The first year of Optimizely saw us grow to a team of four and achieve an annual run rate of $1.1 million, focusing on continual product improvement.

During a call with a former colleague, I pitched Optimizely, and he immediately saw its value, suggesting a price of $1,000 a month, which was significantly more than we made with our previous ventures.

After a month, we pivoted to create products we wished we had, leading to the development of Optimizely, which simplifies A/B testing for users without technical resources.

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 brought in customers early to test our product, which helped change the minds of skeptical team members when they saw real-time reactions from users.

We got our first customer by leveraging LinkedIn to connect and understand their needs better.

The first customers for Flexport signed up through Google Adwords and SEO, even before we officially launched the service.

We decided to sell to our first 10 customers completely cold, without referrals, to prove market fit.

By implementing feedback from our earliest customers quickly, we saw a significant increase in revenue and listings, demonstrating the power of word-of-mouth marketing.