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. Barry documents, with real numbers, how he grew ConvertKit through direct outreach and relentless follow-up rather than a... nathanbarry.com Essay Direct Sales for Bootstrapped SaaS Startups: from $1,300 to $725,000 MRR Nathan Barry
  2. A real, specific account of the actual cold email that got a company its first paying customers before it even had a name or a... Indie Hackers Thread The cold email that started a $100M/yr company Indie Hackers
  3. Video How To Cold Email Clients (WINNING Cold Email Templates) Alex Berman
  4. A direct, practical comparison of the two channels this exact question is about, including what each is better suited for and... Cleverly Article Cold Email vs. LinkedIn Outreach: What Gets Better Results? Cleverly
  5. A practical library of short LinkedIn opening messages organized by scenario, which you can adapt instead of guessing at tone... Sales Bread Template 37 Best LinkedIn Cold Message Templates That Get Replies Sales Bread
  6. A free five-day email course covering the whole cold email process end to end: defining who to target, finding accurate contact... Hunter.io Course · 5 days Hunter's Cold Email Course Hunter.io
  7. A tool built specifically around sequencing cold email and LinkedIn touches together, which matches the exact combine-them... lemlist.com Tool lemlist lemlist.com
  8. Merge's founders sent hundreds of cold emails over six months, not to pitch but to understand who actually had the integrations... First Round Review Article Merge's Path to Product-Market Fit: The Importance of Founder-led Sales First Round Review
  9. Video How To Get Clients Through LinkedIn Cold Outreach Patrick Dang
  10. This guide's central argument matches our answer exactly: most prospect lists fail at definition, not sourcing, so precision... Clay Tool · Guide + tool How to Build a Targeted Prospect List Clay
  11. LinkedIn is where most B2B founders will actually find the named individuals who match their ICP, and Sales Navigator's filters... LinkedIn Tool LinkedIn Sales Navigator LinkedIn
  12. Video · ~15 min How To Build A Lead List For Cold Email Alex Berman
  13. Pete Kazanjy, who has built and scaled multiple B2B sales orgs, gives a founder-focused breakdown of how to get specific enough... Lenny's Podcast Article · 10 min read Defining your ideal customer profile: Pete Kazanjy's perspective Pete Kazanjy
  14. A solo founder documents exactly how cold email grew their product to real revenue over six months, including what changed in... Indie Hackers Thread · 5 min read The untapped power of cold email, your secret weapon Indie Hackers community
  15. Video · about 10 min How To Write Cold Email Subject Lines: Prospecting For Business Development & B2B Sales Patrick Dang
  16. Close is the CRM named directly in this hub's own advice, and for good reason. It is built specifically for founders and small... Close Tool Close CRM for Startups Close
  17. Before you pay for any tool, this is the spreadsheet that gets you organized: contacts, pipeline stage, and follow up dates in... HubSpot Template Free CRM Spreadsheet Template HubSpot
  18. GMass runs entirely inside Gmail, so you can send personalized batches and see opens, clicks, and replies without leaving your... GMass Tool · 10 min read GMass Startup Guide for Cold Emailers GMass
  19. Close is a sales CRM built by working sales leaders, and this piece (reviewed by co-founder Steli Efti) draws the line between... Close Article 17 Best Cold Email Subject Lines for Higher Open Rates Kimberlee Meier
  20. Braun sells cold email coaching for a living and this is his most-shared list, twenty-eight real subject lines with the... LinkedIn (Josh Braun) Thread 28 Cold Email Subject Lines That Get Opened Josh Braun
  21. This one breaks the mechanics down further than the 28-line list, naming distinct patterns like the problem-focused question,... Josh Braun Article 9 Subject Lines That Motivated Prospects to Open Your Cold Email Josh Braun
  22. This is the actual data behind one of the rules founders lean on: Boomerang analyzed over 300,000 emails and found all-caps... Boomerang Article The One Thing You Should Never Do In An Email Subject (Based on Data) Brendan G.
  23. This is the source for the word-count guidance worth knowing before you draft. Boomerang's data, drawn from roughly 40 million... Boomerang Article 7 Tips for Getting More Responses to Your Emails (With Data!) Boomerang
  24. Written for the exact founders who are about to cold email investors, so the advice is calibrated to your actual reader:... Hustle Fund (The Founder Playbook) Article Write Better Subject Lines Hustle Fund (The Founder Playbook)

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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 →