First customersPublished 2017-11-22 · public disclosure
Notice when the internal solution is the larger opportunity
How Shopify approached first customers.
What they did
Shopify’s founder letter describes building an online snowboard store in 2004 and finding existing commerce software expensive and inflexible. The founders built their own system and changed direction toward selling that capability.
Reported outcome
The original retail operation became the testing ground for the commerce software business.
An idea to test, from Afterlaunch
A workflow built for one operating business can reveal a broader customer problem, but outside demand still needs testing.
Small experiment: Show a reusable internal tool to three similar businesses and ask them to complete a real task with it.
A company’s reported outcome doesn’t prove one tactic caused it. Treat this as a hypothesis.
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