our first customer

our initial strategy was to send out thirty cold emails a day, fifteen each, from our personal email accounts, offering real estate agents a free juno pen along with a free 30 day trial. it was literally free, maybe too free.

we projected roughly 600 emails a month with a 1% response rate, which meant we'd be giving away about six free pens. our hypothesis was simple: if we offered agents a free pen and a free limited-time subscription, they'd be more likely to take advantage of the opportunity and potentially provide us with valuable feedback.

on the second day, after our second batch of emails went out, we received our first response. we were ecstatic and immediately shipped her the pen. now, it's worth mentioning that users still had to enter their shipping address and credit card information through our third-party payment processor.

we shipped her the pen on a monday. she received it that same week, on friday, and by sunday, she had already cancelled her subscription. obviously, that hurt. but when we checked the backend, we noticed something interesting: she had never uploaded a recording. in fact, she hadn't even signed in or created an account.

that sucked. it felt like failure, but looking back, it was a blessing in disguise.

we realized that our best strategy wasn't to give away free pens to random people. it was to put them in the hands of people we knew, people we believed could genuinely benefit from our product, and, most importantly, people who would actually provide us with valuable feedback.

so that's exactly what we did.

the goal was to initiate a positive feedback loop, learn from our users, and eventually find our niche. but this time, we changed one important thing: we'd still give away the pen for free, but instead of offering a free subscription, we'd offer it at half price.

the idea was to introduce a little friction. by having users pay something, even at a discount, we hoped they'd feel more invested in the product and actually take the time to use the software. after all, it's easy to ignore something when it costs you nothing.