First customersPublished 2019-11-14 · founder reported
Release an internal time-saver to a focused community
How 1Password approached first customers.
What they did
Teare described building 1Password to reduce repetitive form-filling while developing websites. Publishing the early product on Mac software directories brought feedback that fed into successive releases.
Reported outcome
The 2019 retrospective described 14 years of profitable self-funding before the first outside investment.
An idea to test, from Afterlaunch
A focused distribution channel can turn an internal utility into a feedback loop with similar users.
Small experiment: Release one narrow utility to a relevant professional community and prioritize feedback from people who keep using it.
A company’s reported outcome doesn’t prove one tactic caused it. Treat this as a hypothesis.
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