600 People Who Forgot We Existed

We had a mailing list. 600 people.

Some of them signed up early, back when we first started talking about what we were building. They were interested. They gave us their email. They wanted to know when it was ready.

And then we didn't email them. For months.

How it happened

It wasn't deliberate. We weren't hoarding emails for some strategic launch moment. We just kept thinking the app wasn't ready yet.

There was always one more thing. The matching needed work. The chat wasn't quite right. The events page needed polish. We kept saying "we'll email them when it's ready" and "ready" kept moving.

Some of those people had been on the list for four or five months by the time we finally sent the email. Five months is a long time. Long enough to forget what you signed up for. Long enough to not recognise the name in your inbox. Long enough to think "is this spam?" and delete it.

The launch email

When we did finally send it, I think we were hoping for a flood. 600 people, all interested, all waiting. This was going to be the moment.

It wasn't.

Some people opened it. Some people clicked. Some people downloaded the app. But the response was nothing like what 600 interested people should have produced. And the reason was obvious: they weren't 600 interested people anymore. They were 600 people who'd moved on.

The unsubscribes were low, which I keep telling myself means something. They didn't actively reject us. They just didn't engage. Which might be worse, honestly. At least an unsubscribe is a decision. Silence is just nothing.

What I should have done

I should have emailed them the week they signed up. Even if the app wasn't ready. Even if all I had to say was "thanks for signing up, we're still building, here's what we're working on."

People don't mind waiting if they know they're waiting. What kills interest is silence. You sign up for something, hear nothing for months, and by the time it arrives you've solved the problem yourself or forgotten you had it.

Perfection is the enemy of good enough. We knew that. We literally wrote about it. And then we did the exact opposite.

The people I think about

What gets me is that every one of those 600 people signed up because they felt something. Maybe they were lonely. Maybe they'd just moved somewhere new. Maybe they'd read one of my blog posts and thought "yeah, that's me."

That's not a casual signup. That's someone admitting, even just to themselves, that they want connection. And we left them hanging for months.

I don't know how many of them found what they were looking for somewhere else. I don't know how many of them are still lonely. I don't know how many of them would have used the app if we'd reached them while the feeling was still fresh.

But I think about it.

The lesson

Momentum has a shelf life. Interest has a shelf life. The gap between "someone wants what you're building" and "someone tries what you've built" needs to be as short as possible.

We got that wrong. We can't undo it. But every new signup now gets an email within 24 hours. Not because we've suddenly got our act together on marketing. Just because I don't want another 600 people to forget we exist.

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600 people raised their hand. We left them waiting so long they put it back down.