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 step-by-step guide to running discovery when you have almost no data, aimed squarely at first-time founders. It is practical... First Round Review Article · 15 min read A Founder's Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery Jeanette Mellinger In 2 answers
  2. The free, original essay that defined the MVP before the book existed, written plainly by the person who coined the term. It... Startup Lessons Learned (Eric Ries) Essay · ~15 min read Minimum Viable Product: a guide Eric Ries In 2 answers
  3. Before you have any customer stories, your own founder story is the only pitch you have, and this piece shows you how to use... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read The Three Frameworks You Need to Kick-start Sales Whitney Sales In 2 answers
  4. Steli Efti built Close by doing founder sales the hard way, and here he answers the blunt questions founders actually ask about... Stripe Atlas Article · ~20 min read AMA with Steli Efti: Pricing, Selling and Building a Sales Team Steli Efti In 2 answers
  5. A practical guide to running an early willingness to pay conversation and building pricing around real buyer personas. Good... First Round Review Article The Price is Right: Essential Tips for Nailing Your Pricing Strategy First Round Review In 2 answers
  6. A short research backed breakdown of how three marketplace giants solved the cold start problem by hand. You will see that all... Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Article · 8 min read How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers Michael Blanding In 2 answers
  7. Real benchmark data from founders on what a waitlist actually converts to paid, so you can calibrate expectations against your... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 10 min read What is good waitlist conversion? Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
  8. The book that coined get out of the building and launched the customer development movement. Blank's core claim is that a... Wiley Book The Four Steps to the Epiphany Steve Blank In 2 answers
  9. When people love it but will not pay, price is often the real blocker, and this piece walks you through pricing conversations... First Round Review Article Pricing Lessons from Working with 30+ Seed and Series A B2B Startups First Round Review In 2 answers
  10. Your short answer says to ask what would have to be true for someone to pay today, and this book is the toolkit for exactly... Chris Voss Book Never Split the Difference Chris Voss In 2 answers
  11. Your first filter is whether this is a problem you understand, and this short essay is the clearest statement of why that... cdixon.org Essay · ~5 min read Founder/Market Fit Chris Dixon In 2 answers
  12. A YC founder explains how his team cut their MVP build time from three months to hours once they committed to shipping the... Y Combinator Blog Article The Art of Shipping Early and Often David Mack In 2 answers
  13. This is the internal memo Butterfield sent his team two weeks before Slack's launch, written from inside the wreckage of... Medium Essay We Don't Sell Saddles Here Stewart Butterfield In 2 answers
  14. This one short official answer kills the single most common Product Hunt myth: that you should mobilize everyone you know to... Product Hunt Help Center Article Can I ask my community/friends/family to upvote a product? Product Hunt Help Center In 2 answers
  15. Press is one of the easiest excuses to relaunch that founders under-use, and this guide teaches you to treat it as ongoing... Y Combinator (YC Startup Library) Article Getting press for your startup Y Combinator In 2 answers
  16. Godin's core claim is that marketing is the generous act of telling a true story to people who want to hear it, not... Seth Godin Book · ~256 pages This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See Seth Godin In 2 answers
  17. Written specifically for solo and small-team founders without a marketing budget or audience, this book argues for validating a... Amazon Book Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup Rob Walling In 2 answers
  18. Kracov, a first-time founder at Dock, wrote this after six months of running his own sales calls, and it's refreshingly honest... kracov.co Essay · ~10 min read How I've approached founder-led sales Alex Kracov In 2 answers
  19. MEDDIC gives you a checklist for the 'qualify hard' part of our answer: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision... MEDDICC Article · ~15 min read MEDDIC Sales Methodology and Process MEDDICC In 2 answers
  20. This is narrower than the cadence advice elsewhere on this list: it is specifically about what makes the follow-up email itself... Gong Article · 8 min read Scientific Tips for Writing the Perfect Follow-Up Sales Email Gong In 2 answers
  21. A Hustle Fund investor who reads hundreds of cold emails walks through, line by line, what makes her actually reply versus... Elizabeth Yin Essay · 5 min read How to write a cold-email Elizabeth Yin In 2 answers
  22. Dunford, who wrote the book on product positioning, breaks down how to build a pitch around the buyer's specific situation... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to build a killer sales pitch April Dunford In 2 answers
  23. Josh Braun teardowns real cold emails line by line and explains exactly why each sentence works or doesn't, which is more... Josh Braun (LinkedIn) Thread This cold email hits all the right notes Josh Braun (LinkedIn) In 2 answers
  24. This collection was built for asking strangers for small favors like introductions and advice, which is a gentler version of... 80,000 Hours Article The Best Email Scripts for Cold-Emailing Benjamin Todd 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 →