do things that don't scale
the unscalable work is the work. i send paul graham's essay to every nitro applicant.
what to do
Do the manual, unscalable work yourself at the start. Recruit users one by one, give each one an unreasonably good experience, and carry by hand the parts of the product that are not built yet. I send Paul Graham’s “Do Things That Don’t Scale” to every Nitro applicant for a reason.
for example
In Nitro, the teams that break out treat the first ten users like the only ten users in the world. They hop on calls, fix bugs live, and hand-hold onboarding. It looks like it will never scale, and that is the point. It is how you learn the product well enough that it later can.
the failure it prevents
Waiting for growth to arrive through some automatic system you built before anyone wanted the thing. The system optimises a loop that does not work yet.
when this doesn’t apply
Keep doing the unscalable work until the thing it teaches you is built in. Automate a step only after you have done it by hand enough times to know it cold.