Prefinery = Pretooling...

Part of our initial GTM plan was to use a clubhouse-style waitlist and make Myaigi invite-only to build buzz and exclusivity. It also fits into our model (we don't want people who aren't all in to use our tool and be disappointed)
"you have to really want your goal, not just Kinda want it".

So we did a ton of research and Prefinery came out on top. Viral referral mechanics. Clean embeds. Good analytics. $49 a month (not 25K) so definitely affordable. Sign us up Scotty, confident we'd made the right call. (Ed-Sabs: We did make the right call. At the time)

It was a bit of a mission to setup, First project: too complex. We wanted something simpler. Deleted. Second project: wrong settings. Started over. Third project: closer, but not quite there. Fourth project: finally got it right. This is pretty standard; we didn't know exactly what we wanted until we saw what we didn't want. But after D4 we were ready to rock that. We'd paid for three months, built the waitlist, designed the referral tiers, wrote the email sequences. and closed the item on monday.com.

Aaand then our launch framework changed. We 've now moved away from traditional waitlists entirely. Prefinery no longer fits. So; three months of subs + founder time = a tool we'll never use.

the thing is though, good decisions get overtaken by events. You can research thoroughly, compare alternatives, make the informed choice, and still end up abandoning it. Not because you were wrong at the time. But because the plans sometimes evolve faster than your tooling can. I actually read a medium article talking about just this; execute speed = many small mistakes in search of big goals.

It's just the cost of learning and iteration.

Two other things from that W2. Beautiful.ai charged my card $144. Trial ended, no warning email. I asked for a refund. Jojo from support explained: they only send reminder emails where US state law requires it. South Africa doesn't qualify. Annoying, (my darn cascade extra credits are only $10 a pop okay) but whatever, they did refund us so no harm no foul. Settled on Gamma but its a good reminder to track your own trials.

Then: we also finished our a16z Speedrun application that weekend. S*, a partner, had emailed us personally to nudge us to complete it. "We're actively reviewing applications now". Four zeros and all, we submitted. Never heard back.

Z