I think startups should spend more time on tweaking their business model and gaining traction than building landing pages.

I’m absolutely stunned by Magic which has the simplest web page out there and seems to work wonders with it. Is it because they are out there, bringing the ruckus, serving customers and learning from their mistakes? All I know is that it is a big middle finger to the hustlers out there who keep claiming that they need a better website to convert people.

This weekend I started stripping a few landing pages from a few companies that are either feature as examples of how to do stuff in some articles or workshops or just had a pretty page. Maybe 10 souls around the globe are screwing around with a landing page at this moment while there is enough they can do to make better use of their time (e.g.: talking to customers, helping customers, automating part of the process to scale up the operation). Why shouldn’t they make better use of their time, right?

Working HTML/CSS isn’t exactly my forte (better put, I’d rather write other stuff), but because I needed another landing page I just had to hack something together in a manner that may save me some time the next time I need to perform this dance again.

The project is called LandingStrip because

1. it basically features (st)ripped versions of landing pages that are on the web and seem to be working and
2. a place of landing for airplanes is sometimes referred to as a strip.

Apart from the wordplay in the use of the term strip, it also employs a colorful double entendre.

Landing strip as a colloquialism for runway or a euphemism for the minimalistic pubic hairdo works quite well in that regard.

Next time you’re polishing pixels again, ask yourself if that is really going to make the big difference in pushing your company into the list of winners :trophy:.

I have stripped Magic, the old Buffer page and also Assist which has a nice split pane layout.

Bear with me. In order to avoid copyright infringement or abuse of trademarks I have given all the strips alternative names. A listing of the strips is available on the project page.

Speaking about making that difference, I’m working on getting up there too and damn it is hard! This is why I try to avoid spending the precious little time I have on things that will not make a ground shattering difference for my startups. I will not get that time back and often enough when you tell yourself it needs to look a little better, it is just you bullshitting yourself with excuses that will keep you from the really hard stuff. The really hard stuff that could make the difference. Don’t do that to yourself :wink:.

Stay Lean, Be Focused, Go Hard!

P.S.: Normally I would have spent a few extra days polishing it up. Just to protect my street cred. Then again… Fuck it, ship it :shipit:! If it renders imperfectly in some browsers, I hope a greater wielder of the CSS/HTML swords will help me out… after getting his/her landing page up first. Because we ship landing pages to hook people, not to win awards for aesthetics. I made up mine.