Ten days ago I wrote a post explaining why we were not launching yet. The argument was that document generation alone is a commodity, and we should build the thing that actually protects a business before asking anyone to pay for it.
That reasoning still holds. But something else in that post has not survived contact with reality: the waitlist.
We removed it last week. Statuta is now open, and there is a free version you can use today.
What was wrong with a waitlist
Waitlists work when you have an audience waiting. A company with a marketing budget builds anticipation, opens the doors, and converts the queue.
We had no marketing budget and no queue. What we had was a form collecting email addresses from people who could not see the product, could not try it, and had no particular reason to remember us a month later.
Meanwhile the thing that would actually tell us whether we were building the right product, someone using it and getting stuck, was blocked behind a button that said "join the waitlist".
That is a strange way to build software for people whose problems you claim to understand.
What the free version does
It maps your obligations. You answer some questions about your business, and it works out which parts of UK employment law actually apply to you, when each one bites, and what to do first. In plain English, in a dashboard, with the urgent things at the top.
That is genuinely useful on its own, and it costs nothing. No card, nothing expires.
What it does not do is the paperwork. Document generation, acknowledgements, the audit trail, the connected solicitor: those sit on the paid side at £129 a month.
The split is deliberate, and it is the honest version of the product. The free tier tells you what is wrong. The paid tier fixes it and, more importantly, proves you fixed it.
Why give away the first half
Because the first half is not the hard part.
Anyone determined enough can work out which employment obligations apply to them. It takes hours, the government guidance is scattered, and most owners never get round to it, but it is possible. Mapping obligations is a convenience.
What you cannot do on your own, in a busy week, with no HR team, is generate the right document, get it acknowledged, and keep a timestamped record that still means something eighteen months later when it is the only thing standing between you and a tribunal finding.
So we give away the diagnosis and charge for the treatment. If the diagnosis alone is all you need, take it and good luck. Plenty of businesses will do exactly that, and that is fine.
The uncomfortable part
Opening early means people see the unfinished bits.
Our onboarding is still wearing the old brand. It is the first thing every new signup walks through, and it looks like it belongs to a different company, because it does. Fixing it is the top of the list this week.
There is a version of this where we hold the doors shut until everything is polished. We did try that version. It lasted about ten days.
The trade is straightforward: a rougher first impression, in exchange for actually knowing whether the thing works for real people rather than guessing at it for another month.
I would rather be embarrassed by the onboarding than confident about a product nobody has used.
Conor Co-founder, Statuta
