Buil a better mousetrap and they would come or build it and they will come.

I could not have been more wrong, the reality is at the beginning no one cares about your startup. You are like an unknown kid on the block that needs to prove yourself and also
solve problems potential users deem important enough for them. Or at least give them a product that they want enough to try.

As a founder, I feel it is non-negotiable you have to go out there and recruit users manually. And that means cold approach, phone call or so on, anything to get to know your users.

I will admit it is very daunting to go out and talk to potential users about their problems. It is even more daunting to attempt to sell your product to them right on the spot. I have tried this
a few times. It gets easier but the nerve does not go away entirely.

It was also wrong for me to think because the initial amount of users is small it is not worth my time. In reality, a small set of users at the beginning help shape your product tremendously. It is better to have 10 people who rave about and love your products than 100 people who are meh about it.

As stated in this post here http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html. If you can grow 10% a week, the compound growth number will snowball exponentially and you will end up with a much bigger number in no time.

Eg: $0.01 cent double everyday for 30 days = $5,368,709. This formula is indeed very powerful.

It is tedious to recruit users manually but the insight it gives and the first-hand knowledge will give immeasurable benefit to a scrappy startup. We can also switch to a better method and less manually
once we find product-market fit.