Ghostlaunch

Ghostlaunch is a seven-day validation service for startup ideas that have not been built yet. A founder describes the idea in a few sentences, and Ghostlaunch asks a handful of questions to get the details right. From there the service builds a landing page written and designed to convert, complete with the founder's pricing, fast on any phone, and then puts real people in front of it. Every button on that page opens a 'coming soon' note that asks for an email. Ghostlaunch finds people on Reddit, X and LinkedIn who are already asking for a fix to the problem the idea solves, reaches out to each one about what they asked, and tracks every visit, scroll, click and email for seven days. On day 7 the test closes and a full report arrives: who came, how far they read, which plan they reached for, whether to build it, and every lead, ready to contact. The product sums the division of labour up as 'five minutes of yours, seven days of ours.' Ghostlaunch exists because, in its own argument, the usual ways to validate an idea share the same flaw: nobody has anything at stake. Asking AI means the model has read everything about your market but has never wanted to buy anything. Asking friends means they will tell you what you want to hear, because saying yes costs them nothing. Surveys produce hypothetical answers to hypothetical questions, and 'I would pay for that' is free to say. Feedback swaps are coloured by the other person's own launch. Market research tells you the market exists, not that anyone wants yours; Ghostlaunch calls it homework, not proof. Building first is expensive too. Ghostlaunch's own tally runs to 300 hours for the MVP, 40 hours designing it and writing the page, $600 for domain, hosting and tools, 20 hours of launch posts, DMs and cold emails, $500 of ads for first visitors, and 30 hours refreshing the dashboard for signups, plus endless second-guessing: 390+ hours and $1,100 to find out nobody wanted it. The only test Ghostlaunch treats as valid is putting a real page in front of people who are already looking for a fix, and watching what they actually do. The first half of the service is the page itself. Ghostlaunch writes and designs a landing page made to convert, includes the founder's pricing, and keeps it fast on any phone. Every button opens a short 'coming soon' note that asks for an email and sometimes one follow-up question, so nobody is charged and nothing is sold. The page is editable before the test starts: a founder can change any text or rewrite a section with one click. Ghostlaunch publishes examples of what these pages look like, built from the idea underneath each one, for products that do not exist yet: Paylark, a tool for freelance designers that automatically chases late invoices with polite, escalating reminders; Migalo, an app for neighbourhood bakeries that alerts locals over WhatsApp when fresh bread comes out and lets them reserve before it sells out; Nibblo, an app for parents of picky eaters that suggests tiny, realistic next foods from a photo; Strainly, a Slack bot for remote engineering managers that spots quiet overload; and Slotpup, a booking tool for independent dog groomers that fills last-minute cancellations from a waitlist. A gallery of 44 more examples is linked from the site. The second half is distribution and measurement. Ghostlaunch does the outreach itself: it finds people on Reddit, X and LinkedIn already asking about the problem the idea solves, keeps only the ones who clearly want a fix, and reaches out to each one about what they asked. Founders do not post, DM or ask anyone. Ghostlaunch addresses the obvious objection directly, stating that it only reaches people who are already asking about the problem, one conversation at a time, with no mass posting and no bought lists. That is what makes the traffic meaningful rather than a vanity number: the visitors arriving at the page are people who had already described the problem in public before the page existed. Measurement is continuous and public to the founder through a live dashboard. The site shows the feed filling up during a test on day 3 of 7: a visitor from a Reddit DM reached Pricing, clicked 'Get Team' on the Team plan, opened the waitlist and joined it; a visitor from a Reddit comment reached the FAQ and opened a specific question; a visitor from X reached the footer and scrolled 100%; a visitor from LinkedIn reached How it works. Every visit, scroll, click and email is tracked in that dashboard whenever the founder looks. At the end of the seven days, Ghostlaunch closes the test and writes the report: the verdict, the numbers behind it, what visitors told us, and what to change if you run it again. A published sample report for an idea called Shiftswap returned a 'Promising' verdict with 140 visitors, 8 emails, 6% of visitors leaving an email and 34% of button clicks going to a paid plan, plus a recommendation to build the smallest version, starting with the restaurants that left an email. If almost nobody shows up, the verdict says 'not enough data yet' below 100 visitors, together with how many more visitors it would take; Ghostlaunch states it never stretches a small sample into a conclusion. The overall method is deliberately linear, and Ghostlaunch frames it as sending the ghost first: watch the idea go out before the code does. The founder describes the idea, Ghostlaunch builds the page, Ghostlaunch finds the high-intent leads, Ghostlaunch measures everything, and on day 7 it delivers the verdict. The pitch throughout is to pay for answers rather than for code you will throw away, and the closing line is 'Don't build it yet. Ghostlaunch it.' After day 7 the page and the data stay in the founder's dashboard rather than disappearing, so the test can be revisited, relaunched or rewritten later on a subscription plan. Because the whole cycle is short and the output is a report rather than a product, the benefits are stated in terms of decisions rather than features. A founder gets a verdict grounded in what visitors did, not in what they said, along with the underlying numbers: how many came, how far they read, and which plan they reached for. The emails collected are the founder's to keep, stored with the plan each person picked and what they told Ghostlaunch, visible in the dashboard as they arrive, included in the day-7 report and exportable to CSV at any time. The report also records what visitors said and what to change on a second run, so a negative result still leaves something actionable. And the cost of being wrong drops from the estimated 390+ hours and $1,100 of building first to seven days and the price of a test. Concrete workflows follow directly from the published examples. A founder with a Slack bot idea for remote engineering managers can see whether managers click through to a paid plan before writing any bot. A maker with a booking tool for dog groomers, a reminder tool for freelance designers, a feeding app for parents of picky eaters or a WhatsApp reservation app for bakeries can put the pitch in front of people already complaining about those problems. Founders who are unsure what to build can start from Ghostlaunch's idea library, which it built by reading 1,452 posts where people asked for help and turning what they keep asking for into 50 ideas, each with the posts behind it, grouped into AI business ideas, app ideas, online business ideas, SaaS ideas and small business ideas. Founders working through a notebook of ideas can queue several tests rather than running one. Ghostlaunch is aimed at founders who have an idea but have not built it, including those testing in batches. Pricing reflects that: One test costs $49 once and includes the page built and hosted, 7 days of outreach to high-intent leads, every email collected yours to keep, the live dashboard and the day-7 report. Founder is $99 per month and is marked as recommended for a notebook full of ideas, with 3 tests a month, the ability to rewrite any section and relaunch any page, and everything in One test. Studio is $249 per month for testing in batches, with 10 tests a month, everything in Founder, and priority for its tests. Separately, the team notes that Ghostlaunch itself is for ideas you have not built yet, and points founders with a live product to ReplyHey, which finds people on Reddit, X and LinkedIn asking for what you sell, writes the reply and posts it from your account every day. In short, Ghostlaunch replaces encouragement with evidence. One described idea becomes a converting page, targeted outreach to people already asking for a fix, seven days of click-level measurement and a written verdict with every lead attached, so the decision to build rests on what strangers did rather than on what friends politely said.