How To Get Your First Users

Quick Overview

To secure your first users, startups must focus on building a Minimum Evolvable Product (MEP) that solves a painful problem for early adopters who are willing to pay, rather than chasing revenue, by employing targeted, personal outreach and rapidly experimenting while accepting user churn.

Key Points: The first users for a new product are typically early adopters who are willing to pay and are driven by a burning, specific problem, not price sensitivity. Successful early product evolution, exemplified by Tesla's Roadster, is path-dependent on what the initial early adopters wanted, not on what the mass market eventually demands. Founders should use targeted, personal outreach, like the approach taken by early Airbnb and Tesla, rather than broad methods like cold emails or billboard ads. The goal with initial users is not revenue, but acquiring sharp feedback to guide the product's evolution into a mature offering. Startups must commit to launching early with a Minimum Evolvable Product (MEP) and continuously experiment quickly, accepting that some early users will churn. The average US adult spends $1,080 per year on subscriptions, with $200 of that being unused, highlighting a major pain point for potential consumer apps.

Context: This video provides startup guidance on acquiring initial customers, contrasting the mindset of seeking mass-market appeal too early with the necessity of serving a small, problem-aware group of early adopters. It uses historical examples like Airbnb's initial focus on conference attendees and Tesla's high-margin Roadster to illustrate the importance of finding users with an acute need who are willing to pay for an imperfect, evolving solution.

Detailed Analysis

The video outlines a strategy for acquiring the critical first users for a new product, emphasizing that these initial users are almost never the mass market, but rather early adopters who have a burning problem and are willing to pay for a solution, even if it is imperfect or expensive. The speaker stresses that the goal with these first users is feedback to guide the product's evolution, not immediate revenue, citing the Tesla Roadster as an example: its high price and impracticality were acceptable to its early adopters because it solved the core problem of needing a high-performance electric vehicle. The strategy involves launching an Minimum Evolvable Product (MEP)—something simple that can evolve—and using targeted, personal outreach to find these specific users, rather than relying on general marketing like cold emails or billboards. Founders must study these early users closely to understand their decisions and needs, and they should be prepared to iterate rapidly, embracing churn as part of the necessary evolutionary search process, illustrated by the phylogenetic tree analogy. This early focus prevents startups from building for a mass market that doesn't exist yet or chasing irrelevant features, as seen in the subscription market where high consumer spending on unused services suggests an opportunity for products that genuinely solve pain points.