What is Reddit's opinion of Beta List?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

From experience I can say that setting up a simple landing page which contains an email form and social links is very valuable in getting your first users.

Drive traffic to this landing page through social and reaching out to people to build up an email list. Then when you launch you can email people straight away rather than trying to start from the bottom on launch day.

This is something we should have started earlier with our own product.

Other things to consider:

• List on directory sites such as Product Hunt and BetaList
• Follow and engage with lots of people on Twitter/Instagram who would use your product
• Considered paid referrals from bloggers in your industry
• Post in relevant subreddits
• Don't be afraid to talk and tell people about your idea!

It's quite likely your startup didn't match the criteria: http://betalist.com/criteria

If you could send me your submission ID ( http://betalist.com/dashboard ) I'll double check the status. ( )

This is incorrect.

1. We feature non-expedited submissions all the time. Currently a little over half of the startups we feature do not pay for an expedited review. In fact, whenever too many startups start paying, we increase the price to limit demand and make sure we always have 'free slots' available for those that don't have the financial means. Startups in a hurry with the budget basically finance the free startups who fairly wait their turn.

2. Paying does not guarantee getting featured. The way expedited reviews used to work is that when a founder submitted their startup and paid for the expedited review, we'd check to see if the startup qualified to get featured ( http://betalist.com/criteria ). If it did not qualify we issued a full refund and didn't feature the startup. This happened quite frequently. If we'd feature any startup willing to pay we'd quickly lose our audience because of crappy content.

As of a few weeks ago we changed the process a little bit, so that we first do a quick check to see if a startup qualifies, before the paid option is presented. That way within a few days the founder knows whether their startup qualifies (and if not, why) and there's no need for us to issue refunds for unqualified startups. (We do still offer refunds if the founder wasn't happy with the results of being featured.)

I'm sorry to hear you're still waiting to hear back. It's likely that your startup didn't meet our criteria ( http://betalist.com/criteria ). Until recently we didn't notify startups if they didn't qualify, because we weren't set up to deal with that efficiently due to our small team and increasing volume of startup submissions. As I've noted before, this has changed for new submissions. If you could email me your submission ID which you can find at http://betalist.com/dashboard I'll check your submission status. You can reach me at

Disclosure: I'm the founder of BetaList

I would definitely toss something up. I wouldn't even worry about modifying it too much - it's unlikely that you'll run into someone who is a web dev/designer who also happens to have seen the template, since there are so many. Even if they did, whatever.

As someone else mentioned, you need to validate ASAP. There's no excuse - otherwise you're just making something for yourself.

Pop in Google Analytics to gauge your visitor:signup ratio, cobble together someway to collect email (newsletter, "beta" sign up, etc).

You likely won't have time to polish it off the way you want for this weekend, but after you fix it up a little throw it up on http://betalist.com/ (their one rule is that you can't have a finished product).

I might even print out some biz cards (in the US, you can do this at a local Staples or Walmart in 4 hours). A logo and Twitter handle or something would do.

I got featured on Betalist a while ago (for free), http://betalist.com/startups/startup-stash. Got about 500 signups, so I loved it.

If you have a plan on what to do with your signups, giving the average Betalist listing gets around 300, you'll be paying arround $0,33 per email, which is not much. If you have a solid plan on what you're going to do with this email list then it could be worth it (think Jab Jab Jab right Hook ;) )

Really great points made here. /u/theorymeltfool

The odds of getting investors on board with your idea is much higher if you just have a functional prototype and survey data than if you have an app on the marketplace that isn't already making waves.

Look into beta testing the app with a small community before talking to investors. There are lots of resources for doing this, here's one: http://betalist.com/ (have not tried it myself, just heard good things)

These days, developing an app can be done with little to no initial investment if you know what you're doing. Time will be your investment, and keep track of it!

Use a project management system that logs your hours so that you know what you've put into the project as development progresses. This metric will be important to you when you start courting investors down the road.

Freelancer Office is one that I like using, but it can be done just as easily with free alternatives.

Another very important thing to keep in mind is scalability and scaling milestones. This depends heavily on the type of project, but it's vital that the apps architecture and dependencies are built in a way that won't inhibit growth, and that you don't push growth that can't be sustained by your budget.

Lastly, make sure that the app is well documented such that when the time comes, anyone you hire can hit the ground running.

