consumer playbook — first 1000

after this viral tweet — it's been a roller coaster ride.
this post is about my reflection & lesson learned on building an early-stage consumer product with a team of two:

Choosing the people you want to serve:

• you don't want to appeal to everybody.

• having specific people in mind helps a lot.

• in building a community it's okay to exclude people (with empathy).

• in the beginning, you want 100 people to love you than 100K people kinda like you.

• when you are trying to serve everyone, nobody gonna stick around.

• pick the kind of people you want to serve, the people you want to hang out with, & the people you want to be part of your day-to-day life.

moving fast is how you learn quickly.
but moving fast without direction leads you nowhere.

On building an early stage product

• at the early stage of your product, if something is working, double down on it.

• you want to be really good at a few things.

• trying to do everything all at once will do more damage than good to you.

• your time is limited—prioritize & move purposely.

Marketing & distribution channel

• find where your audience hangs out and invest your effort in one channel first.

• work on it for months, not days or weeks, if nothing is working—move on.

• at first, we tried to work on 4 different channels for months, but there was no recurring way to make it work other than making heavy content daily.

• then we went all in on twitter & worked on it for a few months, now our users growing 10 - 20% per week & it's been good.

• i believe when you gain enough traction in one channel you can always cross-promote & bring your audience into different channels later.

• share your plan, your work-in-progress, & the final outcome to your audience.

• you want to market with people & involve them in the process. That's how you find your niche & raving fans.

Moving from paid to freemium

• at first, we were building a paid community, but for months only 20 people stick around & the growth is not there.

• when you have no audience, going freemium will be your main acquisition strategy.

• If your operational costs are cheap, go for freemium. You don't want to miss this opportunity.

• 2 months after switching to freemium, we grew organically from 30+ to 1K+ people—with invites only.

• We can grow to 5K+ if we don't go invite-only when we have a viral tweet. But in the beginning, the community is about who you want to serve better so they stick around.

• i believe if your product is valuable enough 5 - 10% of power users going to support you.

• after you know who your 5 - 10% power users double down on serving & making them stick around. this is your people you don't want to lose them.

What's next?

the plan is to try to start monetizing the product & see who's the true supporter. So you can focus & double on these people.