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. UPI Autopay lets you set up a recurring mandate on a customer's account so a subscription or installment debits automatically... Razorpay Tool UPI Autopay | Razorpay Razorpay
  2. Lemkin's blunt answer is that the founder has to get the first 10 customers personally, through their own network and direct... Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) Article Dear SaaStr: How Do I Get My First 10 Customers? Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)
  3. A direct answer to the exact question in the title: yes, charge for pilots, and here's roughly how much. Jason Lemkin argues... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: Should We Charge for Pilots and How Much? Jason Lemkin
  4. Picks up right where the previous piece leaves off: once you've decided to charge for the pilot, how do you actually structure... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: We're Starting a Big Paid Pilot. How Do We Maximize the Chances of Success? Jason Lemkin
  5. A pricing consultant's argument that most companies discount reflexively instead of strategically, with a framework for... Harvard Business Review Article The Art of Discounting Rafi Mohammed
  6. A short, sharp reminder that your price tells a story, and that cutting it to close a deal usually just tells the buyer the... Seth's Blog Essay On pricing Seth Godin
  7. A free, plain-language contract template built specifically for running a paid pilot, with the scope, fee, and success criteria... Common Paper Template Pilot Agreement Common Paper
  8. The other side of the discount question: sometimes a genuinely low price is the right strategy, not a concession. Jason Lemkin... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: When Does It Make Sense to Price Low in the Market? Jason Lemkin
  9. A practical, no-nonsense walkthrough of what a pipeline is for and how to keep it honest, written by a company that sells CRM... Close Article The Ultimate Sales Pipeline Guide: How to Build, Manage, & Measure Close
  10. When a spreadsheet finally starts to strain, this is the most common next step: unlimited contacts, deal tracking, and email... HubSpot Tool Free CRM for Small Business HubSpot
  11. Built by an Indian company and free for up to three users, this is the CRM a lot of early Indian B2B founders reach for because... Zoho Tool Zoho CRM Free Edition Zoho
  12. A short, honest account of the exact failure mode this question warns about: a solo founder loses a good prospect purely from... Indie Hackers Thread Built a dead-simple pipeline tracker after losing a deal because I forgot to follow up Indie Hackers
  13. Welsh shows the exact two-step process he used to build a million-dollar pipeline from cold DMs: find people already talking... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read How to Get Replies from Your Dream Customers Justin Welsh
  14. This is the LinkedIn half of the question: a simple system using alerts and triggers (funding news, new hires, press mentions)... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read How to Find More Customers on LinkedIn Justin Welsh
  15. Ferriss writes from the other side of the inbox: what actually gets a reply from someone who gets hundreds of pitches a day.... Tim Ferriss Essay · 5 min read 5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People Tim Ferriss
  16. Sethi gives word-for-word scripts and, more usefully, the follow-up move almost nobody does: closing the loop by telling... Ramit Sethi Article · 10 min read How To Connect w/ Busy People (& actually get HAPPY replies) Ramit Sethi
  17. A straightforward six-part checklist (subject line, personalization, benefit to them, credibility, one call-to-action, respect... Noah Kagan Article · 8 min read Cold Email Tips: 6 Steps to Write Great Cold Emails Noah Kagan
  18. Caponi's argument is that admitting what your product is not good at, early and clearly, closes deals faster than trying to... Todd Caponi Book The Transparency Sale Todd Caponi
  19. Steli Efti has run and coached thousands of SaaS demos, and this is the clearest single write-up of what separates a demo that... Close (Steli Efti) Article A Guide to Sales Demos That Sell Close (Steli Efti)
  20. This book is the practical, step-by-step companion to the essay above, built from Dunford working the same structure with over... April Dunford Book Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win April Dunford
  21. Raskin has coached the sales narratives at Gong, Uber, Dropbox and Square, and this essay is the one everyone in B2B sales... Andy Raskin Essay The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen Andy Raskin
  22. Gallo breaks down, keynote by keynote, how Jobs turned deeply technical hardware into a demo a room full of non-engineers could... Carmine Gallo Book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience Carmine Gallo
  23. Video Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone, Macworld 2007 Apple / Macworld keynote
  24. Duarte studies presentations for a living, and this talk (using the Jobs iPhone launch as one of her two case studies) shows... TED (TEDxEast) Video The secret structure of great talks TED (TEDxEast)

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 →