Ask HN: Do Beta lists still work?

3 points by polysaturate 7 years ago | 1 comment

I have been out of the building a SaaS game for a bit and now working on a new side project (I can post what it is if anyone wants to know, but didn't want to self promote off the bat).

I remember a few years ago, a beta list was hugely valuable and signups seemed to flow in quickly and easily. Does anyone still build beta lists? Find/found success? Stories around that?

sebst 7 years ago |

A German startup in the fintech sector (basically offering managed etf portfolios for retirement) started with a beta sign up waiting list a few months ago.

I found this very irritating and a bit out of its time as a customer, not to mention the missing desirability for most people. Even I as someone who is interested in startups and fintech felt not really like yeah, yeah sign up now.

So, I personally would not do it.

Having said that, I haven't heard of startups with reduced performance or outages because of overwhelming demand for a long time. Maybe, web dev stacks got more professional and scalable, or the time for easy sign ups out of curiosity is over?