Make 100 Core Users Love You: Unscalability is Key

Some of the most widely spread advice for startup companies and entrepreneurs alike is to focus on rapid growth. As a result, businesses focus on creating products and services for a wide range of people expecting that their broad net will catch massive amounts of consumers. They begin to think that their whole business can utilize growth hacking to ensure consistent traction. Yes, these blanket target markets and the resulting advertisement campaigns may yield growth in the short-run; but the lack of intimate user interaction hurts retention rates.  

Consumers from every spectrum of the economy are immersed in the most socially and economically connected time in human history, being constantly feed information that they are barely able to interpret, let alone resonate with. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Facebook, Instagram, if you’re watching television or just casually surfing the web; information is being thrown at you. You scroll down your timelines just trying to weed through the bullshit to find something or someone you truly connect with. It doesn’t matter if it’s ads that are distracting you or that girl from high school you don’t keep up with, the bullshit is there. It’s as if your electronic life is littered with dozens and dozens of things you don’t really care about but deal with anyway in hopes that you find something that matters to you.

I’m not trying to say that you should cut out your social media or television habits because of the white noise that’s there. What I am saying is that if entrepreneurs and businesses want to genuinely connect with an audience, then they should create something relatable to and loved by their absolute core audience. When it comes to making this thing, whatever it may be, people should consider that consumers are more likely to actively engage with and spread the word about something or someone they wholeheartedly love. We use hundreds of goods and services every single day, but think how many of those you take time out of your day to talk about with the people that matter most to you. My guess is that there is little to nothing that makes you want to tell the world about. That’s the key issue. Brands are focusing on slightly pleasing or slightly making the lives of massive amounts of consumers better. They should be concentrating their efforts on something only a handful of people love.

In the age of startup companies, this business concept is no longer a loosely held belief that some people follow to achieve greatness. Making something that only a small number of people absolutely love doesn’t happen by mistake and it definitely doesn’t happen by trying to tweak an existing product to match this idea. It happens through organic development. The entrepreneur must experience a problem first hand and provide a transcendent answer to it to make their own lives better. From there, they can share their solution with people that are experiencing the same problem and get their personal feedback from it to hone their ideas. If you don’t see what’s happening yet, let me explain.

Creating a solution to a problem you are experiencing and then disclosing it to others that share the same problem is knocking down the first and front bowling pin. Allowing the natural process of diffusion to occur, you have a slightly bigger audience that relates to your product as people have spread the word. That’s knocking down the next two pins. This process goes on and on, and a positive feedback loop is created. You are slowly gaining more traction as more people are willing to give you advice as to how they could benefit from your product. Before you know it, with one roll of the ball you have a strike. Now it may be a simple process in theory, but the execution of it is not.

Even though finding a market isn’t an issue if you create a product that only a few people love, there are still many difficult pieces to this puzzle. They all practically stem from creating an unscalable product and connection with your consumers. You shouldn’t just make something that a few people love, you should be interacting with them in a way that doesn’t seem like it would work if you had ten more users, let alone a thousand. Doing things for your users like hand-writing notes to them, calling them, understanding their experiences with your product, and making sure they feel a part of a tight knit community are ways to make sure that your original users feel as if this was the best decision they have ever made. You think I’m exaggerating, right? When’s the last time a company sent you a hand-written note? Or made you feel so special that you told every single person you know that they should try a product?

It just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen because founders fear the future. Starting out with 10 original users that you treat like pure gold is possible, but what about when you grow to 100? You can’t consider the future when approaching this. Realize that if you are just starting a company or just launched a product, that you have nothing to lose by doing this. Say you grow from 10 to 100 users and you are struggling to maintain that level of consumer satisfaction, that’s a good problem to have. Chances are that user growth came from your insane customer service. Also, you’ll come to realize that it’s not actually an issue because your creativity goes beyond just your product. You’ll figure out a way to make those next 1000 users feel as if they are one of the first 10. Just because you haven’t ever experienced this extreme of customer service doesn’t mean you should withhold it from your consumers.

Remember that your core users are buying a product that they love. That’s what they are spending their time or money on, not your customer service. When their exceptionally low standards of business and service are met with a product they love and the best interaction of their life, imagine the possibilities. They won’t be just telling their friends and family about your product, they’ll be gushing over the way your brand made them feel. In a world of superficial connectivity, this sort of approach makes consumers feel like real people again, and that’s invaluable.  

-Memento Mori