Many people believe that startups either take off or don't, but in reality, a startup takes off because the founders make it take off. To get customers, a team has to go out and recruit them manually. This is where a lot of founders get hung up. Maybe it's shyness or laziness, but whatever the reason, lots of founders, avoid personally recruiting their first customers.

Paul Graham wrote an incredible essay on how startups get their first customers and find product-market fit; it's called "do things that don't scale." For some reason, most Founders believe that to build a successful business, they need to do everything in a "scalable" way. Paul points out that the first step is to delight customers and make sure that your product or service is something people want.

It's one of those influential articles you will read as a new founder or future founder. Click here to check it out.

In the essay, you will see that Paul refers to the Airbnb story and how they used the approach of doing things that don't scale to understand their customers' needs better. Check out this interview with Airbnb co-founder and chief product officer Joe Gebbia to hear the story.