Why We Invest Before the Market Notices
Why We Invest Before the Market Notices
Why Users Matter More Than 10k
Apr 4, 2025
Apr 4, 2025
5 min read
5 min read
Early Users Shape the Product
Your first 100 users don’t just use the product — they form it. Every bug report, unexpected use case, and casual comment is a mirror into what you’ve actually built — not what you thought you were building.
If you listen closely, these users hand you a roadmap. They show you which features matter, what feels confusing, and where trust lives. But you have to earn that feedback. That means being present, responsive, and honest.
Early users are partners, not metrics. They aren’t there to validate you — they’re there to pressure-test your instincts.
Volume Dilutes Signal
Getting to 10,000 users feels exciting, but if the product isn’t ready, you just scale confusion. You get more tickets, more edge cases, and more noisy data — but not more clarity.
When a product is still fragile, more users means more cracks. You can lose sight of what matters most: the why behind the behavior.
Scaling prematurely hides product gaps. That’s why we pay attention to teams that spend a long time with their first few hundred users — learning, adjusting, and shaping before broadcasting.
Trust Is Built in Micro-Moments
Your first users notice everything — the broken link, the awkward tooltip, the slightly-off tone in an email. At scale, this kind of detail fades into the background. Early on, it’s everything.
These micro-moments shape emotional trust. They signal whether you’re careful, thoughtful, and paying attention. And trust compounds.
A product with deep trust can afford mistakes. One without it can’t survive the first outage. The best founders obsess over these early signals — because they know they scale.
The Best Feedback Isn’t Obvious
Your power users rarely leave long feedback threads. But they’ll say something offhand, in a chat or call, that reveals a deeper truth.
The art is in knowing which signals to elevate and which to ignore. Not every loud opinion is useful. Not every quiet comment is small.
We look for founders who are great at pattern recognition — people who hear what’s beneath the words. That’s where the roadmap lives.
Loyalty Starts Early
When you treat your first 100 users like insiders — showing them the roadmap, involving them in decisions, thanking them for their time — they remember.
These users become your distribution later. They tell others. They defend you. They stick around when things are rough.
You don’t need a big community to start. You need a real one. And that starts with making those first hundred feel like they matter — because they do.
Conclusion
Growth isn’t about going wide. It’s about going deep — at the right time. The first 100 users offer you something no marketing campaign can: truth. Earn their trust, study their behavior, and let them shape what comes next. Everything big starts small — but only if you respect the small enough to listen.
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Notes from the frontlines of digital advantage, venture, and scale.

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Notes from the frontlines of digital advantage, venture, and scale.

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Notes from the frontlines of digital advantage, venture, and scale.

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Notes from the frontlines of
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