How to write a teaser that fills your waitlist

Developers are the hardest audience to impress with marketing and the easiest to impress with a working product. A good teaser leans into that. It shows the tool doing one useful thing, fast, and then gets out of the way.

Pick one moment

Your teaser is not a feature tour. Choose the single moment where someone watching thinks "I want that". For a database tool it might be a branch created in under a second. For a code review assistant it might be a pull request comment that catches a real bug.

Write that moment down in one sentence before you record anything. If you cannot, you are not ready to record.

Keep it under 30 seconds

Attention drops off quickly on social feeds and directory listings. A strong structure for a short teaser:

1. 0 to 3 seconds: show the problem state. A slow build, a messy config, a failing test.
2. 3 to 20 seconds: show your tool fixing it, in real time or a lightly sped up take.
3. 20 to 30 seconds: show the result and your product name.

Skip the logo animation at the start. Nobody waits for it.

Record the real product

Resist the urge to mock up an interface in a design tool. Developers notice, and it erodes trust the moment the beta opens. Record the actual product, even if it is rough.

Practical recording tips:

• Use a clean terminal theme and a large font so text is readable on a phone
• Hide personal bookmarks, notifications, and unrelated tabs
• Zoom into the part of the screen that matters instead of recording a full 4K desktop
• Export a silent version, since most people watch muted

Export for the web

A teaser that takes ten seconds to load will not get watched. Aim for a small file:

• Format: MP4 with H.264 for broad support, or WebM for smaller files
• Resolution: 1920 by 1080 or 1280 by 720, in a 16:9 frame
• Length: under 30 seconds
• Size: under 10 MB where possible

On TeaserTrack, teasers autoplay muted in listings, so the first frame matters. Make sure it already shows your interface, not a black screen.

Put the waitlist one click away

Every place your teaser appears should have a direct link to your waitlist. Keep the form short. An email field is enough to start. You can ask about team size and use case in the welcome email.

Publish it where developers look for new tools

Once your teaser is ready, submit your tool with a clear tagline, your launch date, and the teaser video. A listing gives you a permanent page that can rank in search and collect upvotes long before launch day.