Good luck, looking forward to seeing your name on Forbes ;)

I saw it before, sounds cool. Just suggesting you have a line summing it up. Like this http://betalist.com you know what each product offers right away. All their landing pages will have the line as well.

check out betalist, I've submitted a few landingpages over there, but a word of caution: The users that hang around there aren't always your target audience. Techies/early adopters/startup lovers. If you're targeting 50yo women in Dallas (random example) you're better off using a different way. The entire goal is to get the right audience to your landingpage, even if just 50/100/200. The way they interact is key to learn about your concept. If you can get them to sign up via email, even better, because you get to ask them questions. The people that sign up to landingpages are interested in your service and the type of people that are great at providing feedback. IMPORTANT THOUGH: Don't just drive any type of user to your landingpage. In order to really test the concept, get your target audience on there

This may not be as applicable for you as it sounds as if you have moved into paying customers. My company is currently in beta phase and attempting to develop traction and obtain feedback for UCD. We're a lean project management system. We are currently gaining some growth for our beta users by using http://betalist.com/. We started beta a week ago and hit Betalist today.

I might have more ideas for you if I knew what your market / business and branding was like. We're tapping into some other types of markets on our local home front and know that can be helpful if you are able to do local networking / get involved as well.

Facebook groups have also been a resource for users and may be helpful depending on your market.

For early adopters, it really depends what your product is. Some people even set up Kickstarter campaigns where the primary goal is not funding, but reaching early adopters.

If you're doing something quite general or aimed at tech audiences, check out http://betalist.com/

If you can get any more specific about your product / audience, I could give better advice.

The traffic wasn't a problem for us. We spent a year building out our backend infrastucture (to the neglect of our UI) because of the particular needs of enterprise clients. We were at perhaps 5-10% capacity even at peak.

We're a small team, so we have been focused on the North American market. The level of response from Europe and South America, however, now has us taking a closer look at selling into those markets. In Europe, for instance, we will need to better understand their data policies.

We would have had better marketing and onboarding materials ready (i.e. better videos, better default and template spaces, etc). We were starting to work on those when we got hunted, so we just had to roll with it and get those issues ironed out as we go.

We tested the waters with BetaList and a couple other smaller platforms like LaunchList about a month and a half ago. At the time, we were pretty pleased with the response, but these are much smaller platform. All of them together netted us maybe 1/10th of the traffic and signups as PH.

We are definitely more cognizant about how much of an amplification effect social media and blogs can have on a launch campaign. We will be paying much closer attention to these channels going forward.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you have to build out a full product to work out if it's worth pursuing. Often you can wack together a good marketing site with a single landing page, collect email addresses for pre-sale to see if anyone would actually convert.

Once you've worked out how to attract customers, then you can move onto thinking about jumping straight into product.

There are a few decent sites out there that will help you see straight away if there's demand for your product.

http://betalist.com – Specialises in pre-launch products, and can help you work out the particulars. https://www.launchrock.com - can get you up an running with a landing page pretty quick.

If you can prove demand, you stand a better chance of approaching investors and saying "Hey look, the internet noticed, and there's demand for this". The pre-launch sites similar to betalist will also start helping your SEO as plenty of sites link to you off the back of coverage, so you are already off to a better start than your competitor who hasn't launched.

My startup co-founder and I just finished our 6th week doing team workouts! Here's our results -

Strengthen Founders at Arkansas Fitness and Athletics

To make this week even more awesome, our startup was just featured on BetaList today. It's helped us get hundreds of signups.

We would love your help keeping the momentum going by visiting and sharing our BetaList page Strengthen App on BetaList. Thank you for all your support!

It's extremely difficult for any product to be featured twice, according to one of the Product Hunt founding members. See his Quora answer. I would suggest to wait for the actual launch to try and get your app on PH. Till then try finding smaller audiences looking for beta projects such as yours, like Betalist

Actually, we have some pretty strict selection criteria: http://betalist.com/criteria

The paid option is only available if the startup matches those criteria.

For those startups that don't match these criteria we have created http://submit.co which is basically a list of BetaList alternatives.

I like to scroll through http://betalist.com ever now and then. There are some awesome designs (although not all that variable as well) but still, it shows actual designs of actual functional websites and you can search for the kind of website you're building for inspiration

Just look at smaller-end tech sites (that are not TechCrunch) - some of these sites will cover you for free. If you have a press release check out HARO. Also add your startup to http://betalist.com/ and if you have a video then http://startup-videos.com/

It's could be a mix of posting on reddit/HN/other sites, some cold emailing/DMing users on Twitter, and getting featured on sites like BetaList.com. There's could be a small stream of traffic from this, but you could start here. Make your value offering clear on the landing page with a clearer call-to-action and more login buttons.

