So getting your first users, it's really important, right?
And you just have to do everything and
anything that comes to mind and whatever you think will work.
So in our case, we put up this landing page and I started emailing my friends.
And when they started using it and were stories about sharing and
people were helping one another out, the moment we got these first stories off,
someone was able to borrow something, borrow a bike from a friend.
And someone was able to find a language exchange,
an English to Chinese language exchange.
When we got those stories, I knew that those are really heart warming, so
I just went to the local press in Palo Alto, to Palo Alto Online and
Palo Alto Weekly.
And like, look, this is happening, it's really local, and
look at all these amazing stories.
And I was able to get a story out.
So, that brought another few hundreds of people, and
my friends invited their friends.
We tried things that are totally not scalable.
Like we printed postcards and we went and put them in people's houses and
door hangers.
Just anything to get those first few hundreds of users and
to prove to yourself, that they want it and they'll use it.
To start your first user base,
just figure out where your users hang out, where they do it.
Is it offline?
Is it online?
If it's online, that's great,
maybe there's a forum where they all just hang out.
Maybe it's all the moms forum.
Maybe it's the small business forum.
Maybe it's the accounting forum.
Whatever your space is, figure that out and go there and be active.
And approach them and tell them, here's my thing, I just started it,
will you check it out?
A lot of startups do that in places like Hacker News, and
Reddit, and those are their type of communities,
but maybe it's a different type of community for you.
So just go there, put it out there, just be very authentic about who you are,
don't try to advertise.
Just say look, this is who I am, I've started this startup, I think
it can be useful for you, and I'd appreciate your feedback, go sign up.
I think people will respond to that, better than if you try to
post something very pompous about, I'm changing the world and
you should all be on this, because you really haven't yet.
So just be authentic.
Common mistakes, I see.
Start ups, I don't do or kind of like, a misconception that they have,
is that marketing is something you can hire for, right?
You build your product and
you get the marketing person and they will just make the product grow.
And, actually marketing is inside the product.
It's a core part of it.
And marketing is the language that you use in your product, it's the flows you
have in your product, it's the social elements you have in your product.
It's the incentives you give people, to invite others to your product.
So, marketing, the product person should be a marketing person.
Or the marketing person you hire should be there from the get-go and
help define the product.
When you're just starting out and you don't have a budget, don't think
about how you can grow, grow, grow to millions and millions and millions.
Just think about how you can experiment and
perform the largest number of experiments to see what will work.
So kind of, take the pressure off, trying to get a million users tomorrow.
And see how you can get two users, and
get those two users to bring two more users.
And if that experiment has been successful, and
it's something that's replicable, then now, maybe you have something.
So just think small, try a lot of things and figure out what works.
>> So, to grow your user base from 0 to 1000, the first thing that I would do.
The first thing that I did, actually, is understanding what makes my user tick.
Where are they spending their time?
What are they doing there?
I mean what are the apps that they are using?
What kind of website they're going to, what are they doing
on those web sites and apps?
Whats interesting for them?
What are their habits?
What are the social platforms that they are using?
And start focusing on those places.
You can't do everything.
Everybody wants to do everything.
You can do incentives and the SCO and social and an offline presence.
You need to know exactly what's working and what's not and
double in what's working.
So for example,
let's assume that you are doing a keyword research for your SEO.
But one of the by products that you're getting from keyword research
is understanding your audience interests.
What they care about, what are they asking Google,
when they're trying to find something online?
What kind of apps are they using?
What are their habits?
And when you're finding out what people care about,
you can start to strategize your next plan.
You can start understanding what you need to do.
>> The important question is how we got from 0 to just 100,000 views a day,
or 100,000 to 1 million views a day.
How did we get from 0 videos uploaded to 100 videos uploaded,
to 1,000 videos uploaded?
And that was sort of the summer of 2005, we went out there to a lot of different
forums out there and told people that, if you needed to
use a method, a server, to be able to host your videos,
use this as the free place, we don't charge storage fees.
We don't charge any fees for you, as a host, to be able to upload your videos.
