Home topics start-up-entrepreneur Hot Tips Opinion Small Business Hot Tips Disrupting loyalty: How start-ups are hacking customer acquisition and retention Guest Author November 28, 2014 Customers no longer have to stay with brands they don’t love, and no amount of clever marketing can overcome this simple truth. More and more, people are comparing your brand less to your competitors, and more to the best of the best brands in the world. Successful start-ups are often customer acquisition experts out of necessity. Most start-ups have a limited runway to quickly find product-market fit and so it’s critical that their relationship with customers is more than just a transaction. For a start-up, you rely on your customers to give you candid feedback, to champion your product, and to help evolve it. Start-ups grow quickly because they are in constant dialogue with their customers and using the feedback to build better product experiences. There are four common techniques that start-ups use to drive acquisition and retention. 1. Find early adopters who love your product Start-ups learn quickly that you can’t be all things to all people. They’ll often sacrifice early revenue in order to attract the right customers, because while customers are useful, what you really want are people who love your product. It’s often hard for businesses to accept that the first people who discover your product can be incredibly unrepresentative of the broader market your product fits. Without customers who love your product, the data you receive in the early days