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. Holiday's core argument is that growth hackers don't bolt marketing onto a finished product, they build it into the product and... Portfolio Book · ~176 pages Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising Ryan Holiday
  2. Michael Seibel lays out a concrete process for shipping as a small team, including deciding on an actual release schedule and... Y Combinator Blog Article How To Build Product As A Small Startup Michael Seibel
  3. This gives you a simple tier system, from a major launch down to a minor one, so you can decide how much noise each thing you... Medium Article The Launch Tier System That Transforms Product Teams Aakash Gupta
  4. Julian Shapiro argues that growth should be designed into the product itself rather than bolted on afterward, so every new... julian.com Article Startup Handbook: Product-Led Acquisition Julian Shapiro
  5. Ries makes the exact distinction our answer rests on: a product launch (making it available) and a marketing launch (making... Startup Lessons Learned (Eric Ries) Essay · 10 min read Don't launch Eric Ries
  6. Godin names the exact failure mode our answer warns about: work that could ship but does not, dressed up as caution. It is... Seth's Blog Essay · 3 min read Project Resistance Seth Godin
  7. A short, sharp distinction that names your exact problem: meeting a real spec is craft, chasing an ever-shifting ideal is... Seth's Blog Essay · 2 min read Perfect is not the same as perfectionism Seth Godin
  8. Clear separates what's optimal from what's actually needed to begin, which is useful when you keep waiting for the landing page... jamesclear.com Essay · 6 min read The Power of Imperfect Starts James Clear
  9. 37signals' own internal rules for when something is done enough to ship, written by a team that has shipped products for over... Basecamp Article Seven Shipping Principles Basecamp
  10. This explains, with the classic committee-and-bikeshed example, exactly why founders fuss over fonts and micro-copy instead of... Effectiviology Article Bikeshedding and the Law of Triviality: Why People Focus on Minor Issues Effectiviology
  11. The actual research behind the claim that a stranger judges your page in seconds, not minutes: visitors form a gut reaction in... Google Research Article Users love simple and familiar designs: why websites need to make a great first impression Javier Bargas-Avila
  12. This is the actual psychology behind your short answer: you overestimate how much other people notice and track you, because... Psychology Today Article · ~7 min All Eyes on Us: The Spotlight Effect Psychology Today
  13. Linear's cofounder makes the case for a running, dated log of what shipped, which turns constant announcing into infrastructure... Linear Essay · ~5 min Startups, Write Changelogs Karri Saarinen
  14. Intercom's own playbook for feature announcements is useful precisely because it treats every release as its own small... Intercom Article · ~10 min A guide to announcing your new features Intercom
  15. A price change is one of the clean, new reasons your short answer points to, and this is a practical, plainly written... Chris Lema Article · ~10 min How to announce pricing changes (without ruining everything) Chris Lema
  16. Clubhouse's invite-only waitlist is the clearest cautionary tale of using scarcity as a growth trick rather than a real... Medium Article · 7 min read Creating the Illusion of Exclusivity: The Story of Clubhouse Dan DeSimone
  17. Cialdini's chapters on scarcity are the underlying psychology behind why a waitlist feels persuasive at all, and why that... Amazon Book · Book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition Robert Cialdini
  18. If you have decided a waitlist genuinely fits your situation, this is a practical, current playbook for running one well,... a16z speedrun Article · 10 min read The Growth Meta: How to Build a Waitlist a16z speedrun
  19. CRED launched invite-only, restricted to people with a credit score above 750, and turned that restriction into both a real... Forbes India Article · 8 min read Inside Cred's growth strategy Manu Balachandran
  20. This short essay explains why fancy language in a launch post reads as a warning sign to your reader, since ornate writing... Paul Graham Essay · 5 min read Write Simply Paul Graham
  21. HN's own posting guidelines tell you plainly what a technical, skeptical audience wants from a launch post: no editorializing,... Y Combinator Article · 5 min read Hacker News Guidelines Y Combinator
  22. Nathan Barry walks through the real, unpolished early drafts of the ConvertKit landing page and how a copywriter's feedback... Nathan Barry Article · 20 min read Step-By-Step Landing Page Copywriting Nathan Barry
  23. This is a working copywriter's breakdown of what actually goes into a launch message that lands, including the parts founders... Copyhackers Article · 15 min read How to write launch emails that sell out your next launch Copyhackers
  24. Figma spent years building quietly before a genuinely coordinated launch, and this piece walks through how that transition was... First Round Review Article · 20 min read How to Launch Your Startup Out of Stealth, from Figma's First Marketer First Round Review

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 →