In order to scale, you have to do things that don’t scale at all.
The Billion-Dollar conversation.
1.5 years of struggle and 50 customers later, Airbnb’s frustrated CEO Brian Chesky went to Y-Combinator’s co-founder Paul Graham for advice
SIRI: Y-Combinator is a startup incubator that cultivates and invests in early-stage companies.
CHESKY: And he asked us, “Where’s your business?”
And I go, “What do you mean?”
“Where’s your traction?”
And I go “We don’t have a lot of traction.”
He goes, “People must be using it.”
I said, “There are a few people in New York using it.”
And he said something I’ll never forget. He said, “So your users are in New York and you’re still in Mountain View.”
I said, “Yeah.”
And he said, “What are you still doing here?”
And I go, “What do you mean?”
He said, “Go to your users. Get to know them. Get your customers one by one.”
And I said, “But that won’t scale. If we’re huge and we have millions of customers, we can’t meet every customer.”
And he said, “That’s exactly why you should do it now because this is the only time you’ll ever be small enough that you can meet all your customers, get to know them, and make something directly for them.”
It’s time to win your customers one at a time.
Enough said, Peace
