Get your first customers

The scrappy, unscalable work of going from zero to your first users.

What founders use for get your first customers, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham In 47 answers
  2. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick In 43 answers
  3. A tactical follow-on covering the channels and motions top B2B startups scale after the first ten. Grounds distribution... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to win your first 10 B2B customers Lenny Rachitsky In 36 answers
  4. The authoritative handbook on founder-led sales, written for technical/first-time sellers building B2B SaaS. Readable free... foundingsales.com Book · book (~400 pages) Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook Peter Kazanjy In 26 answers
  5. When your first ten will come from cold outreach, this guide gives you the full mechanics: building a target list, qualifying,... Close Article · Multi-chapter guide The Ultimate Startup Guide to Outbound Sales Steli Efti In 21 answers
  6. When you have no budget, the worst move is to pour your limited time into a channel that was never going to work for your... Portfolio (Penguin Random House) Book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares In 16 answers
  7. A data-backed teardown of how companies like Figma, Gusto, and Vanta actually sourced their earliest customers. Replaces... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How today's fastest-growing B2B startups found their first ten customers Lenny Rachitsky In 13 answers
  8. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra In 13 answers
  9. This is the best method for the exact job of learning an industry's language when you cannot yet get face time with people in... Stacking the Bricks (Amy Hoy) Article · video walkthrough Sales Safari in Action Amy Hoy In 12 answers
  10. The consumer counterpart to finding B2B customers, focused on manually recruiting your first users for a consumer product. It... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to Find Your Early Adopters by Doing Things That Don't Scale Lenny Rachitsky In 12 answers
  11. The best book on positioning against competitors by understanding the alternatives customers actually consider. Directly turns... aprildunford.com Book · ~200 pages Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It April Dunford In 11 answers
  12. This is the canonical argument that you do not need a mass market to build something real, you need a small number of people... The Technium (kk.org) Essay · ~15 min read 1,000 True Fans Kevin Kelly In 11 answers
  13. This is the canonical source of the ship-ugly-first idea, the LinkedIn co-founder's own essay behind the line about being... LinkedIn Essay · About a 6 minute read If There Aren't Any Typos In This Essay, We Launched Too Late Reid Hoffman In 10 answers
  14. The cleanest distillation of the one framework that turns a customer chat into a relationship instead of a survey. The three... Sachin Rekhi's Blog Article · 10 min read A Primer on Talking to Customers From Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test Sachin Rekhi In 10 answers
  15. The canonical fake-door test, told by the founder who ran it. Buffer started as a two-page site: one page pitched the tool, a... Buffer Article · ~10 min read Idea to Paying Customers in 7 Weeks: How We Did It Joel Gascoigne In 10 answers
  16. The research-backed classic on consultative selling, the antidote to 'pushy salesperson' instincts. Its... McGraw-Hill Book · book (~200 pages) SPIN Selling Neil Rackham In 9 answers
  17. The origin text for the modern MVP and validated-learning vocabulary every founder now uses. Read it for the mental model that... theleanstartup.com Book · ~330 pages The Lean Startup Eric Ries In 8 answers
  18. The official, primary-source guide straight from Product Hunt, it dispels myths and sets realistic expectations, unlike the sea... Product Hunt Article · guide / multi-page Product Hunt Launch Guide Product Hunt In 8 answers
  19. Steli Efti (YC alum, co-founder of Close CRM) is one of the most trusted voices on startup outbound and cold email, practical,... Close Article · article series The Close Sales Blog (Steli Efti on cold email & founder sales) Steli Efti In 8 answers
  20. Most first 100 users advice is vague. This piece is the opposite: it groups the real cold start tactics into seven concrete... Lenny's Newsletter Article · About a 15 minute read How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users Lenny Rachitsky In 8 answers
  21. Blomfield (founder of Monzo and GoCarchless, now a YC partner) gives the concrete mechanics of closing that first B2B deal:... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 25 min read The Sales Playbook for Founders Tom Blomfield In 8 answers
  22. Free to read online, with chapters like "Build Less" and "Half, Not Half-Assed" that name your exact trap. It argues that... Basecamp / 37signals Book · Free online, ~4 hr Getting Real (free to read online) Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson (37signals) In 8 answers
  23. A short, practical field guide to customer discovery: who to talk to, how to find them, and how many. Pairs perfectly with The... talkingtohumans.com Book · ~80 pages (free PDF available) Talking to Humans Giff Constable In 7 answers
  24. A blunt, practical guide from Demand Curve's founder on which paid and organic channels fit which business, and why most... julian.com Article · Long-form guide Startup Handbook: Customer Acquisition Channels Julian Shapiro In 7 answers

Show the next 24

The questions

Getting your first 10 customers 18

Do things that don't scale to get to ten.

How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me? 19 → Isn't doing things that don't scale a waste of time, shouldn't I automate from day one? 17 → Where do I find the very first people to even talk to about my product? 18 → Should I charge my very first customers or give it away free to get traction? 18 → How did real successful startups actually land their first customers? 20 → All 18 questions in Getting your first 10 customers →
Launching (again and again) 18

A launch is a tactic you repeat, not an event.

When is my product 'ready' to launch? 19 → My launch flopped and nobody cared, did I mess it up? 20 → How do I actually launch on Product Hunt and not embarrass myself? 15 → What's the best channel to launch on, Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News, or LinkedIn? 17 → How do I build up an audience before I launch so it's not just crickets? 18 → All 18 questions in Launching (again and again) →
Founder-led sales 18

Nobody sells your product better than you, yet.

I'm a technical founder and I hate selling, do I really have to do sales myself? 18 → How do I run a sales call without sounding like a pushy salesperson? 15 → How do I handle objections and prospects who go silent on me? 17 → When do I know it's time to hire a salesperson instead of doing it myself? 19 → What sales process should I follow if I've never sold anything before? 17 → All 18 questions in Founder-led sales →
Cold outreach & email 18

Start conversations with strangers who need you.

How do I write a cold email that people actually reply to? 19 → How many times should I follow up before giving up on a cold prospect? 18 → Cold email or cold LinkedIn/DM, what works better for reaching first customers? 19 → Is cold outreach even worth it, or is it just spam that hurts my brand? 19 → How do I build a targeted list of the right people to cold email? 18 → All 18 questions in Cold outreach & email →
Distribution & channel strategy 18

The channel is the strategy.

How do I figure out which distribution channel is right for my startup? 2 → Why does everyone say 'distribution is more important than product'? 2 → What are the actual distribution channels I can choose from? 1 → Should I focus on one channel or spread across many? 2 → How do the fastest-growing B2B companies find and scale their distribution? 2 → All 18 questions in Distribution & channel strategy →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →