Nivi · April 2nd, 2010
In Where’s the demo?, I asked, “Unless you’re famous or a big company, why do a closed beta?” There are lots of good reasons why in the comments.
But my favorite comment is from Rob May, founder of Backupify and AngelList power broker:
“In the early days of Backupify (when it was still called Lifestreambackup), not only was I worried that someone would steal the idea and execute it better, but I was also embarrassed by the quality of the product when I demo’ed it. But ultimately, some early users loved it and that kept us going. By releasing an early buggy minimum viable product, we got a pretty big lead on everyone else. Now we have a bunch of competitors, but with more than 60K users and 30 terabytes of data backed up, we are pretty far ahead in terms of traction. Being open early worked well for us.”
By the way, Backupify recently raised money from General Catalyst and First Round Capital.
Topics Customer Development