Pieter Levels
Itch-first · SEO + X
There is almost no 'coming soon'. The build is the pre-launch. Followers watch the sausage get made and show up when the URL does.
Stage 03 / 05
Before launch
Who is already waiting?
Pre-launch is audience, proof, and positioning — not a countdown timer. The best hackers collect emails, post the build, and test the sentence they will launch with. If nobody cares before launch day, launch day will not save it.
Questions they actually ask
- 01Where do these people already hang out?
- 02What proof can I show before the product is done?
- 03Is the waitlist a vanity number or a conversation?
- 04Does the landing page make a specific promise?
Tactics for this stage · 12
Niche · Before
Talk to 100 buyers
Before writing code, speak to a hundred people who have the problem. Count how many will pay — not how many say it is 'interesting'.
Noah Kagan
Niche · Before · After
Audience first, product second
Build a public point of view until a crowd gathers. Then sell the thing they already ask you for. The product is a consequence of attention, not the other way around.
Arvid Kahl, Justin Welsh, Daniel Vassallo
Think · Before
Price before you build
Write the price, the promise, and the refund rule on a page. Collect payment or a strong intent. Then decide whether the build is worth it.
patio11, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling
Before · Launch · After
Build in public
Post the metrics, the bugs, the stack, and the revenue. The feed is the funnel. Transparency is not branding — it is a daily distribution habit.
Pieter Levels, Marc Lou, the Indie Hackers era
Before
Waitlist as a conversation
A waitlist is only useful if it segments intent and starts a dialogue. Vanity counts of 10,000 emails with no replies are a costume.
Superhuman-style queues, indie waitlists done right
Before · Launch
One-promise landing page
A landing page is a single sentence with proof. Headline = outcome. Subhead = for whom. CTA = the next five minutes. Everything else is decoration.
Classic conversion craft, used by every paid-acquisition hacker
Before · After
Email from day zero
Capture the address before you capture the follow. Social is a billboard. Email is an asset you can still reach in five years.
Rob Walling, Noah Kagan, almost every durable indie
Launch · Before
Do the unscalable channel first
Manually put the product where the customers already transact — even if you have to do it by hand, one listing at a time.
Airbnb's Craigslist play, Paul Graham's essay, every early marketplace
Before · After · Niche
A personal content system
Turn one worldview into a repeating content machine: a hook, a story, a lesson, a CTA. The person is the media company. The product is the store.
Justin Welsh
Before · After
Teach the craft, sell the tool
Give away the method in public. The product is the faster way to do what you just taught. Students become customers because you already changed how they work.
Adam Wathan / Tailwind adjacent, patio11 essays, maker-educators
Niche · Before · After
Community, then product
Gather people around a scene. Listen for the software they still duct-tape. The community is the moat; the product is how you charge for a job the scene repeats.
Greg Isenberg, Indie Hackers itself, Small Bets
Before · Launch · Think
Sell the outcome, never the stack
Nobody buys React, a model, or a dashboard. They buy the bingo cards, the appointments, the headshots, the first customers. Copy is the product's true UI.
patio11 — 'don't call yourself a programmer'
How operators handle it
Marc Lou
Picks & shovels · X-native
The audience is already in the replies. Pre-launch is a streak of public builds, not a coming-soon page.
Danny Postma
Paid acquisition · wave rider
A page that survives cold traffic. Creative tests before a big spend. PH and Twitter as proof, not as the plan.
Patrick McKenzie
SEO + copy · charge more
Essays and SEO pages that would be useful even if the product died. Trust is accumulated in public, in writing.
Noah Kagan
Validation · email
Emails, partners, and a page. Warm up the list with value so the ask is not the first letter.
Arvid Kahl
Embedded · audience-first
Write in public for that community. The waitlist is a set of names you can picture.
Justin Welsh
@thejustinwelsh
Content system · LinkedIn
Turning a personal content system into a one-person media company
Rob Walling
@robwalling
Bootstrap compounder · email
Start Small, Stay Small — bootstrap compounding as a go-to-market
Daniel Vassallo
@dvassallo
Small bets · audience
Leaving the big-company script for a portfolio of small, public bets
Andrew Chen
@andrewchen
Growth loops · networks
Network effects, cold starts, and loops versus funnels
Sean Ellis
@SeanEllis
Experimentation · PMF gate
Product-market fit as a gate, North Stars, and experiment cadence
Greg Isenberg
@gregisenberg
Scene-first · community
Spotting scenes early and building community-led products inside them
Sahil Lavingia
@shl
Creator rails · simplicity
Building in public, simplicity as positioning, creators as the niche