The Lamest Growth Hack Ever
Paul Graham built an online store builder. Nobody wanted to use it. They'd approach customers and pitch the easy-to-use platform. Every time: 'No thanks.'
So they asked a different question. 'What if we use it for you?' Customers said yes. Graham thought this was pathetic. It was actually brilliant.
Nobody would use the software. So they used it FOR customers.
Dogfooding on Steroids
Graham was both the developer and the person using the software for clients. He'd be building a customer's website, hit a friction point, and change the code right there.
Then go back to the customer's site. Boy, that made the software much better — that he had to use it himself in the beginning.
He'd change the code mid-project. Fix the friction in real time.
The Math of Small Numbers
You have 10 customers. You want 10% growth per week. That's one new customer. Go get them manually. Next week you have 11. Need 1.1 more. Basically one.
A constant growth rate means exponential growth. The base number handles itself. Just keep growing 10% per week.
10 customers growing 10%/week = 1 new customer. You can do that manually.
Nothing to Lose
The whole point of doing things that don't scale is simple math. If you don't do them, you'll never be big. So you have nothing to lose.
Do the manual stuff. Learn from it. The scale comes later. The learning comes now.
If you don't do the unscalable stuff, you'll never reach scale.