We successfully found our first paying customer just this morning after sharing our project for about two and a half weeks. I shared our project on LinkedIn and with friends, which generated curiosity and led to a great waitlist for our product.

We decided to build a product we wished we had in Carrot 6, which led us to create Spradley, a company we applied to Y Combinator with in Winter 2010.

We launched our product to friends and family to test our processes and pricing, which helped us refine our approach and led to referrals.

We built a strong feedback loop by having the founders handle customer support, which helped us improve the product based on real user needs.

The skepticism among the founders led us to seek customer feedback early, which was crucial in determining the viability of our product idea.

When we first launched our product, I was embarrassed about its readiness, but we had to ship it. We learned from our initial customers, who provided valuable feedback that helped us improve.

We used feedback from our users to improve our product rapidly, which was crucial for our success.

The initial traction we received was surprising, leading us to iterate quickly based on user feedback and adapt our product accordingly.

We had our first paying customer for Optimizely before writing any code, demonstrating the demand for our product.