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An early investor in Pinterest and Uber who sold a company for $100 million says there's a specific order in which young startups need to target clients

Scott Belsky, Contributor   

An early investor in Pinterest and Uber who sold a company for $100 million says there's a specific order in which young startups need to target clients
Careers1 min read

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  • Scott Belsky is Adobe's chief product officer and executive vice president at Creative Cloud. In 2006, he cofounded Behance. He's also an author, entrepreneur, and investor.
  • In his experience creating different products, he's identified the different types of customers that new businesses should want - and exactly when they should be working with those customers.
  • You don't actually want to get all of your customers right away; expanding slowly, and with the right group, is essential.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

New products tend to launch with a "we'll take any customer we can get" mentality. But what if that's wrong, or even destructive, for the process of gaining empathy and key insights/iterating? Indeed, the customers you have at different stages of your business impact how your product evolves and how your team prioritizes. Especially for venture-backed businesses that optimize for sustainable differentiation and growth before cashflow, not all customers are equal. What makes a customer attractive throughout the lifecycle of a company? It really varies, depending on the stage of your company and product.

I've written about and discussed the ideal types of customers you want - and when - in the product portion of "The Messy Middle." But let's quickly discuss the five types of customers to optimize for along the journey of launching and growing a product.

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