I almost gave up on product-led growth. Seriously. We were stuck at 900 users for what felt like an eternity. Every morning, I'd check our metrics, and every morning, it was the same story. Stagnation. I was convinced we needed to open the marketing floodgates and just buy our way to growth. I even had a whole deck prepared to convince my co-founders.
Then, a mentor of mine, a guy who’d seen it all, told me something that completely changed my perspective. He said, “Sahin, you’re looking at it all wrong. You’re chasing vanity metrics. Stop trying to buy users and start earning them.” It was a simple shift, but it was profound. That conversation was the catalyst that took us from 900 to over 43,000 users without spending a single dollar on marketing. It all came down to focusing on the product and the community. Here are the eight biggest lessons I learned from that journey.
1. Your Product is Your Best Marketing Channel
This sounds like a cliché, but it’s the truth. A great product sells itself. We spent months obsessing over every detail of RemoteTeam, making sure it was a product that people would not just use, but love. We talked to our users constantly, asking them what they liked, what they hated, and what they wished the product could do. We shipped updates almost daily, fixing bugs and adding new features based on their feedback. We didn't have a big marketing budget, so we had to rely on word-of-mouth. And it worked. Our users became our biggest advocates, telling their friends and colleagues about us. That’s how we started to see real, organic growth.
2. Community is Your Moat
In the early days, I personally onboarded every single new user. I’d send them a personal email, welcome them to the community, and ask them what they were hoping to get out of our product. It wasn’t scalable, but it created a sense of belonging. People felt like they were part of something special, not just another user of a faceless corporation. We created a Slack community where users could connect with each other, share best practices, and get help from our team. That community became our biggest competitive advantage. Our competitors could copy our features, but they couldn’t copy our community.
3. Stop Wasting Time on Vanity Metrics
I used to be obsessed with vanity metrics like website traffic and social media followers. They looked good on a slide deck, but they didn’t mean anything for the business. My mentor was right. I was chasing the wrong things. The only metric that really matters is user engagement. Are people actually using your product? Are they getting value out of it? Are they coming back day after day? Once we started focusing on engagement, everything else started to fall into place. We stopped worrying about how many people were visiting our website and started focusing on how many people were actively using our product. That’s when we started to see real growth.
4. Referral Programs are a Superpower
We didn’t have a marketing budget, so we had to get creative. We launched a referral program that gave users a discount on their subscription for every new user they referred. It was a simple idea, but it was incredibly effective. Our users were already telling their friends about us, so we just gave them a little extra incentive to do so. The referral program became our biggest growth engine, driving thousands of new users to our platform. It was a win-win. Our users got a discount, and we got new customers for free.
5. Retention is the New Growth
It’s a lot cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. That’s why we were so focused on retention. We did everything we could to make our users happy. We provided amazing customer support, we listened to their feedback, and we constantly improved the product. We knew that if we could keep our users happy, they would stick with us for the long haul. And they did. Our churn rate was incredibly low, which meant that our growth was sustainable. We weren’t just acquiring new users; we were building a loyal customer base.
6. Build in Public
We were completely transparent with our users. We shared our roadmap, our progress, and our challenges. We even shared our revenue numbers. It was a little scary at first, but it built a huge amount of trust with our community. People felt like they were on the journey with us. They were invested in our success. Building in public is not for everyone, but it worked for us. It helped us build a strong relationship with our users and create a sense of community around our product.
7. Don't Be Afraid to Have a Strong Opinion
In the early days, I was afraid to take a stand. I wanted to please everyone. But I quickly learned that you can’t be everything to everyone. You have to have a point of view. You have to have a strong opinion about how things should be done. That’s what attracts your tribe. We had a strong opinion about remote work. We believed that it was the future of work, and we built a product that reflected that belief. Not everyone agreed with us, but the people who did became our most passionate supporters.
8. The Grind is Real, But It's Worth It
Building a startup is hard. There are no shortcuts. There were many times when I wanted to give up. But I’m so glad I didn’t. The journey from 900 to 43,000 users was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. It taught me so much about myself, about business, and about the power of community. If you’re a founder in the trenches right now, I want you to know that it’s worth it. Keep going. Keep grinding. And never, ever give up on your vision.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know which items apply to my situation?
Start by honestly assessing where your biggest bottleneck is right now. The items that address that specific constraint will give you the highest return on your time and energy.
How were these items selected?
Each item on this list comes from direct experience, either from building my own companies or from patterns I've observed across the 200+ startups I've invested in. I prioritize practical, actionable items over theoretical concepts.
Can I implement all of these at once?
I'd strongly recommend against it. Pick the 2-3 items that resonate most with your current situation and focus there. Trying to do everything simultaneously is a recipe for doing nothing well.