Famous advice, tried on real businesses.

Do things that don't scale

Paul Graham — Do Things that Don't Scale (essay, 2013)

Paul Graham: Co-founded Y Combinator, the startup program behind Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe and Reddit.

“If you can find someone with a problem that needs solving and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that”

Early users rarely arrive by themselves, so founders should recruit them one at a time, look after them with unusual care, and even deliver the service by hand before automating it. The manual effort is what gets the company moving and shows what to build.

When it applies: You have a working offer but few users, and are waiting for a launch, a partner or search traffic to bring them.

Crossing the chasm: win one beachhead segment first

Geoffrey A. Moore — Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers (book, 1991)

Geoffrey A. Moore: Tech marketing consultant whose Crossing the Chasm is a Silicon Valley staple.

The enthusiasts and visionaries who buy a new product early behave very differently from the practical, cautious buyers who come next, and many products stall in the gap between them. Moore's answer is to pick one narrow segment, give it a complete solution, win it outright, and use it as the base for moving into neighbouring segments.

When it applies: You have some early enthusiasts, but sales to ordinary, risk-averse buyers are stalling.

Founder-led sales: founders close the first customers themselves

Pete Kazanjy — Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook (book, 2020)

Pete Kazanjy: Co-founded the sales-software startup Atrium; wrote Founding Sales.

“Founder Led Sales is the process by which startup founders discover, refine, and scale their product’s initial sales motion.”

Before hiring salespeople, the founders should personally find, pitch and close roughly the first few dozen customers, learning who buys, why, and which message works. Only once that process is written down and repeatable should it be handed to hired sellers.

When it applies: A B2B business has fewer than a few dozen customers and does not yet know its best buyer or pitch.

Argues against: Product-led growth: let the product do the selling

1,000 True Fans

Kevin Kelly — 1,000 True Fans (essay, 2008)

Kevin Kelly: Founding executive editor of Wired magazine.

“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.”

A creator or small maker does not need a mass audience to earn a living: a modest number of devoted supporters who buy most of what they release, sold to directly without middlemen, can be enough. The math is fans times yearly profit per fan, so the target number shrinks or grows with how much each fan spends.

When it applies: The business sells creative work or a niche product directly to its buyers and can stay in touch with them itself (email list, membership).

Smallest viable audience

Seth Godin — This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See (book, 2018)

Seth Godin: Bestselling marketing author; sold his early internet company, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo.

Choose the smallest group of people whose support would be enough to sustain the work, and design the offer and message for them, accepting that it is not for everyone else. Serving that narrow group well earns the trust and word of mouth needed to reach bigger groups later.

When it applies: A new business could plausibly appeal to 'everyone' and is tempted to launch broadly with a generic message.

Pre-launch email list with referral rewards (Harry's)

Jeff Raider (Harry's), published on Tim Ferriss's blog — How to Gather 100,000 Emails in One Week (Includes Successful Templates, Code, Everything You Need) (post, 2014)

Jeff Raider: Co-founded Harry's razors and the eyewear brand Warby Parker.

“Were we going to launch to crickets? Would anyone notice?”

Collect email addresses before the product is on sale, and give each signup a personal link with rewards that grow as more friends join through it. Harry's reported about 100,000 signups in the week before opening (around 85,000 valid), about 77% of them via referral, so it launched to a waiting audience instead of silence.

When it applies: A launch date is set, the product can be explained on one page, and there is a reward (free or early product) people would ask friends to help them earn.

Fix your suppliers' listings by hand (Airbnb's New York photo trip)

Joe Gebbia (Airbnb co-founder); the idea was Paul Graham's — How Design Thinking Transformed Airbnb from a Failing Startup to a Billion Dollar Business (First Round Review) (interview, 2015)

Joe Gebbia: Co-founded Airbnb and led its design.

Paul Graham: Co-founded Y Combinator, the startup program behind Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe and Reddit.

“The similarity is that the photos sucked.”

When the supply you already have is not selling, go and fix it yourself. Airbnb's founders flew to New York, rented a camera and re-shot hosts' amateur listing photos, and weekly revenue doubled from about $200 to $400 within a week; working by hand on existing supply can beat recruiting more of it.

When it applies: A marketplace has listings or sellers, but buyers browse and do not buy because the offers look poor or untrustworthy.