--- title: You Can't Teach Hustle description: Be someone that can get customers at a startup. You can't teach hustle and scrappiness. --- # Tech In Boston Blog ## [You Can't Teach Hustle](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/get-customers) [fa icon="calendar"] Feb 21, 2015 12:35:00 PM / by [Dave Gerhardt](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/author/dave-gerhardt) ![](https://470553.hs-sites.com/hs-fs/hub/470553/file-2318924860.jpg?width=35&name=file-2318924860.jpg) - [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share) If you’re at a startup with 10 or fewer employees and you aren't an engineer or a designer, you better be able to build an audience and get customers. It doesn’t matter where their degree is from or whether they have their MBA.  Find someone who got 500 people to signup for something by patching together a free Tumblr site, MailChimp, Google Forms and posting on Reddit.  Find someone who was able to get 20 people to put down their credit card before a real product was even developed. One of my favorite examples of this right now is theSkimm.  Danielle and Carly didn’t set out to build an awesome startup, but they knew how to build and grow an audience.  Now with over 500,000 subscribers and $1.3 million in the bank from Homebrew, [they’re figuring out](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/11/at-year-two-theskimm-hits-500000-subscribers/) how to build a company.  You can teach everything else that comes with building a business, but you can’t teach the hustle and scrappiness that you need in the early days of a startup that can really help you grow.    Topics: [Hiring](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/hiring), [Startups](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/startups) ![Dave Gerhardt](https://470553.hs-sites.com/hs-fs/hub/470553/file-2318924860.jpg?width=100&height=100&name=file-2318924860.jpg) #### Written by [Dave Gerhardt](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/author/dave-gerhardt) [[fa icon="twitter-square"]](https://twitter.com/davegerhardt) ### Never miss a new blog post ### Posts by Topic - [Startups (7)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/startups) - [Hiring (3)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/hiring) - [Marketing (3)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/marketing) - [Ideas (2)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/ideas) - [Account Management (1)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/account-management) - [HubSpot (1)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/hubspot) - [Podcast (1)](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/topic/podcast) [see all](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/get-customers#) ### Recent Posts #### More Links #### Contact Dave [fa icon="envelope"]  david.a.gerhardt at gmail Copyright 2014 | Designed with [fa icon="heart"] by [HubSpot](http://www.hubspot.com) [[fa icon="chevron-up"]](http://470553.hs-sites.com/blog/get-customers#)