Today kicks off a new series we’ll be writing over the next several weeks on acquiring your first 1,000 customers, and why it is the most important thing to be focused on. Of course, this writing is targeted at products and businesses who have yet to reach this milestone, as businesses who are post-1,000 should be focused on scaling and optimizing your business.

Why write about landing the first 1,000 customers? Because we believe it’s the most crucial first milestone in building a breakthrough business and reaching this milestone comes with significant benefits that speed up growth.

We help businesses launch new products, and [almost] all of our customers have plans for a customer base far in excess of 1,000 users. However, basic math dictates that you must reach 1,000 customers before you reach 5,000. The often overlooked part is that the strategies used to land the first 1,000 may look so different than the preconceived business strategy that you’ll fail to reach early adopters, and thus the product will stagnate or fail.

More interestingly, is that when we look to launch a new product, most people look at examples of successful breakthrough applications serving large customer numbers that have already broken through. They take note of the tactics and strategies used to add the second and third millionth customer and try and apply that to landing their first or twenty-sixth customer. This is akin to shadowing a college professor around while studying to become a kindergarten teacher, you’ll learn a ton of useful, yet immediately inapplicable, things.

This series is a case for focusing almost exclusively on landing your first 1,000 customers until that goal is met. The source of feedback you’ll receive from your post-1,000 audience will leverage your future product bets and improve the likelyhood that you’ll breakthrough to  critical mass.

After reading the series, we hope you’ll appreciate the power of this launch strategy and consider it when panning your next product or business.

Tags: launch strategy, product development, product marketing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 4:49 am and is filed under Strategic Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.