A 100 people who love your product is better than a thousand who just like it. That’s a lesson from Sam Altman, the founder of business accelerator YCombinator.

I think that’s true in business and in life.

But I first heard about it on the podcast Master’s of Scale, which is hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. On that episode, Altman told Hoffman that you need loyal consumers and people who have been with you from the beginning, excited to share the news about your company and things are normally who helps your business expand to the next level.

Altman said when he looks for startups that have groundbreaking idea that have potential to give consumers something they couldn’t live without and if he doesn’t think the company has it then he will pass on them.

Something that stuck out to me that was said in this podcast was that love is all you need. I think that is true because if there are people who love someone’s business no matter how far or how he or she would have to find their products they would and they would recommend to all they friends.

In another episode, Brian Chesky, co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb, says something similar but more along the lines of personalizing the relationship with your customers to make your relationship with them better and in a sense make them fall in love.

Why not do something that makes your customers fall in love and can’t resist you or your company?

Brian and his small staff wanted to find ways to really reach people that would put their houses up to lend to guest and make their experience as well as the customers who stayed at these places more comfortable.

Home visits became Airbnb secret weapon they got to meet with homeowners and take pictures of the houses to upload to the website but then get feedback from people staying at these homes as well.

This worked out in the companies favor because then it gave some really good information that the company could add to its website like pictures of the house, profiles and experiences around town and as that accelerated gave them an opportunity to now pay professional photographers to take pictures of homes.

The customer is the most important in any aspect; they keep your company afloat or sink your company because they are the people who tell their friends about the great experience they had or terrible experience they have had with your hotel, law firm or new app.

These two podcast I would suggest for our class to listen to or anyone wanting to begin their own startup because they give you insight to the mind of the customer. They teach you ways to focus on that little group of people have been following you and telling all their friends because they are loyal and in the long run will help your startup grow.

They also teach you a little something about yourself as well but help you to grow in a field of business that is really hard and where a lot of people don’t make it. In each podcast there were founders who are in the billions revenue wise and all say it was because of their loyal customers, the ones from the beginning.