Securing initial customers remains one of the most grueling and high-stakes challenges in the lifecycle of any business. Even when young companies manage to generate early interest, break through the noise, and land those crucial first accounts, there is never a guarantee that those customers will stick around for the long haul.
At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, veteran operators and investors gathered to shed light on this foundational hurdle. Elia Wallen, founder and CEO of travel startup Engine; Grant Lee, founder and CEO of presentation software giant Gamma; and Crystal Huang, general partner at Google Ventures, took the stage to share hard-earned tips on how to effectively attract and retain customers in a shifting market.
In the current digital landscape—where young artificial intelligence companies like Cluely and Instinct are building massive audiences not just through their underlying software products, but also through their founders’ colorful, highly visible online presences—social media can easily seem like a magic bullet. For many entrepreneurs, viral marketing looks like the fastest shortcut to reaching early customers. However, founders who want to elevate their business strategy with modern marketing must approach it with careful calculation, according to Lee.
Gamma, a company that sells popular AI-powered presentation software, managed to scale its business exponentially by deploying an innovative social media strategy centered around influencers through its specialized Ambassadors—or "Gambassador"—program. The company adopted this ambitious plan long before influencer-based marketing became a tried-and-true playbook for smaller B2B and enterprise tech companies, ultimately propelling the firm to a staggering multi-billion-dollar valuation and impressive annual recurring revenue milestones.
Yet, simply handing content creators a platform and instructing them to promote a brand online does not automatically translate to sustainable sales or long-term growth, Lee cautioned. There is significantly more strategy required beneath the surface.
"If you have a product that can serve many different segments or use cases, then you want to basically have creators that can target each one of those," Lee explained during the panel discussion. "If you have folks that are in consulting versus people that do all their marketing and create all the decks for their CMO, there’s all these different segments you might want to go after."
Lee noted that founders frequently fall into the trap of treating creator marketing or influencer partnerships as a passive, "set-it-and-forget-it" mechanism.
"I think you’re better served by really spending a lot of time with these creators, because if they’re not able to understand how to articulate the value of your product, it doesn’t matter how much money you spend, it’s just going to fall flat," Lee added.
While influencer ecosystems work wonders for certain software models, the overall effectiveness of social media depends largely on the specific industry, business model, and target demographic. Other, more traditional ways of reaching customers can be just as effective—if not significantly more so.
Elia Wallen understands this reality intimately. His company, Engine, which manages complex lodging and corporate travel bookings for midsize businesses, successfully bootstrapped its way to $150 million in bookings before ever taking on outside venture capital funding. During those critical foundational years, Engine operated with virtually no visible social media strategy at all. For Wallen, old-school sales tactics and direct outreach can prove far more useful than a viral TikTok video or an trending online post.
" extérieure We did events and we smiled and dialed," Wallen said, reflecting on the company’s early days. "We still have a lot of people picking up the phone. A lot of people who didn’t grow up with that or don’t understand it think that it’s outdated or it doesn’t work, but it does. It’s a hard thing. There are a lot of companies that just refuse to do it or don’t know how to do it well. But they’re missing out on a very big offline client base." He emphasized simply: "The phone still works."
Wallen also shared a memorable in-person tactic that his company deployed during its scrappy early days to stand out at crowded industry events. Engine hired a professional magician named David to perform close-up magic tricks for prospective corporate clients walking the convention floor, engaging them directly and encouraging them to visit the company’s exhibition booth. The anecdote served as a reminder that old-fashioned personal engagement and genuine human curiosity can work just as well, if not better, than the latest digital marketing tricks and algorithmic hacks.
Beyond the initial acquisition phase, retaining those customers and understanding their behavior is where enduring enterprise value is truly built. Crystal Huang, a general partner at Google Ventures who has evaluated, backed, and shepherded countless startups to market success, emphasized that once a company secures a customer, an immense amount of strategic value can be derived by closely examining how they utilize the product.
"Can you look into usage data and figure out if it’s recurring, if it’s increasing, if they are referring their friends?" Huang asked the audience. She pointed out that customer satisfaction and product-market fit manifest clearly in early usage and retention metrics. Furthermore, founders should look for passionate advocates within their user base. "And then also, do you see some super fans, right, who even want to work at the company, promote the company, be attached to the brand? You need to have ways to create evangelists who are really passionate about the product."
