Choose your customers

It’s critical to start with the right set of early customers to kick off all the self-reinforcing growth cycles we’ve discussed above. You have to start by knowing who your best early customers will be — for productivity/collaboration companies that’s often knowledge workers on remote and distributed teams, and often engineers.

Pick a customer instead of an idea: “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that when you're starting a company, you often think you're picking an idea, but you're really picking a customer. It's actually pretty easy to change your idea, but it’s way harder to change the customer you're serving,” says Agrawal.

Change your project, change your future. And your project is a direct result of the clients you choose to serve.

Choosing the right early core customer