“Just an MVP” Wasn’t Enough: Why I Built Waitle
Source: Dev.to
Introduction
I’m sharing this because the MVP discussion resonates a lot with the dev community, especially for those building products in crowded spaces. When starting a new project, one thing I’ve always needed hasn’t changed: even before the product exists—sometimes not even beyond an idea—I want to know one thing.
Options for Getting Started
- Build everything myself – create a simple website, collect emails, write backend code, deploy, etc.
- Use a ready‑made solution – often comes with familiar problems:
- Unnecessarily expensive
- Bloated with features I don’t need
- Interface and flows feel old and clunky
What I really needed was simple. That’s exactly the point where the idea of Waitle came from.
What Is Waitle?
Waitle is a tool that makes it easy to create coming‑soon and waitlist pages. It’s aimed at:
- Indie makers
- New project builders
- Small teams
- Anyone who wants to collect email addresses from potential users early on
Current Experience
- One template
- Four different color palettes
- A customizable page (brand name, hero section, email form, social links)
- A unique URL generated automatically
You can set everything up in 1–3 minutes.
Core Principles
- Minimal but useful
- Fast
- Practical
- Affordable
I left out many features on purpose to keep the focus on what matters.
Rethinking the MVP Mindset
The traditional MVP mindset—validating something as fast as possible with the simplest version—doesn’t fully apply today. Most of us aren’t building products for brand‑new markets.
I came across a blog post on X by Furkan and the original piece on Linear titled “Rethinking the startup MVP: building a competitive product.” A key takeaway:
“Building something valuable is no longer about validating a novel idea as fast as possible. Instead, the modern MVP exercise is about building a version of an idea that is different from and better than what exists today.”
So the question isn’t just “Does it work?” It’s about being competitive while staying minimal.
Positioning Waitle
Existing coming‑soon and waitlist tools were already out there, but I aimed to make Waitle:
- Simpler
- Faster
- More modern in UI and flow
- More affordable
Future Roadmap
- Live preview – see changes while you edit
- Analytics – visits, conversions, etc.
- Custom domain support
I also plan to share more about Waitle’s development process, decisions, and lessons learned in a separate, more technical post.
Call to Action
If you are:
- Building a new project
- Want to collect emails from potential users early
- Need a simple, fast, modern solution
I’d love for you to try Waitle. We’re currently in public beta, and it’s completely free during this phase.
I’ll continue to share more about Waitle’s journey, so feel free to follow along.
Thanks for reading 🙌
Original version on Medium: Link
Explore the project (Waitle): https://waitle.com