

Ask HN: What things which don't scale have you been doing to get customers? - robinwarren

Doing things which don&#x27;t scale (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;ds.html) is a hot topic again. And rightly so. I think technical founders (speaking as one myself) often learn this lesson the hard way. I was wondering if people would be willing to share the things which don&#x27;t scale they&#x27;ve been doing to get customers for their startups.<p>Some ideas to help make this more useful<p>1. Lead with what you&#x27;re working on plus a overview of it so we can better understand the techniques you&#x27;re using.<p>2. Try to give specifics where possible. <i>&quot;Emailing people signing up to my pre-launch list&quot;</i> is interesting but adding that you do it within X minutes of them signing up, and ask question Y makes it more actionable for others. Do you try to organise skype meetings with them? Are there tools you&#x27;re using to help with that? etc. etc. etc.<p>3. Some idea of how successful these techniques have been for you and things you are going to change in future would be good as well.
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CaptainConnect
Our startup is in the ed-tech space so we obtain customers by meeting with
Principals and Superintendents. A task we have found difficult since they are
very busy and constantly solicited. We try to get meetings with email but that
is not as effective as showing up at the schools and catching them with some
free time.

We are using a product created by another startup called SnowShoe. You may
have seen them recently featured on Product Hunt. Fans say SnowShoe dabbles in
"black magic" by making 3d printed stamps that have unique digital identities,
which touch screen devices can detect. The SnowShoe Stamps are just black
pieces of plastic so the appearance is not as unique or magic as their
abilities.

I am lucky to have been born into an artistically gifted family. My Mom and
sister have started hand painting the SnowShoe Stamps, making them even more
unique. The painted stamps are much better than a business card and are also a
cool way to acknowledge the teachers that use our system the most.

When a principal or superintendent expresses interest in conducting a one
month trial we let them pick out a painted SnowShoe Stamp to keep at their
desk as a reminder of our awesomeness!

This unscalable gesture has increased the number of referrals we receive from
every principal. Being able to start an email with "principal X said you might
be interested in our product" has made getting the initial meeting with new
principals/superintendents much easier.

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benologist
I came across this the other day which was a great read:

[http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237922](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237922)

My friends and I have a catalog of android jigsaw puzzles, when we started we
were manually optimizing the keywords on each individual game to attract
people searching anything related to that theme - one about England we went
after England-related keywords we could think of rather than the competitive
'puzzle' ones: travel, vacation, england, uk, london, big ben, all that kind
of stuff which got us our initial traction. We kept that up for about our
first 50 puzzles coming up with all these unique keywords which was incredibly
tedious.

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jtfairbank
Not for our customers, but I buy cupcakes for people who go the extra mile to
help me out. Will probably do this for our Beta testers as well once that
kicks off in the spring.

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dangrossman
[http://www.groovehq.com/blog/non-scaleable-growth-
tactics](http://www.groovehq.com/blog/non-scaleable-growth-tactics)

