HACKER Q&A
📣 aparsons

How to build 'Startup-y' product / landing pages?


It seems that every new [especially Saas] startup has a very similar "feeling" website. In terms of what to expect, fonts and colors used, even the feel of scrolling. Reminds me of Apple product pages from a few years ago. Are they using a common template or something?

Some examples which go even further:

https://www.productboard.com/

https://savvycal.com/

I can't imagine building something like this from scratch as an early founder. Any insight is much appreciated.

  👤 radihuq Accepted Answer ✓
Another example is https://cohere.so. When they launched on HN I asked them about their design: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24931869

I understand what you're saying about the similar feel. There was a company that went through YC called Aesthetic[0] that's a design agency. I have a hunch that a lot of YC-backed companies probably go to them for design work. If this is the case, then perhaps this could be a reason for this homogenous startup aesthetic

I too have been looking for templates that replicate this style. The two examples I really like are Dashkit[1] and Landkit[2]. I believe they're made by the same team

Also, a popular CSS framework is TailwindCSS and I know the guys behind that launched a component library called Tailwind UI[3] that has this modern startupy feel. I just saw on Reddit today[4] that someone created an open source TailwindCSS-built component library[5] that could be of interest

I'd love to hear if anyone has any additional insights!

[0] https://www.aesthetic.com/

[1] https://themes.getbootstrap.com/product/dashkit-admin-dashbo...

[2] https://themes.getbootstrap.com/product/landkit/

[3] https://tailwindui.com/components

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/klwy07/open_source...

[5] https://www.tailwind-kit.com/

👤 schwartzworld
Most people I've talked to place too much value in the idea that a website needs to be built from scratch. You could do it, or have a team do it, but its a lot of wasted time and money, especially if your goal is to have a popular look.

You can get quality free and paid templates from a lot of sources on the web. By the time you put in your branding, image assets, and copy nobody will be able to tell by looking what temple you used. If you know html/css/js you can customize the bits that don't work for you pretty easily.

👤 coderintherye
Try using a landing page builder such as FastPages https://www.fastpages.io/
👤 numair
Most of these sites have a marketing front-end built using Bootstrap, which was a framework released by Twitter a few years back. Look up Bootstrap themes.