a waitlist that moves when you share, and invite codes worth leaking

the play

Two mechanics that feed each other. A waitlist where your place moves up when people sign up through your link, so every signup recruits. And invite codes as the only way in, scarce enough that people pass them around and post them.

what happened

Robinhood ran a waitlist for its zero-commission trading app where referring friends moved you up the queue. Co-founder Vlad Tenev said they wanted to “create an incentive for the most avid, most committed early adopters”.

Robinhood
the mechanic	sign up, get a link, move up the line for every friend who joins behind you
the list at public launch	Robinhood said 800,000 people had signed up for its waitlist. Fortune put the list at more than 700,000
opened to everyone	Mar 12, 2015

Clubhouse was invite-only. New users started with two invites. Codes ended up for sale on eBay.

Clubhouse	weekly active users (company figures)
January 2021	2 million
February 2021	more than 10 million

On Jul 21, 2021 Clubhouse dropped the waitlist and the invite system, and anyone could join.

why it works

lever	what it does
every signup recruits	your place in line is a reason to share your link right after you sign up
the keenest users do the work	the people who want in most bring the most friends
scarcity is a story	a code you can’t easily get becomes something people ask for in public
leaks are distribution	a code posted in a group chat or a pinned message brings a wave of people in at once

from my calls

if you invite more people, if you share it on twitter, we have you bumped up.

just have an invite code in the pinned message. someone went even leak invite code.

A consumer crypto app closed public signups for a week or two, so the only way in was a code. They gave sub-communities their own codes. When they relaunched with a new season, impressions spiked and lapsed users came back.

Another app ran invite-only through partner communities and turned roughly a fifth of visitors into active users.

For trader audiences I tell teams to run the community on Telegram before Discord, until they have a couple of thousand users.

cost vs payoff

	what
cost	people you make wait, some of whom never come back
cost	policing fake signups and scripts that game the queue
payoff	a list that grows itself before you launch
payoff	the most motivated users arrive first
payoff	a launch day with a crowd already waiting

how to steal it

	crypto app	consumer app
the queue	a waitlist where each referral moves you up, shown as a live position	same
the codes	codes per community: one for each Telegram group, DAO or KOL’s audience	codes per user, a few each, more for active users
where codes leak	pinned messages in Telegram groups, X replies	group chats, X, Reddit
the reason to want in	early access to a season, points or a rank that only early users get	early access, a handle, a feature others don’t have yet
measure	invites sent per user, conversion of code holders to active users	same

Run it like this:

Give everyone who signs up a link and a visible place in line.
Move them up for every friend who joins.
Close public signups for a short window. Codes only.
Hand each community its own code so you can see which ones convert.
Open up on a set date with a new season or feature.

watch-outs

watch-out	what to do
a code with no pull is, as I put it on a call, “terrible”	scarcity only works if people already want what’s behind the door. build the pull first
people game the queue	co-founder Baiju Bhatt told Quartz people were “writing scripts to move up the waitlist”. dedupe emails and check for bots
the buzz fades while the door is shut	Clubhouse’s downloads fell to just over 900,000 in April 2021 as rivals launched, three months before it dropped invites. set an opening date and keep it
codes get resold	tie codes to a community or a person so you know where they came from