Some feedback: For mass market appeal you could look to changing the product description. I'm not an engineer, but I'm reasonably technically savvy and I know what the sensor is, however I'd say most regular folks who read the above would not be clear as to how it would help them. Thats of course if your target market is > hobbyist etc. You list some of the use-cases further down on the site, maybe thing about having them more up front. A video showing how the app operates with the sensor would be good. Also, how does it compare to NEST for instance. It can be used to monitor temperature, but can I use it to turn on my heating? http://betalist.com/ could be a start to get the word out. Also, consider: https://hax.co/accelerator/ I hope that helps.

I like the concept, and it's a neat little piece of hardware, but why would someone use this over something like AirDroid or similar?

Your landing page could use a little work. This is obviously your first product so it should be central to your landing page. You've spent the time making an explainer video, so why not have it immediately available to people as they arrive at your site? People don't want to have to go clicking around to figure out what your website is about. Have a look through some other sites on betalist for some good examples of product landing pages.

Hey everyone!

Name: Connected Getaways http://www.connectedgetaways.com/

EV Pitch: Luxury fitness getaways for top startups and fitness minded entrepreneurs taking place under one roof in destinations around the world.

Stage: Planning our first few getaways after just being featured on BetaList http://betalist.com/startups/connectedgetaways

Feedback: I would love to hear anyones feedback on anything so feel free to comment.

Discount: I am definitely open to discounts with users that are engaging and willing to help push our service in the right direction through advice, feedback, startup connections, partnership ideas, etc.

Added: Just looked through your site and the sample screenshots, and I am thinking that if you want to compete in this space, you are going to have to talk to a designer to work on the interface and look and feel.

To give you an idea, here is one applicant tracking SaaS app that launched when we launched out own product in a similar space (Note: Our product is not a competitive, but rather a complementary service that would work well with applicant tracking): http://betalist.com/startups/applicant-io

Strangely, it seems that their site is no longer up, only a couple of months after they launched. Looks like they had good design and marketing and still found it hard to get traction maybe??

Sorry - I don't mean to be a downer here, but I guess what I am saying is: If you want to compete with the other guys in this space, you have to bring your design and marketing up to, or exceed, their level.

I also find a Betalist a fantastic tool for startups not just to get new subscribers but also in terms of additional exposure and PR.

Our startup also got featured this week and I'm impressed by the number of subscribers within the first days: http://betalist.com/startups/idealityio

I would definitely try it since I think that Betalist is not just a great tool to get new subscribers but also exposure in terms of people spreading the word about your startup (PR).

Our startup also got featured this week and I'm impressed by the number of subscribers within the first day: http://betalist.com/startups/idealityio

I find Betalist is a great tool for startups to get exposure and reach people outside their own network.

Our startup also got featured this week and I'm impressed by the number of subscribers within the first day: http://betalist.com/startups/idealityio

I'd be careful about using fusioo until it's more proven. Seems they were still in beta just two months ago: http://betalist.com/startups/fusioo

Something like podio is more proven and reliable. Been around years and backed by a big company. Just my two cents. Since switching project management tools sucks big time.

Name : Coworker

URL : www.coworker.com

Pitch : Coworker is your number one place to find and review co-working spaces around the world. Think of it like Tripadvisor for coworking spaces. You can filter by all of the classic essentials such as "free beer" and "swimming pool" (sorry, no hot tub in the amenities list yet), and read real reviews from freelancers, startup teams and entrepreneurs.

View overall ratings, find out WiFi speeds, see daily, weekly + monthly rates, and check out photos… everything you need to find your perfect coworking space in thousands of cities around the world is right there on coworker.com

More: We go live on October 15th and just pre-launched on BetaList today! http://betalist.com/startups/coworker

Stage: Private Beta

Looking For: Feedback from people who either own / manage coworking spaces or work from them :)

Like you said, "it depends on the product, service, audience, etc.", but the number one source of my early users/signups came from BetaList, which is free to list with. Your landing page just needs to look decent and have a form of a "signup for beta" form on it.

