Startup First Users - How billion & million dollar companies got their first users

Hey Producthunt! @leonpals - thank you so much for hunting! Startup First Users is a collection of stories about billion & million-dollar companies, focused on how they got their very first users from scratch. Though they may have millions and billions in revenue today, most companies started out with a limited budget. I've been fascinated about the early stories of successful companies for a long time, reading books and blog, listening to podcasts, and reaching out to companies about how they got their first users. So, here it is. A collection of 30+ successful companies. I decided to launch this as part of my future free email course on early user growth at https://earlyusergrowth.com, as I believe the obstacles of not being able to find your first users can be fixed by understanding how other companies have done it. Thanks to everybody who has helped me out so far! If you have any questions, feel free to drop them down below.

Great stuff Frank! Have just been reading through and honestly a great resource. People fall into the trap of copying big companies now. But that only makes sense if you also a big company. If you're just starting out you'll learn far more by copying the techniques these companies used to get started in the first place. Something I will keep coming back to for inspiration for sure.

I think this must be the product of the year!

I've been waiting for a website like this. As an early startup founder I struggle with getting my first users in the door myself. This website definitely helps.

Startup First User is an overview of how famous startups got their early adopters through the door and how they went from the startup to scale-up phase. It's filled with (in)famous launching strategies and companies that unlocked new engines of growth. A lot of these are from before there was such a term as 'growth hacking'. Enjoy and give Frank your thoughts, I know he worked hard on it.

Looks great! Will be signing up.

That's the biggest issue we are facing for our new product. Great resource to learn from other companies.

YOU. MADE. EXACTLY. WHAT. I. WAS. LOOKING. FOR. Thanks a lot for bringing all this information together. This will inspire me to come up with even more unique strategies to grow my userbase.

This is a great compilation of stories on how to get first users. It's good to see how Paypal, Stripe & Co. started, what they have done and that it's possible. I've been through several startups on the page and it is inspiring, confirming, and makes me smile because of the memories of earlier versions of some services. And the UI is fine. It makes fun to discover new stories just by scrolling down.

Cool idea, but why no citations ?

Wow I bet it took a lot of time to gather the information and get it all on one page. Thanks for sharing!

I love this. I'm posting this to my private group for our Free PR Bootcamp on earned.co - really cool to see that quite a few used PR to get early traction. Nice work

How cool is this! 😯

Great list! Thanks for sharing!

Love it! Would be so great to have more inputs about smaller companies

Great work!

Nice work! I love reading a sorts of story.

All these tactics in one collection, that's precious, upvoted.

I think the main thing that stops many products from gaining momentum is that point exactly – when you already have "something" but need to find your first adopters who will start using that thing. This site aims for this problem, and hits where it hurts, because there's a lot of info on the net about how you can get your first adopters, but it usually doesn't refer to successful cases or doesn't let you compare them to come up with your plan. This product will be huge, I suspect.

Nice idea. Thanks for putting this together.