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. This is a curated set of First Round's deepest sales pieces for founders, including scripts for the exact emails and calls that... First Round Review Article If You're a Founder Brushing Up on Sales 101 First Round Review
  2. Lemkin's point is blunt and useful: most of the extra revenue sitting in your pipeline right now comes from leads that were... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article How to Close More Revenue Today, With the Leads You Already Have Jason Lemkin
  3. Iannarino argues that honoring even small commitments you made on the call, like sending that one document you promised, is... The Sales Blog (Anthony Iannarino) Essay Keeping Commitments: Why Follow Up and Follow Through Make or Break Opportunities Anthony Iannarino
  4. Short, practical piece on formatting the same-day recap so a busy buyer actually reads it: next steps up top, specific... Superhuman Article Meeting Recap Email Example: 3 Steps to Writing Follow-Ups That Actually Get Read Superhuman
  5. Video Follow Up or Die: Why "Maybe" Is Killing Your Business (Interview with Steli Efti of Close.io) Steli Efti
  6. A CRM built specifically around follow-up: it reminds you to send that recap, flags the date you promised to circle back, and... Close Tool Close Close
  7. Ramit Sethi built a business partly on emails from strangers that got answered, and this guide is his own breakdown of what... Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You To Be Rich Essay The Ultimate Guide to Email Copywriting Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You To Be Rich
  8. Copyhackers writes for people who make a living from words converting, and this piece is focused tightly on the mechanics of... Copyhackers Article 4 Tips to Get Your Cold Emails Opened Copyhackers
  9. Your subject line decides whether the rest of your email gets read at all, and this piece is entirely dedicated to getting that... Demand Curve Article Cold Email Subject Line Do's and Don'ts Demand Curve
  10. Hunter built its business around helping people find and email the right person, so this guide doubles as both a practical... Hunter.io Tool A Complete Guide to Cold Email Outreach Hunter.io
  11. Once your email is well written, the next problem is knowing whether it was even opened, and Streak sits directly inside Gmail... Streak Tool Email Tracking from Gmail Streak
  12. Video How to Write the Ultimate Cold Email, Framework Alex Berman (YouTube)
  13. This is a founder's own account of one specific cold email that worked, with the reasoning behind each choice she made, rather... Allie Janoch (Medium) Essay How I Turned a Cold Email Into a $2.5M Seed Round Allie Janoch (Medium)
  14. Jason Lemkin has seen thousands of founder emails as an investor himself, and this piece is written from that side of the... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: How Do I Write a Great Cold Email To VCs? Jason Lemkin
  15. Intercom's founders describe sending around a hundred highly personal emails a day in their earliest days, each one custom... Intercom Blog Essay How Intercom Got Our First Customers Intercom Blog
  16. Graham draws a sharp line between persistence and mere obstinacy: the persistent stay flexible on method while locked onto the... paulgraham.com Essay The Right Kind of Stubborn Paul Graham
  17. This is the actual data behind the "follow up more than you think" advice: only 8.5% of cold emails get a reply on their own,... Backlinko Article We Analyzed 12 Million Outreach Emails: Here's What We Learned Backlinko (with Pitchbox)
  18. Video How many times should you Follow Up? Alex Berman
  19. A practical, no-nonsense breakdown of the tradeoff between too few follow-ups (leaving replies on the table) and too many... lemlist Article How Many Cold Email Follow-Ups Should You Send to Increase Your Replies? lemlist
  20. This lays out an actual day-by-day schedule for spacing your follow-ups, which is the part most advice skips in favor of just... GrowthList Article Cold Email Follow Up Timing: Best Schedule GrowthList
  21. The single biggest reason founders under follow-up isn't strategy, it's forgetting. This tool auto-reminds you (or auto-sends a... Boomerang for Gmail Tool Boomerang for Gmail: Email Follow-Up Reminders Boomerang for Gmail
  22. A compact stat sheet built from Woodpecker's own send data across many campaigns, showing that adding even one follow-up lifts... Woodpecker Article These Stats Prove The Importance of Follow-up Emails Margaret Sikora
  23. A clear-headed synthesis of the various industry numbers (the classic 80/5 stat that 80% of sales need about five touches, plus... Nutshell Article How Many Follow-Up Emails Should You Send? Nutshell
  24. Written specifically to answer this question, pulling together response-rate curves across follow-up counts so you can see... Instantly Article How Many Times Should You Really Follow Up with a Prospect? Instantly

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 →