In the early days of Superhuman, we insisted on one-on-one onboarding, which was the right decision. At our peak, we had about 20 people doing manual onboarding.

On day one, Reddit had no users, so founders Steve and Alexis created fake accounts to make it appear active, which helped attract real users later.

During our early days, we communicated closely with our 24 users, which helped us understand their needs without being metric-driven.

At Superhuman, we manually onboard every new user, which has created superfans and allowed our engineers to focus on product development rather than onboarding flows.

You should do manual work for your early customers, as it's crucial to get those initial users, and the experience will provide valuable insights for your startup's development.

We initially tried various methods like mental tabs and spreadsheets, but they were cumbersome. Even using Venmo felt silly for small amounts exchanged frequently.

In the early days, we innovated by allowing users to upload their address books to see who else was on LinkedIn, which significantly changed our growth curve.

In the early days of Facebook, we established a culture of real identity by requiring users to sign up with their school email addresses, which helped verify their credentials and fostered trust within the community.

It's okay to do things manually in the beginning while figuring out what works and what doesn't.