As long as you're prepared to lose all these customers, and take the risk of whatever bad rep it causes, sure. When you weigh the pros and cons, it's better to

As long as you're prepared to lose all these customers, and take the risk of whatever bad rep it causes, sure. When you weigh the pros and cons, it's better to get the emotional maths right: Factoring in just the disappointment of a cancelled purchase is not enough. You have to take into account the risk aversion that was overcome to make the purchase (which, in light of the cancellation, turned out to be a wrong move). You have to take into account that now the service is perceived at best as flaky, and at worst dishonest. And that the odds of getting some negative comments online is in direct proportion to the success of your experiment. So that when you do launch a product, that's the information already out there that you have to overcome. It still may be worth it to test it that way, if your audience is big enough for all of this not to matter. Personally, I believe at this stage of the game everyone's a bit jaded with explosive growth stories, and it's likelier to build a business based on your first 1000 fans.