Submission Criteria

Before you submit your startup, it’s important to become familiar with the criteria that we use to review all startups. We’ve highlighted some of the most important criteria that cause startups to get rejected to help you better prepare your startup before submitting it for review.

The product should be new

Your product should be only recently launched or still be unreleased.

If your product has already received press coverage it's less likely to be accepted.

  • Not available to anyone yet
  • Private beta accessible by invitation only
  • Recently launched
  • Launched weeks ago or longer
  • Already received significant press coverage
  • App with the same functionality as a previously released app for different platform

Not featured on BetaList before

Each startup gets two opportunities to be featured. Once pre-launch, and once during launch. There should be at least a few weeks between those posts.

Needs to be a technology startup

Our audience visits BetaList to discover new technology startups. It’s not the right place to promote your blog, newsletter, online store, etc.

  • Software startups
  • Hardware startups
  • Old ideas with a new twist
  • Blogs, online courses, books, newsletters
  • Subscription e-commerce
  • Old ideas without substantial improvements
  • Consultancies / Agencies

A distinct, decent-looking landing page

Using a template doesn’t inspire confidence and result in less sign ups than expected. For this reason we do not allow templates or pages with little product information.

We realise not every startup has the budget to hire a world-class designer, but you should have a decent looking landing page for us to feature you as you wouldn’t get much benefit from that kind of publicity otherwise.

Read our guide: Designing your landing page

  • Distinct design showcasing your (upcoming) product
  • Heavily customised template that looks original
  • Free or paid template
  • Default Bootstrap style
  • Page with only an 'explainer video'
  • Hosted page by LaunchRock, Unbounce, KickoffLabs, or similar service
  • Direct link to Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Facebook page

Visitors should be able to sign up or subscribe to a mailing list

There’s no point in getting featured on BetaList if our audience can’t sign up. Asking our audience to simply send you an email to request access would result in a very low conversion rate and therefore isn’t considered a viable option. Other ways to stay in touch might be permissible, but we generally recommend just adding a standard email sign up form.

  • Custom email signup form
  • MailChimp or other form
  • Facebook or LinkedIn connect
  • "Follow us on Twitter to get notified"