Do things that don't scale - obsessively

When you have your first 1, 5, or 10 customers, efficiency is your enemy. Every founder's instinct is to think: "How do I make this scalable?" But here's what you should actually be asking: "What can I learn from this customer that will help me build something people actually want?" White-glove service isn't just about making customers happy (though that matters). It's about creating an environment where you learn everything possible about how they use your product, what they struggle with, what delights them, and what they actually need. The reality: The feedback loop from your first customer is worth more than a thousand website visitors. When you get somebody actually using the product, telling you all the angles, asking questions, explaining how it fits into their workflow - that's how you learn the most about your product. You can't learn this from analytics dashboards or support tickets. You learn it from being deeply involved in every customer's journey.

White-glove service means doing everything for your customer - even the things you eventually want them to do themselves. Here's what I mean: Setup and onboarding:

• You do the complete setup yourself, don't send them a guide
• You configure settings based on their specific use case
• You create their account, set permissions, customize the interface
• They log in and everything is already ready

Data migration:

• You handle importing their existing data
• You clean it, format it, map fields correctly
• You verify everything is accurate
• They see their data already in your system, working perfectly

Workflow creation:

• You build initial workflows for them based on conversations
• You create templates and examples relevant to their use case
• You set up automations (even if you do them manually behind the scenes)
• They experience the value immediately without setup friction

Proactive support:

• You check in weekly (minimum) to see how things are going
• You respond to questions within hours, not days
• You fix issues immediately, often before they notice
• You anticipate problems and solve them proactively

The goal: make their experience feel magical, even if you're doing days of manual work behind the scenes.

Let me tell you the full story of those 400 manual API calls. For my first customer at DealMaker, they needed data from a specific source that I hadn't fully automated yet. The API had rate limits: one call every 55 seconds. I had two options: Option 1: Tell the customer "sorry, our automation isn't ready yet, you'll need to wait a few weeks while we build it properly." Option 2: Sit there with Postman and a stopwatch, manually triggering API calls every 55 seconds for hours. I chose Option 2. Why? Because I needed to learn:

• Would the customer actually use this data once they had it?
• How would they use it in their workflow?
• What insights would they derive from it?
• Would this feature be worth automating, or was it a nice-to-have?

After they got the data and used it for a week, I learned:

• They used it daily (high value)
• They wanted it formatted differently than I expected
• They combined it with other data in a specific way
• The "instant refresh" I thought they'd need wasn't actually important

Those insights shaped how I eventually automated it - and saved me from building the wrong automation. The 400 manual API calls taught me more than any product spec or user interview could have.

Here's the trap almost every founder falls into: You get your first customer. They ask for something. Your brain immediately jumps to: "How do I automate this so I don't have to do it manually for customer #2, #3, #4?" So you spend a week building automation before you even have customer #2. This is premature optimization, and it kills startups.

Here's why:

1. You don't know if the feature actually matters yet
   Maybe customer #1 needed it because of their specific edge case. Customers #2-5 might not need it at all. You just wasted a week automating something that isn't core to your value proposition.
2. You don't know the right way to build it yet
   How customers #1-10 use a feature will teach you the right way to implement it. If you automate based on customer #1's feedback alone, you'll build it wrong and have to rebuild it later.
3. You stop learning
   The minute you start optimizing for efficiency instead of learning, you stop getting the insights you need to build something people actually want to buy. You lose momentum and clarity about product-market fit.
4. You're solving level-100 problems at level-0
   Automation is a level-100 problem. You're at level-0. You need to get to level-10 before automation makes sense.

The rule: Don't automate anything until you've done it manually for at least 10 customers. By then, you'll know what's actually worth automating and how to do it right.

Here's the secret: white-glove service is actually research for your future automation. Every manual task you do is teaching you:

• Which tasks are actually important vs nice-to-have
• What the edge cases are
• Where customers get confused
• What the logical workflow should be
• What can be standardized vs what needs customization

The white-glove to automation progression: Customers 1-3: Do everything manually Document what you do for each customer. Take notes on:

• What questions do they ask?
• What do they struggle with?
• What delights them?
• What takes the most time?

Customers 4-7: Start seeing patterns Notice which manual tasks are identical across customers and which are custom. The identical tasks are automation candidates. The custom tasks need to stay manual (for now). Customers 8-10: Document the repeatable parts Create internal documentation (not yet customer-facing) of the standard workflow. This forces you to think through the logic and edge cases. Customers 11-15: Build lightweight automation Now - and only now - start building automation for the tasks you've done 10+ times and are truly identical each time. But keep the manual escape hatch for edge cases. Customers 16-20: Create self-serve resources Only after 15+ customers should you create customer-facing documentation, onboarding videos, or knowledge base articles. By now you know exactly what questions everyone asks. Customers 21+: Scale the systems Now you can build full automation, self-serve flows, and hire customer success people to handle onboarding using your proven playbook.

