The Muse's first website, launched in 2011, was not great, but it attracted 20,000 users in the first month, indicating we struck a chord despite its flaws.

To build The Muse, we focused on creating valuable career content to attract users before we had job listings, which helped us establish a marketplace.

When we launched The Muse, I reached out to my contacts via email to ask for word-of-mouth support, which led to significant initial traction.

The initial version of The Muse didn't look like a billion-dollar company, but getting it out there was essential for our growth.

When launching The Muse, I offered Forbes career content in exchange for traffic, which took several attempts to finalize.

If we had waited to launch The Muse until it looked perfect, we would have failed before we even started. When we launched The Muse, we were excited to track user data, but we realized that not all metrics, like video views, were essential for our success.

Creating great content on career issues helped us grow our audience and generate buzz around The Muse, as it appealed to a wider audience than just job seekers.

After joining Y Combinator, we initially aimed too high with complicated ideas for The Muse, but were advised to focus on launching a simpler version first. I learned that you have to pick one idea, strip it down, and launch to start testing demand.

The idea for The Muse came from a personal pain point; I realized that many people felt lost in their careers and needed guidance.