Ask HN: Should my startup stay invite-only forever? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should my startup stay invite-only forever?

9 pointsjaredbrown7 comments

I started http://talentopoly.com last Nov as an invite-only community for programmers, designers, and IT pros. The invite-only system has worked fairly well so far and I feel it has kept the site on target and therefore providing value. The question is, how long should sites like this and others (Dribbble, LoveDsgn, Forrst et al) keep the invite wall in place? Forever?

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One of the biggest factors in persuasion is the concept of exclusivity. If people feel like they are getting in on something that not everyone else can get in on, they're more likely to do it.

Be generous with the amount of invites so you can grow.

If you like your current community of users, keeping the system invite-only will generally keep the community at that high caliber.

Invite-only systems are generally really great at keeping people out. Systems like Wave implement invitation systems generally because they aren't ready to scale.

If you're ready to scale, and there's no compelling reason not to open registration, then I'd say do it.

I am sure I'd have more users signed up if anyone could sign up. But I wonder about the quality of those users. Invited users feel they've earned something I hope. So they in theory should be more likely to fill out their profiles and participate in the site. Making the site invite-only also solves a lot of issues, spam links chief among those.

If it is to the benefit of the community to have it be exclusive, it should stay invite only. Scale the invites given out as your business is able to scale, hopefully tied to activity that encourages benefits to the community, not spam.

Currently I give all new users 3 - 5 invites each week. Though only a fraction of them are handed out.

Consider the possibility that you might get less signups if you open it up.

Very good point. Thanks for pointing that out.

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