When you're deeply involved in every customer's journey, you learn answers to critical questions that will shape your entire business: Product questions:

• What features do customers actually use vs ignore?
• What's the "aha moment" that makes them see value?
• What's confusing about the UI/UX?
• What integrations do they need most urgently?
• What workflows are they trying to create?

Sales questions:

• What objections come up during onboarding?
• What proof points close their internal stakeholders?
• How long does it take them to see ROI?
• What makes them become advocates vs churners?

Marketing questions:

• How do they describe the problem you solve?
• What language do they use (vs your marketing language)?
• What alternatives did they consider?
• Why did they choose you over competitors?

Business model questions:

• Which customer segments get value fastest?
• Which ones require too much hand-holding?
• What's the ideal pricing model for their use case?
• What makes them expand usage vs stay at entry-level?

You can't learn any of this from analytics or automated onboarding sequences. You learn it from being obsessively involved in each customer's success.

"This sounds exhausting. How do I do this without burning out?"

Fair question. Here's how to make it sustainable:

1. Set clear expectations about how many customers you can support
   Don't try to onboard 50 customers with white-glove service. Focus on your first 10-15. After that, you should have enough patterns to start systematizing.
2. Schedule dedicated onboarding blocks
   Don't let customer onboarding interrupt your entire day. Set specific blocks: "Tuesday 2-4pm: Customer onboarding" and protect that time.
3. Use the 80/20 rule for customization
   80% of white-glove service can be a repeatable process. The 20% that's custom is where you learn the most. Focus your energy there.
4. Record everything
   Use Loom to record your screen while doing setup. This serves two purposes: documentation for yourself (what did I do for customer #3?) and future training material for automation or team members.
5. Create internal templates (not customer-facing yet)
   Build Notion docs or checklists for yourself. "Customer onboarding checklist: step 1, step 2, step 3." This makes it faster each time while still being manual and flexible.
6. Batch similar tasks
   If you're doing data imports for 3 customers, do all three in one session. Context switching kills productivity.
7. Know when to say no
   If a prospect requires 10x more work than others in your first 10 customers, they might not be a good fit. White-glove doesn't mean saying yes to everything - it means making the right customers wildly successful.

The level and type of white-glove service should evolve as you grow: Customer 0→1:

• Service level: Absolutely everything manually
• Time investment: 10-20+ hours per customer
• What you do: Full setup, data migration, workflow creation, daily check-ins, immediate fixes
• What you learn: Does anyone actually want this? What is the core value?

Customers 1→5:

• Service level: Still fully manual, starting to document patterns
• Time investment: 8-15 hours per customer
• What you do: Same as 0→1, but you're getting faster as you develop a process
• What you learn: What's consistent across customers vs what's unique? What patterns emerge?

Customers 5→10:

• Service level: Manual with some internal documentation/templates
• Time investment: 5-10 hours per customer
• What you do: Personal onboarding, but using your internal checklists and templates
• What you learn: What should be automated vs what needs human touch? Where are edge cases?

Customers 10→20:

• Service level: Mostly manual with light automation for obvious tasks
• Time investment: 3-5 hours per customer
• What you do: Some self-serve with proactive check-ins and available support
• What you learn: What does "good enough" automation look like? Where do customers still need help?

Customers 20+:

• Service level: Systematic with automation and self-serve, white-glove for complex cases
• Time investment: 1-2 hours per customer (standard), 5-10 hours (enterprise)
• What you do: Self-serve onboarding with human intervention for escalations
• What you learn: How to scale the proven process with team and systems

Let me share specific examples from my companies that show how white-glove service led to critical insights: Example 1: The data migration that revealed the real use case I spent 3 days migrating data for an early customer. While doing it, I noticed their data was structured completely differently than I expected. They weren't tracking what I thought they were tracking. They cared about metrics I didn't even have fields for. If I had built "automated data import" without doing it manually first, I would have built it wrong. Those 3 days of manual work saved me weeks of building the wrong automation. Example 2: The weekly check-ins that changed the product roadmap I scheduled weekly 15-minute check-ins with my first 5 customers. Just "how's it going? any issues?" In week 3, three out of five mentioned they were manually exporting data to combine with another tool. They didn't frame it as a feature request - just a casual mention. That insight led to an integration that became our #2 most-used feature. I only learned about it because I was checking in weekly, not from a support ticket or feature request form. Example 3: The onboarding that revealed positioning During manual onboarding, I asked a customer "what made you decide to try us?" They said: "I didn't need another [category tool]. I needed to solve [specific outcome]. Your product was the only one that positioned itself around outcomes, not features." That one sentence changed our entire marketing messaging. I would have never learned that from analytics. Example 4: The manual workflow that became our core product For my first customer, I manually created a workflow that I thought was a "nice bonus feature." But they told me: "This workflow is THE thing. Everything else is just supporting this workflow." Turns out what I thought was a bonus feature was actually the core value proposition. White-glove service revealed what customers actually cared about vs what I assumed they cared about.