Startups do these 9 things that don't scale

This post appeared at Paul Graham's blog, titled "Do things that don't scale".

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One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist.

Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going.

Here are 9 unscalable startup tactics with examples of well-known startups who have used them to get started:

#1 - Recruit users manually

Stripe’s tactic: They took user’s laptops one by one and installed their software by hand

#2 - Remember startups are fragile

Airbnb’s tactic: They went door to door taking phoots (which saved them from failing)

#3 - Make users very happy

Wuloo’s tactic: They sent users handwritten cards

#4 - Have “insanely great” service

Apple’s tactic: They made the packaging as great as the computers

#5 - Pick a narrow market

Facebook’s tactic: They launched only at Harvard

#6 - Do things yourself

Pebble’s tactic: They assembled the 1st 100 watches by hand

#7 - Become their consultant

Viaweb’s tactic: They used their own software to build stores for clients

#8 - “Flintstone” under the hood

Stripe’s tactic: They delivered ‘instant’ merchant accounts by signing up users by hand behind the scenes.

#9 - Avoid big launches

Can you remember the launch of any big startup? Exactly