Unpopular opinion: your first 10 users matter more than your first 100
Everyone chases signup numbers early on. i think that's backwards.
10 people who actually use your product and complain about it teach you more than 100 who signed up and forgot you exist.
I've got 8 paying users right now for BanaloBusiness. haven't even scaled outreach yet, just been obsessing over what those 8 actually do inside the product.
Curious what others think, early on do you optimize for more users, or deeper usage from fewer?
Comments (5)
Absolutely agree with you, Sahil.
In these very early days, your first ten users are incredibly important.
As founders of a product we truly love, I think we’ll be obsessed with it at every stage of its growth. 🙂
As our product and user base grow, we will continuously optimize everything we can to help the product grow faster and to improve the user experience.
May I ask how you found your first ten paying customers?
Not a growth hack, honestly it was just knowing how to work the algorithm. instagram specifically, i've been deep in it for 2 years.
When the idea existed only in my head, no landing page, no product, fresh account with zero followers, i still knew exactly what would make people stop scrolling and actually respond.
300+ people said yes in 72 hours off that alone.
Converting people who already raised their hand once was easy after that.
The real test now is cold traffic with no story attached, working on cracking that next.
Yes, I think Instagram is a very good place to market your product.
I think for different products perform different on social networks. I tried marketing video courses for Software Developers on Instagram and did not have much engagement there. But when I started on LinkedIn, the response was very different.
So I switched to LinkedIn.
Fewer users who actually use it. Having 100 signups who never come back just tells you your landing page works. But 8 people using it and complaining tells you what to build.
Also, in my opinion, scaling the outreach before you understand the first bunch of users' behaviour can attract more people who won't use the thing.
Completely agree. The first 10 users give you two things larger signup counts don't: the language people actually use for the problem, and the points where their expectations break. I'd document both verbatim, then use them to shape onboarding, positioning, and the next outreach tests. The 300 early responses were a great demand signal; now the 8 paying users are the better source for learning why people stick.
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