3 ms·

Here, I'll save you the read. The keys to success are: - "Make sure you build something people will pay you for" - "Make the Value of Your Product Really Obvi

Here, I'll save you the read. The keys to success are: - "Make sure you build something people will pay you for" - "Make the Value of Your Product Really Obvious" - Hire good people but not too early - "Be Relentless in Your Focus" And in case you are interested (like I am) in hearing how entrepreneurs honestly evaluate mistakes so that we all may learn from them, this company only made two mistakes worth noting in their history: - Not enough PR made it hard to hire early on (but they wouldn't do anything differently) - Leaving out almond butter is how you get raccoons This is the kind of "we're amazing at all the generic things and the only mistakes we made are humblebrags that aren't mistakes and irrelevant anecdotes" puff tech journalism that gives this industry such a bad name.

replicatorblog 9y ago
There were a few other nuggets: + Get Leads Without Spending Money: The most interesting learning for me was the idea to focus on getting "free" leads. Basically, the founders of this company figured out how to showcase one of Shopify's advanced APIs to such a degree that Shopify promoted the startups product. It's a "puff" observation on one level, but this old school "biz dev" approach to marketing a nice counterpoint to all the growth hack BS about fine-tuning Adwords spend. + Don't make your first hire until you're at $1M ARR: Another simple observation, but scale is important. If these two guys can run a business for two years and get to $1M, why do most funded startups need 5-10 people prior to product market fit? It may not be your taste, but these are lessons that are rarely taught.