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. 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
  2. YC's David Lieb walks through cohort retention: watching each week's new users and asking how many actually come back. For a... Y Combinator Startup School Video · ~20 min How To Improve Cohort Retention David Lieb
  3. 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)
  4. SaaSBoomi is the community of Indian SaaS founders, so when its hosts work through pricing plans (product, perceived value,... SaaSBoomi Podcast Getting SaaS Pricing Right (SaaSBoomi Podcast) SaaSBoomi (hosts Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor)
  5. 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
  6. When you need a one-time cash injection without giving up equity, this is an actual India-based platform you can approach,... Recur Club Tool · Platform, application-based Recur Club (revenue-based financing and debt for Indian founders) Recur Club
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. This nails the discipline behind the highlight reel: with prospects you share momentum factually without handing over what they... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 20 min read Raising a seed round 101 Lenny Rachitsky with First Round
  11. Bentinck ran a talent investor and watched founders wave signed LOIs as proof, then watched those same customers walk. Her... Entrepreneurs First Essay · 7 min read The Letter of Intent Fallacy Alice Bentinck
  12. Video · ~50 min How to Evaluate Startup Ideas Kevin Hale, Y Combinator
  13. A founder-friendly crash course on planning and running discovery interviews, with tactics from researchers at Zoom, Zapier,... First Round Review Article · 20 min read A UX Research Crash Course for Founders Jane Davis
  14. Steve Blank coined get out of the building, and this is a clean primer on why talking to customers is a search for facts your... Kauffman Entrepreneurs (Steve Blank) Article · 10 min read Getting Out of the Building: Customer Development Steve Blank
  15. The qualitative half of the answer, told through founders describing the moment things flipped: inbound you cannot keep up... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~2,000 words What it feels like when you've found product-market fit Lenny Rachitsky
  16. This piece makes a sharp point, if traction is weak you are probably not a ten percent tweak away but a two hundred percent... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read The Pivot to Product-Market Fit First Round Review
  17. Drawing on thousands of office hours, Caldwell separates when to just not die and keep going from when to actually pivot, which... Lenny's Podcast (Dalton Caldwell) Podcast · ~80 min Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: pivoting, resilience, and avoiding tar pit ideas Dalton Caldwell
  18. Entering an unfamiliar industry means you cannot see the walls and dead ends that veterans already know. Dixon explains that a... cdixon.org Essay · short read The Idea Maze Chris Dixon
  19. A one-page tool for writing down what you have learned about a customer's jobs, pains, and gains, then checking whether your... Strategyzer Tool · template The Value Proposition Canvas Strategyzer
  20. Lenny interviewed dozens of people who built Airbnb, DoorDash, Thumbtack, Etsy, and Uber, then distilled how they actually got... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business (Part 1) Lenny Rachitsky
  21. Once you decide supply is the harder side to get, this piece is the tactical playbook for signing up those first suppliers by... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business (Part 3): Growing Initial Supply Lenny Rachitsky
  22. A short, clear framing of the difference between a nice to have and a must have. It helps you honestly ask whether people would... Forbes Article · ~7 min read Is Your Startup Building a Vitamin or a Painkiller? George Deeb
  23. Written by the person who grew Superhuman's waitlist past half a million, so it is candid about what a big number does and does... Growth by Gaurav (Substack) Essay The Waitlist Delusion Gaurav Vohra
  24. This is the full, concrete story of how Airbnb got off zero, from the Craigslist cross-posting hack to poaching Craigslist... First 1000 Article · ~12 min read How Airbnb Got Its First 1,000 Customers Ali Abouelatta

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 →