The myths “We had 25,000 users sign up on our first day” or “We told our friends and they told their friends” are both likely to have a history that stretches back a couple months or even years. Overnight success is rarely created overnight. 1,000 true fans is a company’s first milestone as outlined in this famous blogpost by Kevin Kelly which is a must read.
As I research anything that may help www.timbertail.com succeed, I researched innovative starting points by many of the companies I love. All of them have a great product (See: Seth Godin – Purple Cow.) which I strongly feel is the most important factor for success, but beyond simply a great product, this is what they did…
- Made early adopters brand ambassadors
- Influencers tried before launch – Robert Scoble, Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte & MG Siegler
- Automatic posting to twitter
- Influencers pushed it to blogs
- Influencers ranked it high on app store
- Influencers used product extensively.
- Seeded with successful friends and connections
- He refused to meet potential investors until they adopted LinkedIn
- Deployed Outlook contact uploader for viral spread among professionals
- Deferred revenue until after growth (1.5 years.)
- Invitation reminders expired after two weeks
Etsy
- Built forums and made observation craftspeople were unhappy with ebay.
- Sellers wanted everything they own to be craft, thus bought from other sellers
- Buyers of craft products are brand advocates
- Sellers told larger craft community forums
- Many sellers had no other e-commerce presence, so sent all new customers to Etsy.
Airbnb
- Mentored by Justin.tv
- Cover large events when hotels were overbooked
- During economic downturn when renters needed additional income to pay rent
- Went to bloggers with CNN keywords, then local news with CNN keywords. CNN searching their keywords covered them.
- Spammed Craigslist. (See Blogpost by Dave Gooden)
- Went door-to-door.
- David (Barry Manilow’s drummer) rented out his full apartment, as opposed to just bedrooms which they met in person.
- Video by Brian Chesky
- 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.
- 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.
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 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.
Mixcloud
- Emailed all our friends + family
- Sent personal emails to our network of DJs and radio presenter friends
- Went to SXSW 09 and managed to get in a frontpage BBC News article
- Built tools for DJs and radio presenters to promote their Cloudcasts
Enternships
- Initial closed beta – 100 companies to test the site
- Apply for an invitation allowed after blog coverage – 300+ more companies added.
- Students joined through word of mouth, working with societies on campus.
- Hired FT Community Manager to kick off social media.
Kickstarter
- Andy Baio blogposts
- First project – New York Makes a Book
- Finding more info
- First YC company to ever launch which grabbed press’s attention
- Early days, they submitted all the content under different user names so it always seemed popular (by Liam)
- Blogged about by Paul Graham (by Liam)
- Grew organically through word of mouth (by Liam)
- Digg had a redesign that made all the users move to reddit (by Liam)
- Stickers ($500) that were given out and stuck many places
Evernote
- Finding more info
Groupon
- Finding more info
Square
- Finding more info
- Finding more info
General Assembly
- Finding more info
OpenIDEO
- Finding more info
Spotify
- Finding more info
Yammer
- Winning TechCrunch50
- Try before you buy.
- Anyone inside of an organisation can set it up.
Zynga
- Finding more info
Spotify
- Finding more info