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. Andrew Chen ran growth at Uber and a16z, and his core idea here, the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, is exactly why a channel that... andrewchen.substack.com Article Every Marketing Channel Sucks Right Now Andrew Chen
  2. Batko is a two-time founder and former Startmate CEO who has received thousands of cold emails, so he writes from the receiving... batko.ai Article · 15 min read Cold Email Templates for Founders: 5 Templates That Get Replies Michael Batko
  3. If you want word of mouth to be intentional, start with why people share at all. Berger's research pins it down to six... Jonah Berger (Wharton) Book · Book, about 256 pages Contagious: Why Things Catch On Jonah Berger
  4. This is the piece that separates organic word of mouth from an engineered viral loop, and shows you how to actually design one.... andrewchen.com Essay · Long essay, about 15 minute read What's Your Viral Loop? Understanding the Engine of Adoption Andrew Chen
  5. The whole game with referrals is timing: ask at the moment someone has just felt the value, not at signup or on a random login.... ReferralCandy Article · Article, about 10 minute read Best Time to Ask for a Referral: Mapping It to the Customer Journey Raul Galera
  6. Most WhatsApp pieces are pitches from tool vendors. This one is closer to an honest operator's map: it lays out the five flows... ProductGrowth.in Article · ~15 min read WhatsApp Commerce for D2C Brands: The Complete India Playbook ProductGrowth.in
  7. Ross and Lemkin are the people who wrote the sales-growth playbook most SaaS teams actually copy, so this is a solid grounding... Wiley Book · Book, roughly 350 pages From Impossible to Inevitable: How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
  8. This is the cleanest side-by-side we found on what you actually trade away going indirect: margin, customer contact, and... GTM Playbook Article · Long-form article, about a 12 minute read Direct Sales vs. Channel Sales: Choosing Your Route to Market in B2B SaaS James Doman-Pipe
  9. SEO feeling slow usually means you are doing it one blog post at a time, and this essay covers the scalable side: generating... Knownful Essay · ~15 minute read What is Programmatic SEO and should your startup use it? Matthis Duarte
  10. Most founders pick an ad budget by copying a percentage they read somewhere, which is exactly backwards. Rollins gives you a... Practical Marketing Article How Much Marketing Budget Does A Startup Need? Brandon Rollins
  11. This lays out the case that your product can be its own distribution, so you sell less by design. It is aimed at exactly the... Bessemer Venture Partners Essay · About a 20 minute read 10 Product-Led Growth Principles Janelle Teng and Ethan Kurzweil (Bessemer Venture Partners)
  12. Before you sink 50 to 120 hours into a launch, read this honest first-person account of what a launch actually returned across... Plain Sight Ventures Essay · Short essay, roughly a 6 minute read Is Product Hunt Worth It? Jason Walkow
  13. Once you know your curve should flatten, the next question is where it should flatten, and this piece answers it with concrete... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~10 min read What is good retention? Lenny Rachitsky
  14. This is the essay that reframes the whole question. Instead of asking whether your DAU/MAU is high enough, it tells you to look... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay The Power User Curve: The Best Way to Understand Your Most Engaged Users Li Jin and Andrew Chen
  15. This is the most direct piece we found on the founder-led versus formal-function question, and it argues hard that most early... First Round Review Article · About a 20 minute read You're Not Ready for a Head of Growth: Run This Founder-Led Growth Playbook Instead Matt Lerner
  16. This is the piece nearly every other CAC explainer is quoting from, so go to the source. Skok walks through how CAC, lifetime... For Entrepreneurs Essay SaaS Metrics 2.0: A Guide to Measuring and Improving What Matters David Skok
  17. Kahl's whole argument is that you earn an audience by embedding in a community and being useful first, then building with those... embeddedentrepreneur.com Book · ~280 pages The Embedded Entrepreneur: How to Build an Audience-Driven Business Arvid Kahl
  18. This is the essay that names the exact problem: most online writing blurs together because it is neither personal,... perell.com Essay · Long read The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online David Perell
  19. The three People and Company founders built communities for Nike, Substack, and others, and they organize the whole book around... Stripe Press Book · ~180 pages Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, Kai Elmer Sotto
  20. This is the classic counterweight to the first-timer instinct to price low out of nervousness. McKenzie's core argument is that... Kalzumeus Software Essay · About a 10 minute read You Can Probably Stand To Charge More Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
  21. Before you tune CAC and take rate, this book gives you the structural picture of why marketplace economics compound: network... W. W. Norton & Company Book Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary
  22. Written by a pre-seed investor who reads these emails for a living, so it is the six-part anatomy of a cold email that actually... Sterling Road (Medium) Article · 10 min read How to Cold Email an Investor Ash Rust
  23. OpenVC runs the platform millions of these emails pass through, so their rules are drawn from data, not opinion: put a... OpenVC Article · 12 min read How to Cold Email Investors (And Actually Get Replies) OpenVC Team
  24. This is the discipline your title slide lives or dies by: Seibel's rule is to name the company and say what it does in the... Y Combinator Article · 12 min read How to Pitch Your Company (Michael Seibel / Y Combinator) Michael Seibel

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 →