Founders of Two Successful Internet Startups Share Their Secrets

Adam Smith and Drew Houston, founders of two successful Internet startups – Xobni and Dropbox – share secrets that helped their products win two million users in two years with mostly word-of-mouth marketing and no advertising spend.

Besides building a great product, some key tips mentioned in the deck include:

• Go where your early adopters hang out
• Simple landing page: capture interest/email address
• Focus: do a few things really well instead of a lot of things poorly
• Hook the user first, educate over time (tours, tip emails, etc.)
• Meet journalists in person (they’re very busy people)
• Niche first, world later (Facebook was initially restricted to Harvard students)

If you run an online startup or are planning to launch one, this is one presentation that you should definitely have in your bookmarks.
Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.