I just got wind of it, we at Uploadcare will soon be releasing an article with more info about the early days :) And, I believe, a podcast or two. Thanks for this question, btw. Would you elaborate on what you would like to know? It'll help us compile a great article, thanks :)

Great to hear that!

The reason why it's particularly interesting to me, i.e. to someone with a dev background, is that the lean startup wisdom says you should be very specific about the customer you're after and Uploadcare seems like a solution targetted at a broad spectrum of customer segments. Of course, I'm happy to be proved wrong if there are one or two dominant customer segments that you address Uploadcare to. Also, you might have as well started out with a very specific customer persona and spread to other segments. Whatever it was, curious to know.

I guess many developers dream up products targetted at developers like them selves. Selling to fellow developers is hard. It would be great to read a success story for a change.

Short answer is:

- believing in your own service - perseverance - fanatical customer support

This helped us to stay focused and our happy customers brought us new happy customers. We didn't know much about marketing in the beginning.