How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users - Issue 25 - Lenny's Newsletter

How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users - Issue 25 - Lenny's Newsletter

Most startups found their early users from just a single strategy. A few like Product Hunt and Pinterest found success using a handful. No one found success from more than three. The most popular strategies involve going to your user directly — online, offline, and through friends. it’s important to first narrowly define your target user. The tactics that you use to get your first 1,000 users are very different from your next 10,000. I’d go in and change all the computers to say Pinterest. Then just kind of stand in the back and be like, “Wow, this Pinterest thing, it’s really blowing up.” (note: This is my favorite story about Pinterest haha) The takeaway is not to underestimate the power of one's personal referral network and to think deeply about the incentive and mechanics.

Pinterest started as an invite-only community. The first users were design bloggers Silbermann recruited. He advised these invitees to only extend admission to people they knew with unique ideas and creative minds. The exclusive community grew slowly until 2012 when the site removed the invitation requirement. The founders picked their first users carefully, courting people who would be good photographers—especially designers who had high Twitter follower counts. Those first users would help set the right artistic tone, creating good content for everyone else to look at. The big lesson here: Don't underestimate the power of traditional media when you launch.

How to Do Great Work

The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work. The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. Some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields. What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for. Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted.

Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren't interested in them — in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could. The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all. Ambition comes in two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix, and the more you have of the former, the harder it will be to decide what to do. When it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own. (note: So true.)

You need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions. One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening. If you're making something for people, make sure it's something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want. Write the story you want to read; build the tool you want to use. Since your friends probably have similar interests, this will also get you your initial audience. (note: Good advice)

In most cases, the recipe for doing great work is simply: work hard on excitingly ambitious projects, and something good will come of it. I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each stage, do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it. (note: Nice) When I'm reluctant to start work in the morning, I often trick myself by saying "I'll just read over what I've got so far." Five minutes later I've found something that seems mistaken or incomplete, and I'm off. Try to finish what you start, though, even if it turns out to be more work than you expected. Finishing things is not just an exercise in tidiness or self-discipline. In many projects, a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage. There may be some jobs where you have to work diligently for years at things you hate before you get to the good part, but this is not how great work happens. Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you're genuinely interested in. (note: "Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you're genuinely interested in.")

Work doesn't just happen when you're trying to. There's a kind of undirected thinking you do when walking or taking a shower or lying in bed that can be very powerful. By letting your mind wander a little, you'll often solve problems you were unable to solve by frontal attack. One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries', but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good. (note: Let's leave things you think are important. People still learn so many things from books written thousands of years ago.) "It's easy to criticize" is true in the most literal sense, and the route to great work is never easy. Great work is consistent not only with who did it but with itself. It's usually all of a piece. So if you face a decision in the middle of working on something, ask which choice is more consistent. Great work will often be tool-like in the sense of being something others build on. So it's a good sign if you're creating ideas that others could use or exposing questions that others could answer. The best ideas have implications in many different areas. Originality isn't a process but a habit of mind. Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on, like an angle grinder throwing off sparks. They can't help it. Original ideas don't come from trying to have original ideas. They come from trying to build or understand something slightly too difficult. Talking or writing about the things you're interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words, a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed, there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. A good new idea has to seem bad to most people, or someone would have already explored it. So what you're looking for is ideas that seem crazy, but the right kind of crazy. How do you recognize these? You can't with certainty. Often ideas that seem bad are bad. But ideas that are the right kind of crazy tend to be exciting; they're rich in implications; whereas ideas that are merely bad tend to be depressing. An overlooked idea often doesn't lose till the semifinals. You do see it, subconsciously, but then another part of your subconscious shoots it down because it would be too weird, too risky, too much work, too controversial. This suggests an exciting possibility: if you could turn off such filters, you could see more new ideas. One of the most interesting kinds of unfashionable problems is the problem that people think has been fully explored but hasn't. Great work often takes something that already exists and shows its latent potential. Durer and Watt both did this. So if you're interested in a field that others think is tapped out, don't let their skepticism deter you. People are often wrong about this. If there's an important but overlooked problem in your neighborhood, it's probably already on your subconscious radar screen. So try asking yourself: if you were going to take a break from "serious" work to work on something just because it would be really interesting, what would you do? The answer is probably more important than it seems. (note: Interesting.)

People think big ideas are answers, but often the real insight was in the question. Sometimes you carry a question for a long time. Great work often comes from returning to a question you first noticed years before — in your childhood, even — and couldn't stop thinking about. People talk a lot about the importance of keeping your youthful dreams alive, but it's just as important to keep your youthful questions alive. (note: Totally.) Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new. Understand, though, that trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that don't work. You can't have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones. Perhaps the worst thing schools do to you is train you to win by hacking the test. You can't do great work by doing that. You can't trick God. So stop looking for that kind of shortcut. The way to beat the system is to focus on problems and solutions that others have overlooked, not to skimp on the work itself (note: Good point. I remember that Bill Gates told the same thing.) Originality is the presence of new ideas, not the absence of old ones. One of the most powerful kinds of copying is to copy something from one field into another. History is so full of chance