I was position 2,847.
Published March 18, 2026
I signed up for a tool I was ready to pay for. Had a real use case. Had budget. Had a team waiting. Got a confirmation email that said You're on the list!
Three weeks later, nothing. I checked. Position 2,847. Behind two thousand people who probably signed up out of curiosity, bookmarked the tab, and never looked back. Meanwhile, I was ready to wire money.
That's the moment I realized: waitlists are broken. Not the concept. The execution. They reward speed, not seriousness. The person who signs up fastest gets in first, even if they have zero intention of ever opening the product again. Your most valuable future customer? They're somewhere in the middle of a spreadsheet, invisible.
What if a waitlist could tell the difference between “sure, I'll check it out” and “I need this, here's why, take my money”?
That's what Baitlist does. Instead of collecting emails and hoping for the best, it asks a few pointed questions and scores the answers. Not demographics. Not company size. Intent. How specific is the problem they're trying to solve? Have they tried alternatives? Do they know what success looks like? The answers tell you more in 60 seconds than a spreadsheet tells you in 60 days.
A designer who got tired of bad defaults
I'm Dennis. I've spent over a decade in UX, product design, and digital strategy. I run Handoff, a design and development studio where we build products for clients who care about getting the details right. I've designed onboarding flows, conversion funnels, and signup experiences for companies across Europe.
So when I kept running into waitlists that felt like they were designed in 2012 by someone who had never actually waited on one, it wasn't just annoying. It was professionally offensive. I've spent my career making digital experiences smarter, more intentional, more respectful of the people using them. Waitlists had none of that.
Baitlist is what happens when a UX designer decides that “first come, first served” is a lazy pattern, not a law of nature. It's opinionated software. It believes your best leads deserve to be recognized, not buried. It believes founders shouldn't have to manually review hundreds of signups to find the ten that matter. And it believes a waitlist should work for you, not just at you.
What we stand for
Not all signups are equal
Someone who writes three thoughtful sentences about their workflow is worth more than a hundred drive-by email drops. Treat them accordingly.
Speed is not a signal
The fastest signup is rarely the most valuable. The most valuable one took a minute to think about their answers. That minute tells you everything.
Founders should launch, not triage
You didn't build a product to spend your evenings scrolling through a spreadsheet of email addresses. Automate the filtering. Spend your time on the people who showed up with intent.
Design is a competitive advantage
Your waitlist is the first impression of your product. If it feels generic, your product feels generic. Every touchpoint should feel intentional, because it is.
Your best leads are signing up right now. Make sure they don't end up at position 2,847.