For founders

A startup website builder for founders: ship a launch page and a demo before you pitch

Investors who have only seen slides debate the slides; investors who have clicked a link debate the product. With Eqlo as your startup website builder, one sentence about the problem you solve is enough to get a launch page with its waitlist, plus a prototype people can click, live on a public address before the meeting.

  • 5Free projects, enough to test several pitches
  • 30 daysOf visits, sources and sign-ups, without cookies
  • 1,000Characters per comment on the review link
  • $19A month on Plus to put it on your own domain

Three things that hold a founder back

A launch page waiting for the product

The page waits for the product, the product waits for feedback, and the feedback waits for the page. Publishing the page first breaks that circle: it brings in email addresses and conversations, which tell you what to build.

A demo that only exists in your head

An investor asks to see it, and all you can do is describe it, so they imagine something else. Even a partial prototype that they click themselves closes that gap, and it no longer has to wait for an engineering sprint.

Feedback lost in email threads

Advisors reply with “looks good” or with a long email that refers to “the second block”. Comments pinned to the exact section they concern are far easier to act on, and far faster to collect.

What the startup website builder produces for you

Four pieces, built in this order, because each one feeds the next. You describe them in plain English and correct them the same way.

A launch page

Pick the campaign page type: one or two pages stating the problem, who has it and what changes once it is solved. Eqlo writes it from your description, and its admin comes with a table of sign-ups and conversions.

A waitlist form

An email field and a button. Each sign-up sends an email to you and your co-founder, lands in the inbox of the admin and can go straight to HubSpot or Brevo. The list exports as a CSV file whenever you need it.

A clickable prototype

The prototype type gives one or two clickable pages built around your main flow, with a kit for collecting testers’ feedback. Fill it with realistic sample data, so the investor sees a working screen rather than gray boxes.

A review link

Send it to advisors or friendly investors. Each reviewer types a first name, points at the section they mean and writes a note, 1,000 characters at most. Hand those notes to the AI singly or as a batch, and renew or delete the link whenever you like.

Startup launch page reading “Launch coming soon” with an email field and a Join the list button, beside a sign-up curve split into Search 41%, Social 33% and Direct 26%
A launch page with its waitlist form, next to the sign-up curve and the share of search, social and direct visits.

What an investor opens before the meeting

The decision starts before anyone sits down. The link you send two days ahead is often the first real impression, and the only one if the meeting gets canceled.

Investors tend to open the public page first, to understand in thirty seconds what you do. They open the prototype next, provided it loads without creating an account. Numbers come third, if they are on the page rather than in an attachment.

Three mistakes cost a lot at this stage. A heavy file sent as an attachment gets lost in spam. A demo locked behind a sign-up form never gets opened. And numbers with an old date say more than the numbers themselves.

Pages published with Eqlo are public, so keep confidential figures out of the prototype. If a page must stay private, reserve it for members you add by hand: they sign in with a code sent to their email, and Google never indexes that page.

Telling real traction from noise

Once a waitlist is live, the question comes quickly: when does the number start to mean something? No universal threshold exists, but a few criteria separate a signal from decoration.

Pace matters more than the total. Four hundred sign-ups in two weeks and four hundred in eight months tell different stories, so always state the period, even when the figure is modest.

Origin matters more than volume. Visitors who arrive from a search were looking for a solution, while a crowd from one shared post was passing by. The statistics show your ten main sources with the conversions from each, with no cookie and no third-party service, and they compare the variants of your links, tagged with utm_content, and flag the stronger one.

Commitment that costs something beats free interest. An email address costs five seconds and a call costs thirty minutes, but a pre-order costs money. If you can sell something, even small and in advance, you get the most reliable signal available before launch.

Illustrative scenario

Two founders, ten days before a seed meeting

This scenario describes no real company. Two founders preparing a seed round have their first meeting in ten days. They have no product and no public page, only a deck and a sharp view of the problem they solve.

  • 10 daysUntil the first investor meeting
  • 2 hooksCompared through tagged links
  • 6 callsBooked with people from the waitlist

On Monday they publish the launch page and share it with two different hooks, each with its own tagged link. On Tuesday they write to twenty-five people in their network, and six of them accept a call. On Wednesday they build the prototype around the main flow and send the review link to two advisors, whose comments they apply the same evening. On Thursday they email the investor the link to the page and to the prototype.

In the meeting, the talk is no longer about what they plan to build. It is about what six calls revealed, which hook won, and where the sign-ups came from. The figures are small, but they are real, dated and open to discussion.

The tools you already use stay in place

Your domain

On Plus, connect the domain you already own: you add two DNS records at your registrar, Eqlo verifies them on its own and switches on HTTPS. On the Free plan, the page lives on an eqlo.dev address.

Your CRM and your automations

Sign-ups go to HubSpot or Brevo, or to Make, Zapier and n8n through a signed webhook. Your sequences and templates stay where they are, and Eqlo only feeds the list.

Your Stripe account

Pre-orders can start before the product exists once your own Stripe account is linked. Every payment lands there directly, with no cut taken by Eqlo.

When to bring in an engineer

While you test demand, you need nobody else. The page, the list, the prototype and the review link are all built and changed in plain English, so changing your mind costs nothing, which is exactly what this stage calls for.

Things change when paying customers must use the product for real. Eqlo can add member accounts and monthly or yearly subscriptions paid through Stripe, but specific business rules call for a developer. A developer picks the project up from your GitHub repository, where the full Next.js source sits next to the specification; when they edit that specification there, Eqlo records it as a new version.

Frequently asked questions

Is a waitlist the same as an MVP?

No. A waitlist measures stated interest, not use. It helps before the product exists and falls short afterwards, because an MVP lets someone do the useful thing at least once.

What should I send an investor ahead of the meeting?

Two links: the public page and the prototype. Add a few dated figures on the page itself, such as sign-ups per week and the main sources, rather than a long attachment.

How many sign-ups count as a signal?

No universal number exists. Look at the period, the sources and what each sign-up cost the person. Four hundred in two weeks from search say more than two thousand from a single post.

Can I keep the prototype private?

Links cannot carry a password. To keep a page private, reserve it for members you add yourself, who sign in with a code sent by email. You can also delete and renew the review link at any time.

Does the launch page survive the round?

Usually, yes. The launch page becomes the home page, and the waitlist becomes your first users. You add the missing pages with a sentence, and the history keeps every earlier version.

What if an investor asks to see the code?

Send the project to your GitHub repository. Any developer can read what lands there: a specification and a standard Next.js codebase.

Can I charge before the product exists?

Yes. Connect your Stripe account and sell a pre-order. State clearly what the buyer gets and when, and refund without discussion if you do not deliver; refunds go through Stripe from the admin.

Why not simply start from a template?

A template gives you a layout to fill. Eqlo writes the page from your description, adds the waitlist, the sign-up statistics and the review link, and lets you change all of it by writing a sentence.

Describe your startup and send the link before the meeting

Start on the Free plan, with no card. Publish the launch page, collect the first sign-ups and move to your own domain on Plus when you are ready.