Stealing Stripe

Talent borrows, genius steals
- Oscar Wilde

Sometimes I'll see a pastel colored web page with illustrations, and I'll think of a post on Design News asking why all new tech websites look like Stripe.

I reread it today, and noticed a comment claiming that not a single website on top of Producthunt does. And it was right.

Slack actually uses photos - not illustrations. I know! Like ... whaaaat!?!

Startup Pitch decks and Stash are different in that they just provide you with their service on the landing page itself - no sign up, just a single page service.

The same is true of the free music page, Fugue 2.0 and the global Apple price index.


When you can't provide a service to your visitors as they touch the ground, things become more complicated. The design and information has to be so convincing and compelling that they'll get over the obstacle between them and the treasure.

The result is that the other trending sites has more of a generic feel, although they haven't borrowed from Stripes design. Their pages are still:

  1. jumbo header followed by
  2. short two/three column rows separated by
  3. short 1 column rows

Today, these were trending along site the sites above:

I remember Posterous, a blogging platform, that let you sign up, create a blog and post your first post by simply mailing them an email with your post.

CakeResume has a free subscription alternative. There's no reason why couldn't start building your resume on the front page, and then being offered to save it for free so you don't lose your work.

Margin could provide a random email address and an input field for your email on the landing page, and let you get started right now. Instead, you need to download an app.

Investor list doesn't have a free service. Everything requires a subscription. But perhaps you could provide a random short list of company names and first names to provide something more tangible than a generic pitch page.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
- Charles Caleb Colton

20.01.2019