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. When you are building outside the big startup hubs, the honest question is not "what is the theory" but "what actually worked... Indie Hackers Article · ~15 min read Indie hackers share how they got their first 10, 100, and 1,000 customers James Fleischmann In 3 answers
  2. Judging whether people will actually change their behavior comes down to how well you can hear intensity in what they say, and... deployempathy.com Book · Full book, roughly 250 pages Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers Michele Hansen In 3 answers
  3. If you decide Product Hunt fits your audience, this is the playbook that treats a launch as weeks of prep, not a single day.... Demand Curve Article · Long-form guide, roughly a 20 minute read How to Launch on Product Hunt Nick Costelloe In 3 answers
  4. The two ways to fake a product while you test real demand. Do the work by hand in the open (concierge), or hide the manual work... LogRocket Article · ~12 min read Concierge vs. Wizard of Oz MVP LogRocket In 3 answers
  5. Validation in B2B bleeds straight into early sales, and this answers the real questions founders hit when they start selling to... First Round Review Article · 18 min read The Most Common Go-to-Market Questions This Expert Gets from Early Founders Emery Rosansky (First Round Review) In 3 answers
  6. A short, honest essay arguing that cold outbound is both a strong demand signal and a skill you will need anyway. It counters... Pascal Unger (pascalsnotes.substack.com) Essay · ~10 min read Cold Outbound is Under-Appreciated Pascal Unger In 3 answers
  7. This is Product Hunt's own pre-launch checklist, covering exactly the assets you need lined up weeks ahead: gallery images,... Product Hunt Article Preparing for launch Product Hunt In 3 answers
  8. A short, sharp counterpoint to the instinct to try to reach everyone before you launch: Godin argues you should aim for the... Seth's Blog Essay · 3 min read The smallest viable audience Seth Godin In 3 answers
  9. This breaks down how early sales teams actually build and work a target account list, including how to find contact information... First Round Review Article · 12 min read Designing Your Sales Stack so that Customers Come to You Max Altschuler and Jorge Soto In 3 answers
  10. A bootstrapped founder's step by step account of building a short list of exactly-fit prospects and personally emailing each... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read How to get your first 10 customers with cold email William Paul In 3 answers
  11. This is a practical, step by step walkthrough with real before and after examples of cold emails, useful when you want a... Woodpecker Article · 12 min read How to Write a Cold Email: 6 Steps + Templates Woodpecker In 3 answers
  12. A real teardown of real cold emails sent to a real, busy recipient, with his honest reaction to each subject line. Reading... Nick Gray Essay Feedback on 4 Cold Emails To Me From Ramit's Brain Trust Nick Gray In 3 answers
  13. The foundational text of customer development, 'get out of the building' started here and became the backbone of the Lean... steveblank.com Book · ~370 pages The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win Steve Blank In 2 answers
  14. The most accessible, practical intro to usability ever written, you can read it in a weekend and immediately fix your product.... sensible.com Book · ~200 pages Don't Make Me Think, Revisited Steve Krug In 2 answers
  15. Fifty-plus recent YC founders answer the exact question every early founder asks. The pattern across their answers is the lesson. YC Startup Library Article · ~10 min read Founder FAQ: How did you get your first customer? Y Combinator (50+ founders) In 2 answers
  16. Altman's condensed operating manual for founders, including sharp guidance on focus, spending your time on what only you can... playbook.samaltman.com Article · long Startup Playbook Sam Altman In 2 answers
  17. CB Insights read hundreds of real startup postmortems and found that poor product-market fit (around 43 percent) is the single... CB Insights Article · ~15 min read The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail CB Insights In 2 answers
  18. The book behind the "One Metric That Matters" discipline, which is exactly the mindset you need to judge whether a ship worked... O'Reilly / Lean Series Book · 440 pages Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz In 2 answers
  19. This is the honest, founder-written version of what selling to Indian SMBs actually looks like: high-touch, relationship-first,... Blume Ventures Article Selling Smart: The Insider's Guide to SaaS Success in India Blume Ventures In 2 answers
  20. This is the short, canonical essay that names the exact trap: people switch into a stiff, impressive-sounding written voice... paulgraham.com Essay Write Like You Talk Paul Graham In 2 answers
  21. This is the clearest argument for why a launch should not be a single spike: if you share the process continuously, every day... Austin Kleon Book · 224 pages Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered Austin Kleon In 2 answers
  22. If you want to fix the follow-up mindset for good, this is the book, and this is the author's own page for it. Blount is blunt... jebblount.com (official) Book · ~320 pages Fanatical Prospecting Jeb Blount In 2 answers
  23. The global playbooks assume a US-style buying process; this one is written for the Indian enterprise reality, where the sale... Blume Ventures Article · 25 min read The Rough Guide to Building an Enterprise SaaS Dhandha in India Blume Ventures (with Aakrit Vaish, Haptik) In 2 answers
  24. Once you are testing an idea, this piece gives you concrete signals that tell you whether it is actually working, from... Lenny's Newsletter Article · about 15 min read How to Know If You've Got Product-Market Fit Lenny Rachitsky In 2 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 →