Podcast · 35 min

Airbnb's Brian Chesky: Do Things That Don't Scale

Reid Hoffman · Masters of Scale (Reid Hoffman) Free Beginner

Chesky tells the Airbnb story in his own voice, including flying to New York to meet hosts and re-shoot their listing photos by hand. Hearing the founder narrate the unscalable early grind makes the lesson stick better than reading about it. A good listen for a commute when you need conviction that hand work is the job.

  • Chesky and his cofounders personally visited hosts and photographed listings
  • Better photos roughly doubled weekly revenue, a fix found by going in person
  • Handcrafted early work is where you learn what customers actually need
Open on mastersofscale.com ↗

It answers 6 questions

  1. How do I get my first users for the MVP?
  2. How did real successful startups actually land their first customers?
  3. Everyone says do things that don't scale, but where's the line between that and just wasting weeks doing manual work?
  4. I'm building outside the big startup hubs and my 'market' is the small businesses in my own town. Is that a strength or a limit?
  5. I'm building for Indian SMBs who use WhatsApp for everything. How do I get my first 10 without a fancy sales process?
  6. How much should I invest in design polish for an MVP versus just shipping something functional?

Read with it

  1. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  2. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  3. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  4. The consumer counterpart to finding B2B customers, focused on manually recruiting your first users for a consumer product. It... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to Find Your Early Adopters by Doing Things That Don't Scale Lenny Rachitsky
  5. Fifty-plus recent YC founders answer the exact question every early founder asks. The pattern across their answers is the lesson. YC Startup Library Article · ~10 min read Founder FAQ: How did you get your first customer? Y Combinator (50+ founders)
  6. A tactical follow-on covering the channels and motions top B2B startups scale after the first ten. Grounds distribution... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to win your first 10 B2B customers Lenny Rachitsky
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