Just upload the content and we'll do all the trans-coding, and
we'll do all the bandwidth and we'll pay for all the bandwidth for you, for
all the views that you want to use the site for.
So, that was really what, I think in the beginning.
But there was another part of it, was MySpace in 2005,
was one of the largest users or largest sites out there,
that utilized its ability to be able to host videos.
And so, they themselves, didn't have a service to able to host videos.
Their users were desperate for a way to be able to upload and share videos.
And in comes YouTube with perfectly, every time you uploaded a video
on to YouTube, there was this little snippet at the bottom,
you barely have to scroll down at all.
And here's a copy and paste and we can add this copy and
paste HTML snippet on to everywhere.
So, we allowed pretty much any site that allows HTML snippets.
eBay, Craigslist, but MySpace was one of the big ones,
where people were seeking out this solution and we provided the solution.
I think the equivalence,
as well as the differences between I think different companies,
different startups, but key metrics and how do you actually get that.
I think with YouTube it was about giving sort of almost free bandwidth out and
accumulating more users, getting the brand name out there.
For PayPal it was different, right?
It was getting the people's trust and it was trying to get people,
to see this as a way to make payments online.
People were still back in that time, 1999,
this was something they've never heard of and
they were still kind of trying to feel out what the internet can do.
So one thing that PayPal did early on was to be able to assign a very
high value.
I think that when we were looking at banks out there.
And every customer, had a sort of a value of about $750.
And so, when PayPal took a look at it and said well, if it only takes us
$10 to get a new user, it's an investment that we're making that's
very costly now, but the returns on it years from now will be very big.
And so, it was a sign in for every new user that you would create,
every new user account automatically gets $10 into their PayPal account, and
they can start making payments.
And then, to try to create that virality,
to try to create more users and get you are automatically connected and
comfortable with this idea of payment to payment service.
It automatically gave you $10 for every new user, that you brought online.
But, you can quickly see that, once you start getting your first 1000 users and
they're actually getting another 10,000 users it starts accumulating very
quickly, that you're actually just paying out all the funding that you're
getting from VCs in checks to these people.
But ultimately,
it also created a network that people were comfortable with.
Down the line people, it became harder and harder to get that $10, so
initially it was, you would sign up for the account and
confirm your email address, and here's the $10 in your account.
Later on it became, you have to give us your credit card information.
And then, even later on it was, you have to give us your ACH or
banking account information and then you would get $10.
And by that point, I think, if you're a new user that's actually giving credit
card information, as well as your banking information,
it's well worth the $10 to get that information.
One of the questions that I get a lot from, sort of, new entrepreneurs where
they give a talk, for example, and I get questions coming up afterwards.
And, it's kind of this model of question which would be, I've this great idea.
And two things, I think, one of them is, I've been thinking about it for
a long time, but I don't know what the next step should be and
I think the obvious is, why don't you start it?
And it's like well, no I don't know if it's going to work, and I'm still
working on something else at the time, and it's taking up a lot of my energy.
But at the end of the day, I think behind every company there was that risk
and there was the ability to say forget it for six months, three months, for
a year I'm going to go without a salary.
And without that sort of safety net and I'm going to take a chance, and
I'm going to take some risk, to be able to see this through.
But, without ever taking that risky first step,
no company's ever been created.
So, I think that's one of the key things there.
I think, the second one is always this question that people come up and say,
well, what do you think?
They would pitch this idea and they would say, but
one of the reasons why I'm not so ecstatic about starting this,
is that I don't see this as a billion dollar company.
And I have to say, I don't think that whenever one of these companies,
whenever Facebook started, or PayPal, or YouTube started, we talked earlier,
YouTube was a dating site.
We didn't think YouTube was a billion dollar company.
I think as long as, it's an idea that you believe in.
As long as it's an idea that you see, either yourself or somebody, you can see
and visualize the users behind the site, then create it because people will come.
And it's going to be a question as to how many people will use this site.
But I think that's more important, rather than trying to create
something that you think is going to, rather than having to qualify that
the actual start up idea with, is it going to be this billion dollar idea?
I think it's more important to just say,
is it creating a solution to a problem that I can see?