Launch like Dropbox

Dropbox’s referral program is one of the most famous cases of referral marketing. Thanks to incentivized invitations Dropbox has more than 600 million users today.

Yesterday, Bani Singh introduced WaitlistAPI, an easy, lightweight, and free tool to quickly set up a waitlist on your next project.

Inspired by her friend, Bani built WaitlistAPI to be a free tool suitable for a small side-project that can be implemented in 5 minutes.

Here are some of the early reactions from the community:

“I absolutely love simple and effective solutions like this one. Thanks for making this and congrats on the launch, Bani!” – Gleb Sabirzyanov

“Awesome! Can’t believe it took this long for this. Great work.” – Drew Wandzilak

“Congrats! Definitely a much needed service. I was planning to search if there is such a service. Glad to see it on PH. I found it now.” – Wilson Bright

Make Something People Want is the motto of Y Combinator and a guiding star for many makers.

If you want to launch a well-received product, consider taking a community-first approach. In simple words, pick a community and build something for them and not vice versa.

Some benefits of building an audience first:

1. They will be more likely to buy when you launch.
2. You’ll better understand exactly what they want.
3. You’ll build trust and brand awareness.

Here are some of the things you can do before you even start building:

1. Join or start a discussion.
2. Build in public by sharing progress on Twitter.
3. Create a pre-launch page.
4. Read and understand negative reviews of your competitors.

Luckily, there are tons of resources to help you build your audience. Here are some of our favorites:

Ship is a toolkit to generate demand, build an email list, communicate, and ship products.

Uplaunch is a ready-to-use landing page solution with eye-catching coming soon pages.

Luupro is the platform for you to get social about the projects you're working on.

GrowSurf is a customizable platform to create custom refer-a-friend programs built for startups.

ReferralMagic turns your users and customers into referral magnets.

Productboard is great for collecting customer feedback and sourcing new ideas.

Should I Make This? is a site to get feedback on your idea.

Faraday is a free no-code tool to build interactive flows and engage customers.

Not everyone earns a US Salary.

With Parity Bar you can offer customers a discount based on their location. Launched today by community Maker Danny Postma, Parity Bar wants to enable everyone a fair chance at purchasing online tools, regardless of their physical location.