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. A grounded, tactical read on the leaky bucket problem for founders who just closed their first handful of customers. It covers... Vitally Article · ~10 min read Turning Your First Customers Into Recurring Revenue Ian Russell
  2. Balfour (Reforge) makes the case that retention and engagement, not raw acquisition, decide which company wins. It explains the... Brian Balfour Essay · ~15 min read Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough Brian Balfour
  3. Intercom's team, led by Des Traynor's thinking, argues onboarding is the new conversion: keeping customers matters more than... Intercom Blog Article · ~12 min read Onboarding Strategies to Drive Long-Term Customer Retention Intercom
  4. From India's largest community of SaaS founders, this is peer advice on landing and holding early customers without spray and... SaaSBoomi Article · ~10 min read How to Get Your First 10 B2B Customers SaaSBoomi (Raviteja Dodda, Mohit Garg, Sahil Aggarwal)
  5. The clearest explainer of how VCs actually decide, from term sheets to how partnerships evaluate founders. Understanding the... Andreessen Horowitz Book · 336 pages Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It Scott Kupor
  6. Levels documents committing to ship a new startup every month for a year, in public, mostly to unglamorous silence, until two... levels.io Essay I'm Launching 12 Startups in 12 Months Pieter Levels
  7. This explains why buying upvotes is a waste of money, not just against the rules. Votes are weighted by account quality and... Product Hunt Help Center Article How does Product Hunt ensure fair voting and prevent spam or vote manipulation? Product Hunt Help Center
  8. The nuts-and-bolts mechanics of the submission flow itself: what fields you'll fill in, what's required, and how the process... Product Hunt Help Center Article How to post a product Product Hunt Help Center
  9. A short, practical rundown from someone who's actually gotten featured twice, with the small unglamorous stuff that gets... Indie Hackers Article I launched 2 apps on Product Hunt and both were featured, here's what I learned Indie Hackers
  10. An honest account of a launch that stalled at 200 upvotes and ranked below a blender, and what the founder changed to do better... Indie Hackers Article Notes from a failed Product Hunt launch Indie Hackers
  11. Product Hunt's own founder, talking to YC about what separates launches that land from ones that don't. He's blunt that a clear... Y Combinator Article Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Startup Launches with Dalton Caldwell Y Combinator
  12. A founder walking through the exact playbook that took his product to #1 Product of the Day, Week, and SaaS Product of the... Tom Dekan Article How we won Product of the Week on Product Hunt Tom Dekan
  13. An Indian solo founder's real account of hitting #1 Product of the Day, with the tactic he says mattered most: personal DMs to... Inbox Pirates Article How we won Producthunt #1 Product of The Day As a Solo Founder (And you can too!) Inbox Pirates
  14. A direct list of the specific mistakes that sink launches, useful to skim right before you hit submit as a final gut check.... Poindeo Article The Product Hunt Playbook: 10 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Launch Poindeo
  15. A working engineer's own account of what actually happened when he posted to Hacker News, including timing, title wording, and... Lucas Costa Essay How to Do a Successful Hacker News Launch Lucas Costa
  16. Marc Lou has shipped and launched many small products, and this is his practical rundown of how Show HN posts actually move... Marc Lou Article How to Launch a Startup on Hacker News Marc Lou
  17. The companion piece to Marc Lou's Hacker News guide, written from the same practical, ship-it perspective but for Product Hunt... Marc Lou Article How to Launch a Startup on Product Hunt Marc Lou
  18. A practical, no-nonsense comparison of what actually differs across these three specific channels: what each one rewards, what... DEV Community Article Indie Dev Launch Strategy: Getting Traction on Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Reddit DEV Community
  19. The most thorough practical guide we found on organic Reddit specifically, going beyond just avoiding a ban into how to... Karmic Article Reddit Marketing Guide: The Reddit Organic Marketing Guide for Startups and Scale Ups Karmic
  20. Jackson uses how bands sell out tour dates, announcing months ahead, building anticipation in stages, as a working template for... justinjackson.ca Essay · 10 min read How to build demand before you launch Justin Jackson
  21. Written by the founder of ConvertKit, this book is squarely about the sequence your short answer describes: build an audience... nathanbarry.com Book · Book Authority: Become an Expert, Build a Following, and Gain Financial Independence Nathan Barry
  22. A plain, no-jargon explainer of building in public for founders who have heard the term but aren't sure what to actually post... Indie Hackers Article · 8 min read What Is Building in Public? (Explained Simply) Indie Hackers
  23. This is the practical rulebook for your actual question. It draws the line between shipping (code deployed) and launching... Lenny's Wiki Article Feature Launches Lenny's Wiki
  24. Two former Amazon VPs explain the PR/FAQ method: writing the press release before you build anything, for far more initiatives... St. Martin's Press Book · ~350 pages Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon Colin Bryar, Bill Carr

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 →