

First 1,000 users. - jamesmcbennett
http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/1000-users/

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jamesmcbennett
I am looking at strategies for gaining the first users to a startup and have
made bullet points on several now well-known companies from the last couple of
years. Would love your help at finding more examples of what companies have
the best inspirational strategy..

<http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/1000-users/>

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jamesmcbennett
Easier to read on blog, but copy/paste as of 04/02/13

The myth of “we had 25,000 users sign up on our first day” or the line “we
told our friends and they told their friends,” are both likely to have been
backed up by a smart strategy. I am still figuring out the plan with
www.fabsie.com and researching other playbooks for inspiration. All of the
startups below have a great product which is central to their success, but
beyond that are some very important findings that led to their growth.

Instagram

The founders weren’t scared of letting people try it before launch. They just
kept showing it to people and taking feedback. They got everyone they talked
to be a brand ambassador. Early adopters used the product extensively. Users
posted their photos to twitter attracting new users, (many early adopters had
’000′s of followers.) Early users became huge advocates and pushed it on blogs
and in reviews on app store. Showed it to influencers. (Robert Scoble, Kevin
Rose, Leo Laporte and MG Siegler)

LinkedIn

Reid Hoffman seeded the product with successful friends and connections. (The
company would have been doomed if there had been massive adoption of have-
nots, instead of people who were hiring, recruiting etc.) He refused to meet
with potential investors until they adopted LinkedIn. Entrepreneurs and
aspiring executives would follow their lead. Deployed an Outlook contact
uploader (very painful to build/support) to allow viral spread among
professionals. Deferred any features related to revenue or engagement until
after the growth path was established, which took nearly 1.5 years. Invitation
reminders that expired after two weeks were another key feature.

Etsy

The original founders built forums and started reading through the
conversations people were having. The overwhelming topic was, “I wish there
was a place I could sell my crafts! Ebay sucks – it’s hard to use, doesn’t
care about us, and charges high fees.” Craftspeople buy crafts in other
sectors than their own trade. Sellers were also buyers and brand advocates.
They told their friends at even larger crafting community forums about Etsy,
which brought even more sellers. Sellers previously had no e-commerce
presence, so for them to accept any online transactions at all, they had to
send customers to Etsy.

Airbnb

Spammed Craigslist. (See Blogpost by Dave Gooden) Found spikes in demand and
tried to cover those events (from SXSW to London Olympics.) Pinterest

Email Marketing: “I think I personally wrote to the first 5,000 users.”
Silbermann Psychology of the invite-only beta. Engaging and frequent
notifications. Design demographic = design blogs coverage. Facebook

Emailed friends and sent emails to several mailing lists. College Newspaper
Cross-school friends connections and artificial scarcity. At a time when
camera phones were just taking off. Hub strategy, take on strongest
competitors first (startup at Columbia), then expand to where no competition
exists. Aggressive use of email notifications to acquire, engage, and retain
users. Defaulting users to receive comment updates was especially clever.

Dropbox

Posting demo video to Digg.com that moved from 5,000 to 75,000 signups. Many
failed experiments. Word of mouth / Social worked for Dropbox much more so
than search.

Warby Parker

Hired a Fashion PR agency (Bradbury Lewis) that landed them in GQ, hit their
annual sales target in three weeks. Made the office into a store. Co-branded
with other stores – the readery. Took the store on the road – the schoolbus.
Held a bazaar.

Youtube

Monthly video contests with decent prizes More contests. Even more contests.
Loose adherence to DMCA. Ad-free through Sequoia funding in early days.
Comments, subscriptions, user profiles and embeddable flash made it easier to
embed than windows media player, popular at the time.

Netflix

One month free trial.

Yammer

Winning TechCrunch50 Try before you buy. Anyone inside of an organisation can
set it up.

Skillshare

With many ideas, not writing a line of code unless 1,000 signups to alpha
page. First Skillshare class around poker. Controversial article ‘Why College
is overatered.’ Kickstarter Student loan crisis

Sketchfab

Blogpost on blendernation.com that embedded the product on their page. (3D
file embedded like a youtube window.) Attracted great 3D artists via twitter

Fab.com

Previous users from faboulous.com (although only XX% came.) Viral invites
invite three friends to gain referral credits. 200,000 users at launch. 38% of
visitors came from email campaign, 30% from typing in <http://www.fab.com>,
10% from twitter links (Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore), 9% Facebook. Giveaway of
10 Vitra Eames Elephant Understanding that people cared more about status when
referring than discount. I.e. first on the site outranked 10% off.

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EliChambers
Great article!

Firms such as Dot PR use two general methods: 1) Target "highly-active" users
to promote their brands 2) Actually buy likes/ retweets until product goes
viral

I think there is much to be said about creating a user driven experience in
advertising, as demonstrated with PD3's O2 Academy campaign. Brands are easily
forgotten so make them memorable!

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jamesmcbennett
DO you have a link to 'PD3's O2 Academy campaign'?

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daemon13
Excellent summary - can pick and choose to fit specific case.

Also, design is nice for the eyes.

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jamesmcbennett
referring to the design of which one?

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KevinWaller
Great post James - I read it twice and took detailed notes the second time.
This is a must read for any tech start-up or marketer!

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jamesmcbennett
Thanks, will add another set of companies later today.

