Matt Mullenweg: Scaling For Your First 100K Users
created on Fri, 2006-07-21 14:10 The lovely Matt Mullenweg, brilliant founding developer of Wordpress and Akismet led a session on getting those first 100,000 users.
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A Few Tidbits:
- Wordpress.org gets 3 to 5 thousand hits a day.
- Wordpress.com is at 260,000 blogs
- Akismet has over 1 million spam blocks per day.
- Matt's only been programming for 3 years!?!
- The first 100, 000 are the most passionate and unique users, and the hardest to get. After that, you've got enough momentum - chances are, you'll coast.
- It's easy to call something an overnight success - it's never true - there's always time, blood, sweat and tears poured into any major success - you just never hear about it until it's big.
- Your first users should be your friends, your family, and those people who don't like you - they'll give you the honest goods on how to improve the experience you're creating for your (hopefully) 100G users!
Mullenweg's 12 Rules:
1. You have to be the most passionate person involved.
2. Get off the computer - the act of writing things down on paper frees the mind, allows for the juices to really flow.
3. Obsess about the details, down to the space between two letters.
4. Do your own support. You have to be able to feel the pain of your users. Document everything. Make it as easy as possible for your users to contact you.
5. Blog every step of the way. Keep all of your users in the loop at all times - they will love you. Communicate with them and put them in the driver's seat.
6. Have a great tagline. If you can't describe what you are doing in less than 5 words, edit it, shave it down.
7. Frame everything you're talking about in a context for your users. What are you going to do for them?
8. Get out of version 1.0 as fast as possible. Most people make their successes on something different from where they started. Be flexible. User feedback is the most valuable asset. Don't let yourself be too led by your first users. Listen to the silent majority. Keep the majority in mind.
9. Track yourself.
10. Know what to do if you are successful.
11. Start strong, end strong. People don't often remember what was in the middle.
12. Be a pain killer, not a vitamin.
