From Paul Graham · · 2 min
Why Early Startups Must Do Things That Don't Scale
Startups don't take off on their own, founders have to manually push them into motion.
In brief
Startups don't take off on their own, founders have to manually push them into motion. Manually recruit and obsessively delight your first users instead of waiting for automatic scale. Originally reported by Paul Graham.
Startups require a manual push
Most founders believe successful startups just take off on their own. In reality, early startups are like old car engines that require a laborious manual crank to get going.
“Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off.”
Recruit your first users manually
Do not wait for users to come to you. The Stripe founders didn't just send beta links; they took people's laptops and installed the software on the spot.
“When anyone agreed to try Stripe they'd say "Right then, give me your laptop" and set them up on the spot.”
Compound growth starts small
Founders often resist manual recruitment because initial user numbers feel insignificantly tiny. But steady weekly growth compounds rapidly into massive numbers over a year or two.
“If you keep growing at 10% a week you'll be surprised how big the numbers get.”
Take heroic measures early on
Early-stage startups are fragile and require extreme effort to survive. Airbnb founders flew across the country to meet hosts in person and take professional photos of listings.
“Marketplaces are so hard to get rolling that you should expect to take heroic measures at first.”
Delight individual users
Being small gives you an advantage that tech giants like Apple cannot match. You can send hand-written notes or provide custom, white-glove support to make early users love you.
“That's one advantage of being small: you can provide a level of service no big company can.”
Focus on an insanely great experience
In the first few months, your product will be buggy and incomplete. You must make up the difference with extreme personal attentiveness to create an insanely great user experience.
“It's not the product that should be insanely great, but the experience of being your user.”
Start with a contained fire
Target a small, highly specific group of users before expanding to the broader market. Facebook succeeded initially by limiting registration strictly to Harvard students.
“It's like keeping a fire contained at first to get it really hot before adding more logs.”
Perform tasks manually before automating
Solve user problems manually before writing code to automate the fix. When Stripe launched instant merchant accounts, the founders manually processed the paperwork behind the scenes.
“If you can find someone with a problem that needs solving and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can”
Beware the big launch trap
A flashy PR launch or corporate partnership rarely drives meaningful growth. Success comes from taking care of early users, not broadcasting your existence to a crowd.
“How well you're doing a few months later will depend more on how happy you made those users than how many there were of them.”
Treat your startup as a vector
View a startup idea as two things: what you build and the unscalable manual work you do to launch it. Extraordinary effort is just as vital as the product itself.
“You have to make an extraordinary effort initially.”
What matters most
Manually recruit and obsessively delight your first users instead of waiting for automatic scale.
