

How Geckoboard got their first 2000 beta users (2010) - revorad
http://startupbynumbers.posterous.com/how-i-got-my-first-2000-beta-users/

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pmjoyce
I wrote this post almost 2.5 years ago - happy to answer any questions here.

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kordless
Would absolutely love to see or hear more of your growth stories!

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pmjoyce
Will give it some thought. Is there anything in particular you would like me
to expand on?

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juriga
Hi Paul, I'm a big fan of Geckoboard - in some circles, your name is almost
analogous for a dashboard :)

Getting to over 2500 signups in four months is definitely a great achievement,
but I think it would be more interesting to hear about getting to 100 daily
active users for example. After all, signups are not worth much if the users
don't keep using the service (I'm sure this was not a problem in your case
though).

I know there are a lot of generic blog posts and SaaS services for maximizing
customer engagement, but reading real stories from founders is always uniquely
inspiring.

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pmjoyce
Thanks!

Totally agree, beta signups is almost the definition of a vanity metric. That
said, at this particular (very early) stage of product development I wanted to
solicit as much feedback as possible much of which was gathered from usage
data - particularly first time users usage patterns. Having a reserve of
signups that I could drip into the app as we released new features was useful
in itself.

Will have have a think about whether I can add any value above the noise of
the generic blog posts that you mention, thanks for your interest.

Feel free to drop me a line for a private discussion. I'm seriously impressed
what you're doing with BitDeli!

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kordless
Analysis reveals they got over half their first 2K users from right here.

