It doesn't have to be pre-development. For my product, I created this page about 3 months after development began, and 3 months before public release. I used th

It doesn't have to be pre-development. For my product, I created this page about 3 months after development began, and 3 months before public release. I used the signups to get beta testers before launch, and then announced to the rest after launch. Anything can be a sleazy practice if people use it for sleazy purposes, but it's not the practice itself.