After the company finds product-market fit and has a sticky product experience in this category, the waitlist is often retired.

2. Capture low intent customers/Top of the funnelRelated but different to assessing demand is capturing low intent customers. This is the case when working in a domain that has a high price point, requires a high trust threshold and/or a meaningful investment in customer education.

5. Sourcing supplyFor bootstrapping liquidity on a multi-sided marketplace, waitlists effectively capture demand and sourcing supply as needed to allow the demand and supply side of the network to grow in lockstep.

Growing a waitlist

Why it works: The Psychology behind waitlists:

When to implement a waitlist

4. Paid marketing “skip waitlist”Sometimes waitlists are implemented for purely tactical reasons. This is the case for companies that leverage waitlists to improve conversion and, subsequently, the unit economics of performance marketing.

3. Control experienceGetting feedback and developing the right product experience is a commonly cited reason why a certain product has gated access. This is especially true for consumer products where losing 75% of the initial sign-ups is considered a good retaining product.