“Just an MVP” Wasn’t Enough: Why I Built Waitle

When starting a new project, one thing I’ve always needed hasn’t changed:
to reach people who are genuinely interested, early on.

Often, when the product doesn’t even exist yet — sometimes not even beyond an idea — I want to know one thing:
Is anyone actually interested in this?

To answer that, I usually had two options:

• Build everything myself
  (create a simple website, collect emails, write backend code, deploy, etc.)

• Or use a ready-made solution

The second option usually came with some familiar problems:

• It was unnecessarily expensive

• It was bloated with features I didn’t need

• Or the interface and flows felt old and clunky

What I really needed was simple:
A clean page, fast setup, and the ability to collect email addresses.

This is exactly the point where the idea of Waitle came from.

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First, for My Own Needs

When building Waitle, my first goal was simple:
To build a tool I would want to use myself.

Something not complicated, something I could set up in minutes, something that just got the job done.

Then I realized it wasn’t just my problem.
Other indie makers, side-project builders, small teams, and anyone trying something new were running into the same pain point.

And that’s how Waitle went from a personal need to a shareable solution.

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What is Waitle?

To put it simply:

Waitle is a tool that makes it easy to create coming-soon and waitlist pages.

It’s for:
• Indie makers
• New project builders
• Small teams
• Anyone who wants to collect email addresses from potential users early on

In short, it’s for anyone asking:
“Is anyone interested in this yet?”

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What You Can Do With Waitle Today

Right now, Waitle has a clean, deliberately simple 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.

The goal is simple:
Get from “I have an idea” to “I’m collecting emails” as quickly as possible.

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What Makes It Different?

What sets Waitle apart from other tools isn’t more features — it’s focus.

Waitle is:

• Minimal but useful

• Fast

• Practical

• Affordable

I left out things on purpose.
Not everything needs to be in one product — Waitle doesn’t need to do everything, it just needs to do this one thing well.

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Rethinking MVPs

During this process, one thing I kept thinking about was the traditional MVP mindset.

The idea of validating something as fast as possible, with the simplest version of a product…
It sounds good in theory, but in practice, it never fully resonated with me.

Today, most of us aren’t building products for brand-new markets.
We’re building next to existing solutions — in categories where something already exists.

At this point, I came across a blog post that really put things into perspective.
I actually discovered it thanks to a share on X by Furkan:

https://x.com/benfurkankilic/status/1999745984302022709

Then I read the original piece on Linear:

“Rethinking the startup MVP: building a competitive product”
https://linear.app/now/rethinking-the-startup-mvp-building-a-competitive-product

One part really stood out to me:

“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 “Why should someone choose this over what already exists?”

That’s the mindset I tried to follow while building Waitle.

There were already coming-soon and waitlist tools out there, but I tried to make something that was:

• Simpler

• Faster

• More modern in UI and flow

• And more affordable

After reading that piece, it became much clearer why I wanted to position Waitle this way.

Today, an MVP isn’t just about being minimal — it has to be competitive.

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What’s Next

In the near future, I’m working on:

• A live preview feature so you can see changes while you edit

• Analytics (visits, conversions, etc.)

• Custom domain support

Beyond that, I also plan to share more about Waitle’s development process, decisions, and what I’ve learned along the way.

This article didn’t go into technical details — that’s coming in a separate, more technical post.

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Finally

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.
Your feedback will directly influence how Waitle evolves.

I’ll continue to share more about Waitle’s journey, so feel free to follow along.

Thanks for reading 🙌

🔗 Explore, upvote, and share your thoughts on Waitle:

👉 https://peerlist.io/aykutonen/project/waitle

🔗 Original on Medium: https://aykutonen.medium.com/just-an-mvp-wasnt-enough-why-i-built-waitle-179ae4b57950