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. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. If you decide to run WhatsApp at any real scale, you cannot do it from the plain WhatsApp Business app: you need a... AiSensy Tool · Free plan, paid tiers from about 1,395 rupees per month AiSensy: WhatsApp Business API Platform AiSensy Communications Private Limited
  6. Data and tool pages tell you what WhatsApp can do; founder stories tell you what it actually took. This show interviews Indian... Spotify Podcast · Episodes about 25 minutes The Indian D2C Playbook Isaac John Wesley
  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. Video · Talk, roughly 30 to 45 minutes Partner Ecosystems: Trends, Predictions and Forecast, with Jay McBain Jay McBain
  10. If you are asking whether SEO is still worth it, start by learning what good SEO in 2026 actually looks like, and this free... Ahrefs (YouTube) Course · ~2 hours across a short video series SEO Course for Beginners (by Ahrefs) Sam Oh (Ahrefs)
  11. 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
  12. The only honest way to answer "is SEO working" is to look at real search data, and Google Search Console is the free,... Google Tool · Free web tool Google Search Console Google
  13. 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
  14. Video How to Test Facebook Ads Creatives at Every Budget Dara Denney
  15. 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)
  16. 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
  17. Product Hunt reaches a global, product-curious crowd, so if your buyer is in India this episode grounds the decision in what... Practical Founders Podcast Podcast · Podcast episode, roughly 45 to 60 minutes Bootstrapped B2B SaaS in India Serving IT Services Companies, with Sandeep Kumar Greg Head
  18. 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
  19. 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
  20. 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
  21. 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
  22. Video · About 30 minutes How to Get Users and Grow Gustaf Alstromer
  23. 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
  24. 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

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 →