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WHY FIRST 1000 EXISTS

First, I studied
their beginnings.
Now I’m sharing mine.

During COVID, I kept coming back to one question: how did this company get its first 1,000 customers?

I interviewed founders, spoke with employees who were there early, and did a lot of research. I wanted to understand the real beginnings: the first person who cared, the awkward pitch, the unexpected thing that finally worked.

The question stayed. The writing changed.

After a couple of years, retelling second-hand founding stories started to feel limiting. In 2023, I shifted toward raw data, product research, and the details behind real experiments: pricing, onboarding, subscription flows, and what people actually clicked.

I wrote fewer issues and tried to make each one more useful. The goal was never to fill your inbox. It was to leave you with a better question or a concrete thing to try.

Now I’m the case study.

At the beginning of January 2026, I took time off from Duolingo and started building Lazyweb. That changed the premise of this newsletter. First 1000 is now my own journey, documented while it’s happening.

“Things will fail and things will work, and I’ll tell you all about it as it happens.”

I’m trying to give it to you straight: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The twists, the wrong turns, the experiments, and the moments when I have to admit I was wrong. I don’t want to clean up the story so much that the useful parts disappear.

The letter that started this chapter ↗

What you can expect.

  • Specifics. The experiment, the number, the decision—not just the lesson.
  • An unfinished story. The wrong turns belong here too.
  • A point of view. Mine. Sometimes revised by the next issue.
  • Room to leave. The newsletter is free, and every email has an unsubscribe link.