Good Monday everyone!

If a friend asked you for the definition of a startup, what would you say?

Usual answers are along “a company in the first stages of operation”, or “something new”. These, however leave out a crucial element: a startup must have a potential to scale fast.

A new florist might have just opened in your neighbourhood. While it’s a company in its initial stages, you wouldn’t typically call it a startup because it lacks the ability to scale rapidly.

Uber increased its drivers from 5.7 million in Q1 2023 to 7.1 million drivers in Q1 2024 (25% increase). This 25% YoY increase might seem massive, however a 25% increase in customers when you only have 100 is usually a bigger challenge.

To understand how startups scale, it’s important to understand how they got to their first 1,000 customers.

Here are some ways startups acquire their first 1,000 customers:

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7 ways to first 1,000 customers

Back in 2020 Lenny Rachitsky created a framework of the most common ways the consumer apps reached their first 1,000 customers.

If you are building a startup, the key takeaway for you is that one of these approaches is going to be the right for you. The most popular, doing things that do not scale, in this case approaching users directly, either offline or online.

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