We quickly realized that building it and expecting users to come didn't work; we had to actively engage potential users to grow our platform.

We faced a significant challenge with distribution, as it's tough to get parents and teachers to adopt new technology, often requiring a one-on-one approach without any scale or leverage.

The challenge with LinkedIn was achieving critical mass; without it, there was no value for users joining the platform.

In the early days of Airbnb, we struggled to achieve product-market fit and faced significant challenges in getting people to adopt our service.

In our first year, we faced significant challenges, including a tough go-to-market transition and hiring the wrong team for our stage of growth.

The biggest challenge in starting Lever was figuring out what we were going to do and ensuring we had the right people around us to believe in our vision.

Despite early growth, we faced challenges in fundraising, pitching to 150 investors, with most rejecting us due to the perceived unsexiness of our content-focused approach.

We didn't take the approach of getting a billion users and figuring out how to make money later; we focused on how to monetize if we could get to 100 million monthly active users.

A common mistake is assuming that if hundreds of millions of people are using a product, it will be successful; the real challenge is getting the first million users.