Thirteen successful companies have shared their stories of how they attracted their initial customers.
Airbnb founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, sold cereal boxes to fund their start-up and hosted a design conference to attract their initial users. They also travelled to New York to meet their users and understand their needs.
Dropbox used a demo video to generate buzz and attract sign-ups. They also offered extra storage space for referrals, which led to a 60% increase in sign-ups.
Buffer, a social media scheduling tool, validated its business idea by creating a landing page and gauging interest before developing the product.
Close.io, a sales communication platform, started as an internal tool for ElasticSales. They gained their first customers by offering the tool to other start-ups.
Zaarly, a marketplace for small jobs, organised a one-day event to attract its first users.
Yelp attracted its first reviewers by hosting parties for the early adopters.
Groupon started as a WordPress blog and offered its first deal to the subscribers of a local mailing list.
Evernote offered a freemium model to attract its initial users.
Reddit co-founders, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, created fake accounts to make the site appear active and attract real users.
Twitch, a live streaming platform, started as Justin.tv and gained its first users by streaming the life of its founder, Justin Kan.
Paypal attracted its first users by offering cash incentives for sign-ups and referrals.
Gumroad, a platform for creators to sell products, gained its first users by leveraging the founder’s Twitter following.
Lastly, Product Hunt started as an email list before becoming a popular product discovery platform.
Go to source article: http://blog.referralcandy.com/2014/08/12/13-successful-companies-fought-for-first-customers/