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Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by csytan on Monday November 19, 2018 @07:54PM (#18491052)
My wife and I are bootstrapping a business, and we're nearly at 100 customers (92 right now). I would not say it's an easy road. We've been working on it full time for 1.5 years so far.

A couple things I've realized while doing this:

1. Business is a competition. Much like in sports, skills are only built up through practice. For an entrepreneur this means actually selling something. You will start at level 0. There is no substitution for actually doing the work.

2. The bigger you grow, the easier it gets. A year ago we were running around like headless chickens not knowing what to focus on. Now that we've got a core group of customers, and it's much easier to decide where to go. We can start to plan a month or two months out now. Opportunities such as partnerships also present themselves as your business grows larger.

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by PopeDotNinja on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @01:36AM (#18492204)
> The bigger you grow, the easier it gets

I guesstimate it's easier to grow until start hiring, and hit the point where you can no longer directly manage everyone who works at the company. And if you've never hired & managed people, being new to having employees is it's own kind of adventure!

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by goatherders on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @10:25AM (#18494442)
My perception from going through growth again this past year is that the sooner you can get your organization organized the easier it gets. I can't recommend the eMyth books enough for most anyone starting a business. Systemizing things, particularly the things that are rudimentary, is the fastest way to get to a healthy business. I also ran around for months like a chicken with my head cut off. Once I hired some help (contractors mostly) to do some of the tiny tasks that were massive time sucks my life got easier and my business got healthier.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by sbilstein on Monday November 19, 2018 @09:48PM (#18491492)
How long did it take you to build your product? My partner and I are bootstrapping have customers but I’m always way behind on product as a solo dev.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by Kagerjay on Monday November 19, 2018 @08:19PM (#18491164)
Unrelated but I found your portfolio site to be really funny with the pointer clicks and portrait changes

Business looks interesting but Im not the target demographic

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by itsbenlee on Monday November 19, 2018 @08:35PM (#18491245)
Appreciate your perspective. Which portfolio site are you referring to?
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by Kagerjay on Monday November 19, 2018 @08:38PM (#18491265)
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by itsbenlee on Monday November 19, 2018 @09:13PM (#18491376)
Never heard of him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by kornish on Monday November 19, 2018 @09:23PM (#18491412)
Kagerjay's comment is responding to csytan's comment, not your post.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by itsbenlee on Monday November 19, 2018 @09:31PM (#18491447)
Ah...sorry lads! couldn't tell on mobile :-)
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by alexchamberlain on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @03:12AM (#18492483)
> sorry lads

Come on, we can do better than that. This isn't an ol' boys club.

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by DanBC on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @07:51AM (#18493422)
In Ireland "lads" is (weirdly to British people) gender neutral and is used by men and women to refer to mixed groups of people.

I don't know if itsbenlee is Irish or in Ireland.

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by scrollaway on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @03:17AM (#18492497)
"Lads" is an appropriate, albeit very british, way of addressing men, which the poster above was doing. Why the noise?
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by alexchamberlain on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @07:40AM (#18493383)
Little disappointed to be so downvoted for calling this out; I don't really do it very often. Also a brit, but I didn't know that the others in the conversation were men. It's pretty easy to use `guys` instead.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by DoreenMichele on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:05PM (#18499383)
I didn't downvote you.

But it was a short comment intended to convey "Oops! Sorry. My bad." So you basically replied to an apology with a suggestion that the apology had committed some greater sin.

My feeling is that probably falls under the heading "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I don't think it qualifies as a Best Practice for improving the social climate on some metric or other.

That's not intended to lecture you. I'm just trying to make conversation on a topic I find interesting. Given the nature of the beast, I'm having very mixed feelings about commenting at all.

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by freehunter on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @08:57AM (#18493778)
"Guys" is just as gender-specific as "lads".
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by alexchamberlain on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @01:52PM (#18496537)
The defence was it was a Britishism, where guys is gender neutral.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by scrollaway on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @02:04PM (#18496655)
I don't understand your post/replies. Do you have a problem with people using britishisms? The "defence" spelling is also a britishism, so I'm not sure where you're going with all that.

"Guys" is not any more gender neutral than "Lads" (they both are often used in a gender-neutral way, but they're etymologically male). "Folks" is what I personally use if I specifically want something gender-neutral, but "lads" is definitely appropriate if the author is speaking to men.

Which brings me back to "this is a lot of noise for nothing".

Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by freehunter on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @07:08PM (#18499087)
Literally the first definition of "guy" is "a man". "Guy" is only gender neutral when you're referring to a group of people.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by dheral on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @04:46AM (#18492764)
Why not address all readers, instead of only men?
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by scrollaway on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @05:37AM (#18492915)
The poster above was not addressing readers, but rather three specific people.
Re:How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers by forcemajeure on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @05:05AM (#18492818)
Apparently you can use 'guys' now instead