First customersPublished 2011-02-16 · founder reported
Test demand before expanding the product
How Buffer approached first customers.
What they did
Gascoigne paused development to test whether people wanted a simpler way to queue tweets. After launching a small first version, he balanced development with marketing and customer conversations.
Reported outcome
He reported the first paying customer within four days of launch and more than 500 users at the time of writing.
An idea to test, from Afterlaunch
Early payment can justify shifting effort from feature breadth toward distribution and learning.
Small experiment: Show a clear offer and price to ten target users, then ship only the workflow they are willing to try.
A company’s reported outcome doesn’t prove one tactic caused it. Treat this as a hypothesis.
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