David Darmanin is the CEO of Hotjar, as well as one of the cofounders that took Hotjar from an idea to a successful company. Over the years, David has learned the value of putting people first and taking feedback seriously. He’s used this experience to help turn Hotjar’s earliest users into some of the company’s most loyal customers.

In this episode, David explains why he and his co-founders decided to create a landing page for a product that wasn’t even live yet. He talks about the things that he learned from previous startup ideas that failed and the resources that he used to ensure that Hotjar would be different.

Listen to the episode to hear David explain how Hotjar slowly began giving access to early users, eventually amassing around 7,000 users before the product’s official launch. This strategy allowed David and his co-founders to collect feedback, create WOW moments and develop relationships with beta users that continue to this day. David also tells the story of how treating a single beta user like an enterprise client led to Hotjar’s largest customer to date.

• [00:03:08] Who was involved at the very beginning of Hotjar
• [00:05:32] Why the decision was made to set up a homepage for Hotjar long before the official launch
• [00:06:10] How David used the experience of past failures when deciding to create the beta program for Hotjar
• [00:07:36] The book that helped David learn about critical ingredients for a good launch.
• [00:09:20] The first day David and his co-founders gave access to people who signed up
• [00:09:53] How David’s idea for a beta program stretches all the back to 2007 when he read a book about beta testing around the time Google was doing their first betas
• [00:12:27] What happened when the first users started to get access to Hotjar
• [00:13:50] The WOW moments that occurred when David and his co-founders started to receive feedback from their first users
• [00:17:34] The types of feedback that Hotjar received from its earlier users, and what feedback David found surprising and interesting
• [00:21:58] The number of conversations, heatmaps, surveys and polls, and other types of feedback received during their beta testing period
• [00:22:58] How Hotjar is still getting value today from the data they received from those beta testers several years earlier
• [00:23:46] Why Hotjar decided that every customer would be treated the same, regardless of how large or small their brand was, and how that led to Hotjar’s biggest six-figure client
• [00:25:49] Why David believes that entrepreneurs can’t afford not to communicate openly with users you
• [00:26:26] Resources that David recommends