Tomer London, co-founder of Gusto, explains how the company launched its payroll platform by targeting an intentionally narrow initial customer profile.
“So for us, it was so small. You wouldn't believe it was just California companies who only, who have salaried employees only. So no hourly employees, Who have, you know, no benefits or any other deductions from their payroll. And it's their first payroll ever.”
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More from Tomer London
Insight
London: Startups must target narrow customer segments to drive word-of-mouth growth
“These initial customers are your seed for your word of mouth and everything flows from there. So to do that, you need to be very, very selective on a small sub segment of target customer.”
Tomer LondonDec 5, 2024▶ 5:16How Gusto Used Customer Input to Scale Growth with Tomer London
Insight
Founders must be able to watch early customers use the product in-person
“It's really important for these initial customers for you to feel like you, they, you can spend time with them. You can watch them as they use your product.”
Tomer LondonDec 5, 2024▶ 12:05How Gusto Used Customer Input to Scale Growth with Tomer London
Insight
London: Accountant trust drives small business software adoption
“Accountants are a big part of the decision Process for small businesses often. And we, if accountants believe in gusto, then that can help their small businesses also believe in us.”
Tomer LondonDec 5, 2024▶ 13:24How Gusto Used Customer Input to Scale Growth with Tomer London
Insight
Tomer London: Over-indexing on customer feedback creates a feature-bloated Frankenstein product
“On the other side if you are obsessed with every single piece of feedback that people give you, you're going to build a Frankenstein and it's going to be just a random sort of feature.”
Tomer LondonDec 5, 2024▶ 17:01How Gusto Used Customer Input to Scale Growth with Tomer London
Insight
Tomer London: Founders should prioritize passionate early users over rigid strategy frameworks
“Looking backwards, I underestimated the importance of focusing on people who are really, really passionate about helping you succeed. And by that, they're going to spend a lot of time with you, giving you the raw customer feedback that you need in order to fig…”
Tomer LondonDec 5, 2024▶ 26:01How Gusto Used Customer Input to Scale Growth with Tomer London
Insight
Tomer London: SMB software requires self-serve distribution over sales teams
“We saw that, you know, the unit economics here, like just the amount of revenue per customer is going to be low compared to enterprise and high compared to consumer. So you can't put sales you can't just rely on sales for acquisition, right? So it had to be se…”
Tomer LondonDec 5, 2024▶ 29:06How Gusto Used Customer Input to Scale Growth with Tomer London
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