How app crashes, porn fails & botched shipments build super fans

A porn incident. Failed shoe shipments. App crashes.

They’re all related today, in that they can all help you build better relationships with your early customers.

When you start a company, there are only two mindsets for how you will portray your company:

1. As a corporation, devoid of human traits

2. As a team of humans

There isn’t much in between.

My favorite founders are the ones who lean into mistakes, and use them to build relationships with their customers. These are also the companies where you see founders responding to customer service emails. They share behind the scenes content as they’re building. They take letting down their customers personally.

And probably most importantly, they treat their early users or customers like heroes.

Because they are.

In contrast, companies that try to “act like you’ve been there” or “act as big as you want to be” often execute corporation communication strategies that are built for giants and fail to resonate. They cover up failures, ignore feedback or inquiries altogether, and sometimes even hide who is running the show.

When you choose option 1, you ignore one of the most significant concepts in starting a company—the 1,000 true fans.

1,000 fans to rule them all

Some businesses will need thousands or even millions of customers. But most great products go through a period of early adoption and build their first 1,000 fanatics who will continue to carry your company for years to come.

This is called the "1,000 True Fans" concept, and it can be applied to make any business thrive. “True Fans” are highly dedicated customers who will consistently buy your products or services and support your business in various ways because they feel a part of it. They’re passionate about what you’re doing in a way that sometimes doesn’t even make sense to the founders.

By cultivating your 1,000 True Fans, you can create a loyal customer base that provides a stable income for your business, a constant data set to compare new customers against for optimization, and an active group willing to provide customer feedback.

True Fans aren’t just making purchases, either. They’re usually powerful advocates, spreading positive word-of-mouth and attracting more customers to the business.

When brands choose to build companies with a cold corporation mindset, they may fail to engage these True Fans, or even worse, they may fail to build them in the first place. Companies that operate as a team of humans optimize the power of these early relationships, provide personalized attention and ensure customers feel valued and a part of a movement.

Famous examples

Zappos. Zappos famously cultivated True Fans even well beyond 1,000 with delights like surprise overnight shipping on a first order of shoes. In the early days, they’d even include a fun note to customers, something unheard of by most online retailers.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh was fanatical about creating these delightful experiences with his customers. He implored his customer service team to be human, to the point he once celebrated a customer service rep spending more than 10 hours on the phone with a customer without even talking about shoes.

Read Tony Hsieh’s book to see a master at work, or just look at this list of wild customer engagements.

Netflix. You may have forgotten, but Netflix got its start with DVDs by mail. In the early days, a mishap occurred when the team accidentally sent hundreds of pornography DVDs to customers.

The story goes that Netflix had the truly genius idea of renting the grand jury testimony from Bill Clinton’s famed Monica Lewinksi trial. The company was burning these DVDs in-house for speed, and DVDs were not being properly labeled. An unthinkable error occurred and instead of merely hearing about Clinton’s sexual improprieties, customers got a DVD chock full of visuals.

The company mailed hundreds of full-length porn videos out to its customers.

Netflix owned it. They contacted customers, and said they made a horrible mistake. They fell on the sword and said they were shipping the correct DVD and would pay for the wrong DVD to be mailed back. Comically, few if any of the “wrong” DVDs were returned.

GoWild. OK, this company is not as big as Netflix or Zappos. But it’s my company, and I have a story.

In early September 2017, GoWild launched our beta app on the iPhone. As we launched, I still remember the cofounders and I chatting in Slack that night, saying things like “Hey, we have a Jim Jackson in the app. Does anyone know him?” “No, I think that’s one of our first real members!” This enthusiasm only grew as we received our first press, calling us the best platform for outdoorsmen.

Our pride crumbled one morning in October. I woke up and checked the GoWild feed first thing. To my horror, it wasn’t working. I texted Chris, my cofounder, at 6 in the morning, and he shot back a message that made my gut sink. Chris had made an error in how he coded our server, and the Amazon server had crashed.

Our app was dead.

We emailed our members to let them know we screwed up and were working on a fix. Chris patched the app and put in an emergency release with Apple. Within 24 hours, we were back. We sent out an email poking fun at ourselves, and apologizing for the mishap. Members not only opened the email—and their app—they replied to say how much they had missed the platform in that short gap.

Find your True Fans

In the digital age, any company can tap into your True Fans, and technology is making it easier than ever to stay engaged with them. Brands can use social media, email, text and community platforms like Discord to build powerful relationships with your True Fans directly. This can become a powerful tool even for fundraising when a brand taps into Crowdfunding and other forms of micro-patronage.

While you have to balance listening to feedback from your customers and focusing on solving your problem, you can’t ignore the power of your fanatics. That balancing act is nuanced for every company, but I am confident that all companies can benefit in their early days by making their company more human with real language and honest communication.

Kill the corporate jargon. Keep it real.

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Who I’m listening to: Geno Seale & Emily Jamerson

What I’m reading: “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton M. Christensen

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