Startup First Users

In plain words

Startup First Users is a resource documenting how over 30 well-known billion and million-dollar companies acquired their initial users without large budgets. The guide covers bootstrapping strategies and early growth tactics used by successful startups, focusing on sales, marketing, and growth hacking approaches. It is designed for entrepreneurs and founders seeking practical insights into user acquisition methods employed by established companies during their early stages.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Many billion and million-dollar companies did not start out with huge budgets, they often bootstrapped to get their first users. This page contains insights on how 30+ well-known companies got their first users.

Learn how 30+ companies such as GitHub, Zoom, Amazon, Twitch and Whatsapp got their first users

Click on any company logo below to read the story of how the company got their first users from scratch. When GitHub launched in April 2008, the platform had already started a beta program for early users. They gained around 6,000 users by the time they officially launched. The early strategy revolved around inviting their developer friends to use the open platform. New users could easily share their code on GitHub with a single link. This increased the traffic to the GitHub website, as others wanted to check out the code. When people visited the code pages, they could sign up for the beta program on GitHub. This then allowed them to also publish code and share it with their friends. The…from earlyusergrowth.com

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