Instructions
Your first users matter more than any users who come after them. They shape what you build, what you learn, and whether the signals you get are any good. Choose them carelessly and you'll end up over-indexed on a group that's nothing like your real market. Choose them well and you'll come out of early-stage development with something genuinely useful.
The trap most people fall into is defaulting to whoever is easiest to reach — friends, colleagues, people who are already rooting for you to succeed. Those people will tell you the product is great. They're not representative, and their feedback won't help you make better decisions.
Good first users have three things: the problem acutely enough to show up and engage, enough patience to work with something imperfect, and enough ho...
