Matlab's First Customer
@gballan's retrospective from 2019 captures the critical transition from initial concept to the first dollar of customer revenue.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Early traction rarely comes from passive launches; it requires direct manual outreach, personal network activation, and high-touch customer support.
Narrowing down the target audience to a specific niche allows solo founders to out-position generic horizontal competitors.
Underpricing out of fear of rejection is common; founders who set premium pricing often discover higher customer satisfaction and lower churn.
Community Debate Themes:
Discussions analyzed Show HN launch mechanics, cold DM outreach conversion rates, and the psychology of validating customer demand before writing code.
CATEGORY Zero to One →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 73 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 15 comments
A bit off topic tidbit:
Early Matlab version(s) had an interesting Easter egg. Once when frustrated with the learning on the REPL, I typed "fuck you" and the console spit out "your place or mine?" instead of an error that I was so used to.
I really hope that's listed in chronological order, because otherwise he's throwing serious shade at the Royal Society.
Edit: I checked it out- Matlab has been around since 1984, and Prof Trefethen was made FRS in 2005. Safe.
As far as I know he bought that license for one of his student at the time, Alan Edelman, who then ended up co-creating the Julia language.
He ought to add to that list “finder of mistakes in Feynman lectures”