You shipped. The product works. The Show HN post got a few upvotes — and the signups chart is a flat line.
The reflex is to conclude the product is not good enough yet and build more of it. That reflex is almost always wrong, and expensive, because building is the one activity that feels like progress while changing nothing. No-signups has four usual causes, and they must be checked in order — a fix downstream is invisible while an upstream leak is open.
Leak 1 — Nobody with the problem is arriving
How many people who plausibly have the problem your product solves saw your page last week? Not peers, not launch-day tourists — potential users. For most SaaS with zero signups the honest answer is "a handful", and no page converts a handful of anybody. If that is you, stop optimising the page and go where the problem is discussed.
Leak 2 — It is built for "anyone"
"A project management tool for teams" selects nobody. When a product is for everyone, no visitor feels it is for them. A product for "developers" loses to a product for "freelance mobile developers who bill hourly" every time the second one shows up — even if yours is technically better. Narrowing is not shrinking your market; it is choosing the smallest market you can actually win.
Leak 3 — No answer to "why you specifically?"
A visitor who has the problem and feels selected still asks one silent question: why this one and not the incumbent I have already heard of? If your page describes you as a member of a category ("a modern CRM"), the visitor fills in the answer themselves — usually "no reason".
Leak 4 — The page talks about the product, not the visitor
Features are evidence, not argument. The visitor is asking "what does my Tuesday look like after I sign up?" and the page is answering "we use vector search". First sentence: their problem. Second: the outcome. Features prove it lower down.
The five-minute test
Write one sentence: "[Product] is for [the narrowest group you would bet on] who [specific situation], so they can [outcome they would pay for]." If you cannot fill it in without "anyone", "teams", or "businesses" — that is your leak, and no amount of traffic fixes it before the sentence does.
Originally published as a field note at strangertosold.com. The free 3-minute Sales Bottleneck Finder — 18 questions, no email — names which of the nine stages of your sales system is actually blocking you.
Top comments (0)