Sure no problem. There is another big site called http://betalist.com/ .But unfortunately it doesn't cater to indie game developers. Also the best part is sharing email address is kindof OK nowdays as Google can always help with a spam filter if in case someone is emailing you more than necessary. What if i make a website, would you be interested to register in that case for creating a BETA List. Whichever is community happy with, i will stick with that.

http://betalist.com

They have a requirement that the product can't be public, yet, so you're finding them pre-mvp usually. With that said, I'm curious how many that post on betalist ever actually release an mvp.

The tweets aren't bots, but a lot of our users have chosen to automatically tweet the startup we feature. Please see this comment for the full story: http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/37fbhq/share_your_betalist_launch_experience/crnjbjs for

Our goal isn't to deceive users into thinking we have a bigger reach than we really have, but I can see how you'd feel that way. As mentioned in my comment we're planning on phasing out this auto-sharing functionality partly for that reason.

It's worth pointing out however, that the paid 'expedited review' option we offer comes with a 100% money back guarantee. So if you pay to skip the waiting queue and aren't satisfied with the results you'll get your money back. Fortunately, this hardly ever happens, but it's there in case we didn't meet one's expectations.

As for the advertising package you refer to we indeed include a tweet as part of the package. We clearly communicate the expected number of clickthroughs when advertising on BetaList ( http://betalist.com/advertise ) which is ultimately what advertisers care about. I understand your viewpoint though, so we make sure advertisers have the right expectations.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of BetaList

Thank you for submitting. For those who visit the Beta List http://betalist.com/startups/rsvp-law page, you'll find a priority access offer with a phone # to text your specific request for free info.

I'm happy to see that there's more customization available for iOS these days. There's a new keyboard that has been released on BetaList that I've signed up for to test...Looks promising!

http://betalist.com/startups/monkey-keyboard

Curious to see if iOS is going to become less- "flaky" with the release of more of these 3rd party apps!

There's Beta List. It's not specifically for mobile apps/games, but I'm sure it's worth a shot.

I've wondered the same thing about getting beta-testers, I'll be keeping an eye on this thread :)

Very cool. I'm imagining a club looking to build the next dropbox/redditt/facebook/snapchat applications. I see beta after beta from from the Beta List (http://betalist.com/) and my assumption is there are students on campus who also want to build great products.

Name: Endorsevent (www.endorsevent.com)

Elevator Pitch: Corporate sponsorship for consumer events (i.e. weddings)

Details: We connect consumers (and agencies) with our network of corporate sponsors. Consumers have the potential to recognize a cost-savings for their events and sponsors can achieve low-cost experiential marketing. We were recently featured on BetaLi.st.

Looking for: Users, we want to speak with sponsors and consumers/agencies on what capabilities are important to them.

Discount: Share Endorsevent on Facebook and get early access to the platform.

Considering that you have a landing page with email integration one of the best places to gather a lot of users and to show that you're launching soon would be listing your startup on betalist. Another great place, if you can get on, is by trying to get listed on producthunt. Considering that fact that many entreprenuers, vc scouts, and journalists/ tech bloggers are already on those sites, if your product is really awesome and solves a real pain point then you could get some pretty good coverage. You could also get coverage by going to a PR site for startups called Justreachout

There's something kind of not really like that but similar that i have used in the past.

http://betalist.com/

I think you have a good idea, if those early signups get some promotional value like early access, + features, discounts, etc incentive?

Submitting to a few of these is a good idea, but honestly, only provides minimal traction. I would focus my efforts on finding out where your target audience is hanging out/reading.

We had good luck with http://betalist.com/, but only in getting a bunch of eyes on the site and a few email signups, but not really a targeted customer mix.

That being said, if you are overwhelmed by the number of them, just pick five a day and submit to them. By the end of the month you'll have over 100 generating some traffic for you.

When I land on a landing page of a startup who is using the run-of-the-mill ubounce or launchrock page, it just doesn't seem like I should take them seriously.

So yea, I don't think their effective enough.Probably why betalist (http://betalist.com/submit) doesn't allow them.

I second the guys who are saying the site is too busy. Have a look at http://betalist.com. Content display similar to the one they have there would make it easier for visitors to consume the content. The idea is interesting. I also think that you should worry more about the display than the logo. You can always take care of the logo after you have gained some traction. I have actually emailed you a question about requirements to be published on your site as I am looking for ways to get my startup off the ground.