21 Comments
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Raquel Smith's avatar

A lot of these companies had either previous successful companies or extensive networks they relied on for the "tapping your network" part of it. I wonder if that becomes an actual requirement to having a super successful startup.

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Terry Danylak's avatar

It seems that way. At least for the startups listed here.

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Mario Araujo's avatar

Hey Lenny - tried to find the articles about the first 100 and 1000 customers, not sure if you wrote these, but in case you did, do you mind sharing the links?

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Lenny Rachitsky's avatar

Working on that right now!

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Rose's avatar

I know this is from a couple years ago but did you ever publish this?

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Moses Adams's avatar

We launched safecar(uber like)recently in kampala but we are trying to acquire B2B users however it's been a challenge especially with already existing competition. Who could advise on the best pitch to move a B2B client from another competitor?

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0x24/7.eth | She/Her's avatar

Hi, Lenny! We are trying to build a social knowledge app with fair distribution. The team is super excited about this. The thing is, we don't have any personal networks, or in another word, we don't have any potential customers in our personal networks, so how could we get this done?

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L. Sojini's avatar

Interesting

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Ivan's avatar

Thank you! Up :)

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Jason Lin's avatar

Great summary and always learn something from your article. So, I acquire my first 85 paid customers via friends and family and go to where my customers are approached.. I am at the stage of productizing our process and not sure if I shall continue to hustle to acquire customers the "do things don't scale" way or I shall focus more on product growth strategy with the goal to turn our process more bottom-up and self-serve. Right now, it's still a lot of direct sales by me although we are getting more and more organic customer referrals.

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Lenny Rachitsky's avatar

That’s a super good question, and I haven’t yet spent a lot of time thinking through when to make the transition to more scalable channels. But in the meantime, check this post out: https://www.reforge.com/blog/racecar-growth-framework

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Jason Lin's avatar

Awesome! Thanks so much, Lenny!

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Przemek's avatar

Your breakdowns are factful, honest, and well-structured. I've learned something, thank you Lenny 🤝

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Sakib Dadi's avatar

Thanks for sharing! A very similar post but from one company that may be useful to others: https://medium.com/lean-startup-circle/how-to-get-your-first-10-customers-81170a5e65a9

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Akash Kotadia's avatar

This is great. Zero to One journey is hardest part for many entrepreneurs. These compilation will certainly helps Thank You!

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Kazuki Nakayashiki's avatar

Great article and thanks for the hard work :)

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jj3033's avatar

Great article. Loved to hear these insights Lenny!

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Gen Furukawa's avatar

this is a great summary--distills oft-referenced advice ("do things that don't scale") into three simple strategies. simple yet enormously difficult.

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Tom Laverty's avatar

Love the first hand experiences, Lenny! Really great.

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Tom Laverty's avatar

more precisely, I love hearing about those companies (square) that didn't have a waiting list and really scratched and clawed for those first 10 customers!

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Raquel Smith's avatar

Yeah, it seems like that's a little less common for the breakout successes but it's cool to hear about those that did do it without a giant wait list.

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