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. From the founder of CMX and author of The Business of Belonging, a practical framework for deciding whether to build community... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read A Founder's Guide to Community David Spinks In 7 answers
  2. This is the book most modern cold outbound advice quietly borrows from, so reading the source is worth it. Its "Cold Calling... Amazon Book · ~208 pages Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler In 7 answers
  3. Written by a former FBI hostage negotiator, not a sales trainer, which is exactly why it works for founders who recoil at... Chris Voss Book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It Chris Voss In 7 answers
  4. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen In 6 answers
  5. Basecamp's battle-tested, opinionated system for shipping meaningful work in fixed cycles without endless backlogs, a primary... Basecamp / 37signals Book · free online book Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters Ryan Singer In 6 answers
  6. This is the canonical structure for the investor cold email, written by a YC partner who reads them from the other side. It is... Y Combinator Startup Library Essay · 5 min read How to Cold Email Investors Aaron Harris In 6 answers
  7. The idea that started the lean movement, from the person who coined it. No business plan survives first contact with customers,... steveblank.com Article · ~8 min read Get Out of the Building Steve Blank In 6 answers
  8. Getting the customer to say yes is only half the job, the other half is onboarding them yourself so they actually succeed. This... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How to Build and Scale Onboarding (The Superhuman Playbook) Gaurav Vohra In 6 answers
  9. First Round has coached hundreds of founding teams through 0-to-$1M ARR; this is their tactical guide to selling in the... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read Founder-led sales First Round Review In 5 answers
  10. This is the most concrete walkthrough of how to test a niche when you have nothing built yet: put up a page describing the... kromatic.com Essay · ~15 min read Fake Door / Smoke Test Kromatic (The Real Startup Book) In 5 answers
  11. This is the founder essay that made the case for validating before you build, from the person who did it with Buffer. Gascoigne... Medium (Joel Gascoigne, co-founder of Buffer) Essay How to successfully validate your idea with a Landing Page MVP Joel Gascoigne In 5 answers
  12. This is the rare cold email piece written by someone who has actually sent thousands of them (Steli Efti built Close, a sales... Close Article 15 Best Cold Email Templates That Actually Get Replies (Proven Examples) Steli Efti In 5 answers
  13. Savoia, who led early Google AdWords, argues most ideas fail because nobody wanted them, and teaches pretotyping: cheap... Alberto Savoia Book · ~250 pages The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed Alberto Savoia In 5 answers
  14. Braun's four-sentence formula (proof you did your homework, the specific problem you think they have, a sliver of social proof,... Josh Braun Article · 8 min read How To Get A 35% Cold Email Response Rate Without Selling Your Soul Josh Braun In 5 answers
  15. A tight five-part framework (short, personalized, credible, valuable, clear ask) with real examples of emails that led to... The Curiosity Chronicle Essay · 10 min read The Cold Email Guide Sahil Bloom In 5 answers
  16. Steli Efti built his sales career on the belief that unanswered outreach is a maybe, and a maybe is what kills deals. This... Close Article The Winning Cold Email Follow-up Plan for Sales Teams Steli Efti In 5 answers
  17. The definitive playbook for network and community-led products, drawn from Andrew Chen's a16z experience and interviews with... Harper Business Book · Book (~368 pages) The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects Andrew Chen In 4 answers
  18. Patrick Campbell built ProfitWell on pricing data from thousands of companies, and this is the single best free deep-dive on... lennysnewsletter.com Article · long-form guide Pricing Your SaaS Product Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell), via Lenny's Newsletter In 4 answers
  19. The other side of the question, honestly told, including when a coordinated launch is actually the wrong move. It shows how... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 15 min read How to Successfully Launch on Product Hunt (When It's Right for Your Startup) Leo Bosuener In 4 answers
  20. This is the book that made outbound prospecting a repeatable discipline instead of a guessing game, built on the Salesforce.com... predictablerevenue.com Book · ~250 pages Predictable Revenue Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler In 4 answers
  21. The nuanced counterweight: PMF isn't a single binary moment, it can be lost, and 'market' is doing more work than founders... a16z.com Article · ~20 min read 12 Things About Product-Market Fit Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) In 3 answers
  22. The most-quoted primary source on why founders should launch fast and iterate, short, canonical, and from the co-founder of YC.... paulgraham.com Article · ~8 min read Startups in 13 Sentences Paul Graham In 3 answers
  23. The most concrete guide to actually measuring what customers will pay, including survey methods and tier design. It turns... lennysnewsletter.com Article · long-form guide The Ultimate Guide to Willingness to Pay Lenny Rachitsky & Patrick Campbell In 3 answers
  24. A punchy, contrarian classic on building a lean, sane, profitable company from the founders of Basecamp. It's the antidote to... 37signals Book · ~288 pages Rework Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson In 3 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 →