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.”

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.