Launch checklist for SaaS founders
The 14-day launch checklist for SaaS founders.
Built for SaaS founders whose product ships but whose Stripe line is flat. Ten ordered moves that take you from sub-1% trial conversion to one paying customer at full price – without rebuilding the product.
Verified · editorial policy
TL;DR
As of , the short version is: Built for SaaS founders whose product ships but whose Stripe line is flat. Ten ordered moves that take you from sub-1% trial conversion to one paying customer at full price – without rebuilding the product.
Checklist TL;DR for SaaS founders
- Who this is for
- Your product works, your pricing page is live, signups trickle in, trial-to-paid sits under 1%. This checklist is the next 14 days.
- Steps
- 10 ordered moves, grouped into Foundation, Offer, Proof, Traffic, and Follow-up
- Time to complete
- Roughly 14 hours of focused work spread over 14 days
- Final step
- Run the free 90-second diagnostic on the rewritten page
- Last verified
- May 21, 2026
Who this checklist is for
Your product works, your pricing page is live, signups trickle in, trial-to-paid sits under 1%. This checklist is the next 14 days.
The 10 ordered moves
Name your ICP in the hero, by job-to-be-done
Foundation45 min'For modern teams' converts at zero. 'For B2B SaaS founders running paid LinkedIn at $30K–$300K MRR' converts. Put the ICP and their job-to-be-done in the H1. Vague hero copy is the most common Wrong Person diagnosis on SaaS pages.
Rewrite features as outcomes
Foundation2 hrs'Real-time sync' is a feature. 'Your CSV exports stop being a 90-minute Monday ritual' is an outcome. Rewrite every feature block as the user's after-state. Features sell to existing customers; outcomes sell to prospects.
Build the Stack Slide on the pricing page
Offer2 hrsList every component of the offer: the app, onboarding, integrations, support SLA, dashboards, docs, community. Dollar-anchor each. The total at 5x list price. The pricing page without a Stack reads as 'what does this cost'; with a Stack it reads as 'why is this so cheap'.
Add a conditional money-back guarantee
Offer30 minConditional beats unconditional: 'If you don't see 10x your subscription cost in measurable value in 30 days, full refund.' Specific, dated, falsifiable. Vague 'cancel anytime' language doesn't move conversion; conditional guarantees do.
Ship three dated, named customer case studies
Proof5 hrsEmail five existing paying customers. Ask for a 200-word case study with a specific metric and a date. 'We cut onboarding from 4 weeks to 6 days; 2026-03-14' beats logo soup. Without dated specifics, the page reads as Weak Belief.
Wire the in-trial Soap Opera Sequence
Offer4 hrsTrial signups get a 5-email sequence over the trial period: Attractive Character intro, failed-attempt story, the moment-of-truth, the offer, the urgency. Trial-to-paid lifts 30–80% from a working SOS. Same emails for every trial.
Add the activation-moment trigger
Follow-up3 hrsIdentify the one in-product moment that predicts retention (first export, third teammate invited, first integration connected). Trigger a celebratory in-app + email at that moment. Activation-moment surfacing lifts second-month retention by 20–40% on most B2B SaaS.
Ship one comparison page against the dominant alternative
Traffic4 hrsHonest /vs/ page against the named competitor your cohort already searches for. Where you win, where you lose, where you tie. Comparison pages convert 3–10x homepage traffic on bottom-funnel intent. Don't trash the competitor; the honest version converts better than the salesy version.
Plan the post-purchase upsell ladder
Follow-up2 hrsWhat's the next rung above the entry tier? Annual prepay at 15–20% discount, a higher-tier with quota expansion, a done-for-you implementation. Map the ladder before you need it. Customers in month 3 are the highest-intent upsell target you'll ever have.
Run the diagnostic on your live pricing or marketing page
Foundation10 minOnce items 1–9 ship, run the free 90-second diagnostic on your URL. Triage labels whether the bottleneck is now Wrong Person / Weak Offer / Weak Belief on the rewritten page, so you fix the next-leverage issue with data, not guesses.
How the buckets work
- Foundation · 3 steps · The hero, the headline, the cohort definition. Where the page either earns the next four seconds or loses the reader.
- Offer · 3 steps · The Stack, the guarantee, the pricing structure. What turns the reader from interested into ready-to-pay.
- Proof · 1 step · Dated, named, specific evidence. What turns ready-to-pay into actually-paid.
- Traffic · 1 step · How the right cohort finds the page. Always after the page is rewritten, never before.
- Follow-up · 2 steps · Soap Opera, Seinfeld, OTOs, post-purchase sequences. What turns one customer into compounding revenue.
Questions SaaS founders ask before starting
I have PMF but won't scale. Is this still relevant?
Yes. 'Won't scale' with a working product is almost always a marketing-and-sales layer problem, not a product problem. This checklist patches that layer.
Should I A/B test the pricing page?
Not yet. Below 100 trials per week, A/B tests don't reach significance. The checklist focuses on directional moves with known lift first; you A/B test after baselines exist.
I'm B2B with long sales cycles – does this still work?
Yes. B2B SaaS needs longer Stack Slides and longer follow-up sequences, but the underlying Hook / Story / Offer scaffold is identical. Steps 6–8 add the B2B-specific extensions.
Read the cohort breakdown first
The diagnostic page for SaaS founders walks the Hook / Story / Offer triage on the cohort's vocabulary, money mechanics, and most common mistakes. Pair it with this checklist for context.
Open the SaaS founders cohort page →Step 10 made easy: run the diagnostic now
The free 90-second Launch Diagnostic runs the Hook / Story / Offer triage on your actual URL and labels what’s broken. You can run it before step 1 (to see where you start) and after step 9 (to see what shifted).