How We Went From 1M To 100M Users In 6 Months

Picture the scene:

• Empty pizza box
• Infinite cups of coffee
• The rhythmic sound of 2 people chewing gum for concentration
• The tap-tap-tapping of keyboards

It’s got the beginnings of a startup written all over it. To be more precise, it’s 2010 and the face of Crossrider is about to emerge.

Having just created a cross browser extension, one thing was clear: it didn’t take a few hours of coding to create one. It took months. MONTHS!

Imagine waking up after a night out involving lots of alcohol: You’re hungover and you’re vowing never to drink again. That’s pretty much how most developers feel after creating a cross browser extension. And it’s how we felt, except we vowed never to let another developer have to go through the hell we’d been through.

Getting to the 1M mark

Crossrider was created with a clear mission: Make it simple: write one code and manage all browsers under one API. It took us a few months to create and the result was a JavaScript framework (no learning curve), one code base (write one simple code), use one API (all browsers managed under one API), and the general elimination of all frustrations thrown at you from every browser.

It wasn’t long before we started to get noticed by developers, awesome extensions were created and in turn users were flocking to install them. Our numbers started to rise. We passed the 1 thousand mark and jumped for joy. We passed the 100,000 mark and went out for a fancy meal. Getting to the 1M mark left us exhilarated and shell-shocked. I mean, this was serious business.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. Supporting the major browsers had its fair share of obstacles. Everytime we felt we’d moved forward, something would always transpire that would throw us back where we started. But we never let go of our focus, we knew what our goal was and we kept charging straight towards it.

Getting to the 100M mark

Now picture this:

• Empty pizza boxes
• Infinite cups of coffee
• The rhythmic sound of 16 people chewing gum for concentration
• The tap-tap-tapping of keyboards

It’s 2012 and we’ve grown. We’re creeping up to the 50M mark and we’re fully aware that we need to up our game to keep growing. We spend four months working on a brand new and fully improved framework.

Evolving the product and innovating proves to be a crucial part of growth. We’ve not only re-thought the entire dashboard and flow but we’ve also created a new online IDE that lets you jump straight in and code in real-time. It’s dramatically cut development time but we can do better.

Last week we made it to 100M users. We’re overjoyed and proud to see our efforts paying off. We also know that while we may have given them a platform it’s really all thanks to our awesome developers and their creativity that has got us to where we are.

Thank you Crossrider developers!

We’ve got a community of over 7K developers creating kickass extensions that are getting noticed by millions of users and creating buzz. Here’s a look at some of the awesomeness that has come out of the crossrider framework:

Streamified: View all your social streams in one beautiful journal. Built by Streamified, @streamified

Color My Facebook: Lets you change the style of your Facebook page as often as you like. Built by Augustin Duval, @AugustinDuval

Spiq it: Send video email messages. Built by Dor Kalev, @dorkalev

Google+Tweet: Fully implement Twitter into your Google+ account. Built by Bruno Barbieri, @brunobar79

See you at 1 Billion users

As we pass 100M end-users we may have taken some detours along the way but we have always kept our eyes on the goal and we have no doubt that we’ll get there. Until then, we’ll see you at the 1 billion mark.