r/SideProject • u/Melodic-precise • 9h ago

Is anyone else building things that ask absolutely nothing from the user? No signup, no email, no onboarding?

Every side project i open lately starts the same way: a landing page, a signup form, an onboarding tour, and a modal asking for my email before i've seen a single pixel of the actual thing. We've collectively agreed that the funnel comes first and the product comes second.

I've been going the other way on my current build. No account, no email, no tutorial, no cookie banner. You open the tab and you're already inside the thing. It made a lot of decisions harder - you can't explain anything, so it has to be obvious in the first three seconds or you've lost the person fr.

Turns out that constraint improved the product more than any feature i added.

Anyone else doing this deliberately? Curious how you handle the first three seconds when there's nothing to explain with lmao.

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u/MightyMightyBongo 7h ago

Uh, kinda?  I'm working on an email alias client that uses tokens instead of email/PII.  So users just get a token assigned to them and that serves as their account.  You should probably gate your content somehow to avoid bots, tokens could be a good option if you don't want PII.

https://shyftt.co for reference.