The first 1000

The time I passed 1000 subscribers was an extremely exciting moment. In fact, I still have the extremely cringe celebration video from that moment.

(3246) The 1000 Sub Special [Universe Sandbox 2] — YouTube

That milestone took literal years to accomplish — achieving it in 2015 when my channel started in 2012. To put that in perspective, that’s about 1 subscriber per day. While not extremely impressive now, that milestone is still memorable as one of the most challenging hurdles I’ve passed.

It’s now 2021, and my channel sits at 170,000 subscribers. This number is bound to change (hopefully upwards). Each milestone now still feels important, but far less impactful than that 1000 milestone. The only things that truly surpassed that feeling are probably when I hit 100,000 (of course), and when Nodecraft finally agreed to sponsor me (best partner ever, by the way).

Humans get desensitized easily. Constant dopamine hits from the slow growth of a channel makes it harder to feel the euphoric feeling of progress in the future. But that’s not the only reason that those first 1000 felt so damn good — it’s the fact that it is, in fact, easier to get from 1000 to 100,000 than it is to go from 0 to 1000.

This is due to the network effect. When you have an audience, that audience will share your content for you. The more people, the larger the network. This seems very obvious, but it’s an important thing to keep in mind. Sometimes you are prepared for your first ten customers, but don’t see the mob incoming behind them. Much like the Reddit “hug of death”, an unexpected surge of success can be just as harmful as no growth at all.

And now Valour sits here, at this milestone. With 995 users, I can make an easy guesstimate that 1000 is well within our grasp. This did not take years — it took a little over a month. And if the platform follows in the footsteps of my channel, that gives us a steep incline in work and required oversight within a short period of time.

This is the beginning — an exciting start to a frontier we’ve never approached before. A group of new developers, using new technology, to push a new kind of product to a target audience that hasn’t been the focus of many other companies.

But we will see where we go — and now that the first 1000 have entered, I’m confident we will see a few more zeroes added to our user count soon.

After all, the first 1000 are the hardest.