The Startup Landing Page Drinking Game: 2026 Edition

Print this. Bring it to a startup demo day, an investor pitch event, or simply your laptop at 11pm when you are doing competitor research for a product that should not exist. The rules are simple. You will lose in under four minutes. The drink is water because alcohol would kill you.

Take One Sip When:

• —The hero section uses a terminal font on copy that has nothing to do with a terminal.
• —There is a row of model logos presented as a spiritual altar. (AI companies only. Web2 companies: take a sip for each logo strip anyway.)
• —The primary CTA is "Get Early Access" and the product has been in beta for 18 months.
• —The word "unlock" appears as a verb.
• —"Join [round number]+ teams/builders/makers" appears with no methodology cited.
• —The hero background is either: pure black with floating particles, a dark gradient with a faint grid, or a photograph of a laptop on a minimalist desk.
• —The founding team section describes everyone as a "builder," "maker," or "problem solver" without specifying what they built, made, or solved.
• —There is a floating chat bubble blocking the pricing section.

Take Two Sips When:

• —The product description contains the phrase "the future of [existing category]."
• —There is an "As featured in" section where one of the publications is a podcast that interviewed the founder once.
• —"Simple, powerful, [third adjective]" appears as a value proposition.
• —An agent diagram appears showing six circles connected by arrows. None of the circles are labelled with what the agents actually do.
• —The page contains a countdown timer. (Finish your drink if it resets on refresh.)
• —The FAQ section answers questions that nobody has ever asked.
• —The pricing page has a "Most Popular" label on the middle tier.

Finish Your Drink When:

• —The entire page is a single scroll with no navigation.
• —The product video is three minutes of screen recordings set to lo-fi music with no voiceover.
• —"We're hiring" and "We're profitable" appear on the same page.
• —The CTA copy at the bottom of the page is different from the CTA at the top, but both lead to the same calendar booking form.
• —The page ends with a personal note from the founder in a handwriting font that is clearly not handwriting.

Leave The Game Immediately If:

• —You recognise your own product in any of the above.
• —You've been asked to build this landing page.
• —You've been paid to audit this landing page and you are now drinking water at a client's expense.