Lessons from Growing TapTok to 15,000 Customers

TapTok was the project that taught me the most about what happens after you ship. We grew it from zero to 15,000 customers, landing accounts at AT&T, Harvard University, Coral Gables City, Authentic Brands Group, and thousands of small businesses. The technical challenges were real, but the growth lessons were more valuable.

The product had to work for everyone

Our customer base ranged from solo shop owners to enterprise teams with procurement processes and security reviews. Building for that range forced us to think carefully about onboarding, permissions, and how different users experience the same product.

The biggest lesson: onboarding is the product. If someone can't get value in their first session, nothing else matters — not features, not performance, not design. We rewrote our onboarding three times before it worked.

Enterprise and SMB are different planets

Selling to AT&T is nothing like selling to a local business. Enterprise needs security documentation, admin controls, and a sales process that can take months. SMBs need to sign up and get value in minutes.

We made the mistake of trying to serve both with the same experience early on. Eventually we learned to create separate paths — self-serve for SMBs, high-touch for enterprise — while keeping the core product the same.

Growth comes from the product, not from marketing

The channels that actually drove growth for us were referrals and word of mouth. Paid acquisition was expensive and the users it brought churned faster. The users who stuck were the ones who came because someone they trusted told them about it.

This taught me that the best growth investment is making the product genuinely useful. Everything else — campaigns, content, partnerships — amplifies good product-market fit but can't create it.

What I carry forward

TapTok shaped how I build software today. Every project I take on, I think about: how does this onboard? How does this scale from one user to a thousand? What happens when a team with different needs tries to use it?

These aren't just product questions — they're architecture questions. The way you structure your database, your auth system, your API — all of it should account for growth, not just the current use case.