In the early days, we struggled to raise money, which taught us to focus on solving real problems and to build an efficient, profitable business from day one.

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

We learned the importance of understanding our customers' needs, especially as we scaled, to ensure we were meeting the right demands.

Focusing on customer needs and building something immediately is essential for early-stage startups.

To gain the trust of early customers, we initially targeted fellow companies in Y Combinator who were also new and had never paid themselves, which was a strategic move to build our initial customer base.

In the early days, we avoided free trials to ensure we received feedback only from customers who truly valued our product, which helped us stay focused on delivering real value.

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

In the early days, fearlessness meant being super opportunistic and finding our way, especially since the idea of crowdfunding didn't exist at that time.

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.