The Early Days of Disqus

Everyone who builds a blog has probably heard of this commenting system—it’s really good. Here’s how it started:

At an YC demo day, the founder persuaded a blogger to install it on his large-scale blog as a product showcase.

After the event ended, the founder asked to keep it running on the blogger’s site in exchange for building a feature that allowed email replies to comments.

And so it got its cold start.

Years later, when the blogger noticed the product again, it was already used by millions of blogs and he chose to invest actively (starting with a $300K seed round and continuing to lead subsequent rounds).

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A classic example of turning viewers into users and users into investors through the product itself.