\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
\tKey Takeaways<\/p>\n
The doorbell rings, and I glance at my phone to see who it is. On the screen, a Girl Scout in a green sash is standing on the porch, a folding wagon piled high with cookie boxes behind her. I can\u2019t help but smile.<\/p>\n
These days, there are lots of ways Girl Scouts can avoid the toil of going door-to-door in pursuit of cookie sales. Online ordering, social media and enterprising parents canvassing the office break room are all easy, effective ways of making big sales in record time.<\/p>\n
As an entrepreneur, I\u2019m all for these other tactics. But knocking on doors, introducing yourself and making a pitch, one household at a time, does more than sell Thin Mints: It builds resilience<\/a>, confidence and sets you up with invaluable interpersonal skills. In my opinion, every founder needs these traits.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that launching a business has never been easier than it is today. AI has made it possible to do everything from automating marketing to building products in record time. Even so, I still believe in the seminal advice offered<\/a> by Paul Graham back in 2013: Do things that don\u2019t scale. Especially when you\u2019re out finding your first customers, the analog work of pounding the pavement<\/a> can be the difference between your business taking off and falling flat.<\/p>\n Related: These 3 Simple Steps Will Help You Expand Your Network in Your Base City<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Don\u2019t wait for customers to come to you<\/p>\n AI is changing how startups engage with customers in transformative ways \u2014 optimizing for Answer Engine Optimization<\/a> (AEO), for example, is essential for getting your product noticed and promoted by LLMs.<\/p>\n But it can\u2019t be the only tack you take. Even in the age of AI, you still need to ensure product-market fit<\/a> \u2014 the point where a product naturally generates strong market demand. A great idea will stay just that \u2014 an idea \u2014 until it\u2019s actually being used by its target audience. The early feedback you gather is key to shaping a successful business.<\/p>\n Take Stripe, the now-ubiquitous payment platform whose founders recruited their first users not by passively emailing them a link to try, but by physically taking their laptops and setting it up on the spot. They weren\u2019t the only ones to undertake such dramatic efforts \u2014 not unlike Girl Scouts selling cookies, Airbnb\u2019s founders initially went door-to-door to recruit new users and help existing ones improve their listings. Grubhub\u2019s co-founders began by digitizing takeout menus by hand.<\/p>\n Understandably, most founders aren\u2019t overly excited about the prospect of something as labor-intensive as knocking on doors or as uncomfortable as asking someone to fork over their laptop. But as Graham puts it, \u201cmarketplaces are so hard to get rolling that you should expect to take heroic measures at first.\u201d<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t mean you have to follow this blueprint exactly. One founder-friend is based in Silicon Valley, where he organizes meetup events for small businesses and startups. Running this meetup has given him a solid network of friends and acquaintances \u2014 and a built-in user-base to pitch the new email marketing tool he\u2019s currently developing. It\u2019s not scalable, but having an established rapport with even a handful of users allows him to gather in-depth feedback<\/a> in real-time and understand their needs far better than he would otherwise.<\/p>\n Related: Don\u2019t Wait For Customers to Find You \u2014 Here\u2019s How to Go to Them Instead<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Scaling while testing<\/p>\n Obviously, there\u2019s a limit to how many doors you can knock on, acquaintances you can leverage and menus you can digitize by hand. The tactics that help you win those first critical customers are often the very ones that become impossible to sustain<\/a> as your business grows.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an art in knowing when to make the shift. Research shows that premature scaling dramatically increases the odds of failure \u2014 according to Harvard Business Review, scaling within the first 12 months of founding raises the risk of failure<\/a> by 20%. On the other hand, staying too scrappy for too long can slow momentum and frustrate early adopters who expect your business to mature.<\/p>\n