What Actually Goes On a Pre-Launch Startup Site
You need five things, and none of them is a hero video. Here is the list, in the order a stranger reads it.
6 February 2026 · 5 min read
You need five things, and none of them is a hero video. What follows is the list, in the order a stranger actually reads it.
The five
- One sentence saying what the product does, in words your customer already uses.
- One line saying who it is for, so the wrong reader can leave quickly.
- Some evidence it exists — a screenshot, a snippet, a short recording. Anything but an illustration of a laptop.
- One thing to do next, and only one.
- A way to reach a human, with a name attached to it.
That is a complete pre-launch site. Everything else — the team page, the blog, the manifesto — is optional, and every optional thing you add before those five are right makes the five harder to find.
Why the order matters
A visitor reads top to bottom and quits the moment they cannot place you. If the first sentence is a slogan, they spend their attention decoding it instead of deciding. The most expensive thing on a startup site is a clever headline that has to be explained by the paragraph underneath.
If a stranger cannot repeat your first sentence back to you, it is not a first sentence yet.
What to leave out
Leave out the metrics you do not have, the logos of companies that only trialled you, and the roadmap. Leave out the newsletter signup until there is something to send. And leave out the cookie banner, which you only need because of a tracker you probably do not need either.
A short honest site reads as a company that knows what it is doing. A long site padded to look established reads as exactly that.
Send the deck, the paper, the repo, the demo.
We'll send back a website.