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. A large, organized reference bank when you want more raw examples to riff on than the individual essays above give you. It is... Hunter.io Article 89 Effective Cold Email Subject Lines & How to Craft Them Hunter.io
  2. Video 50+ Cold Email Subject Lines To Test (Free Download) Alex Berman
  3. A free, instant way to sanity-check a draft subject line against length, clarity, and tone before you send it, useful as a... CoSchedule Tool Email Subject Line Analyzer CoSchedule
  4. A solo founder's first-hand accounting of what actually moved the needle after hundreds of real sends, useful because it... Indie Hackers Thread 800+ Cold Emails Later: Here's What Actually Moves the Needle Indie Hackers
  5. Hunter Walk is a working VC who has actually funded companies off cold emails, so this comes with real skin in the game rather... Hunter Walk (Homebrew) Essay A Strong Cold Email Always Beats A Weak Warm One Hunter Walk (Homebrew)
  6. This is a tightly reasoned section of a widely respected reference guide on venture capital, written for exactly your... Holloway Article Cold Emails (Raising Venture Capital guide) Holloway
  7. A YC partner walks through the mechanics of actually landing an investor meeting, not just pitching once you're in the room.... Y Combinator (Aaron Harris) Video How to Get Meetings With Investors and Raise Money Y Combinator (Aaron Harris)
  8. This is the canonical essay on the psychology of fundraising, and it explains exactly why desperation kills your odds: 'there... Paul Graham Essay A Fundraising Survival Guide Paul Graham
  9. Hustle Fund invests at pre-seed and reviews over a thousand companies a month, so their founders team has read (and rejected)... Hustle Fund (Hustle Commons) Template Cold Email Tips + Templates Hustle Fund (Hustle Commons)
  10. This shows the real, full text of a cold email that turned into a $250,000 check from Mark Cuban, then a second $250,000 nine... Inc. Article Here's the Email Factmata's Founder Used to Get a $500,000 Investment From Mark Cuban Inc.
  11. This free 83-page book from the founders of AngelList is the original modern text on distilling a startup into a message... Venture Hacks (Naval Ravikant & Babak Nivi) Book Pitching Hacks: How to Pitch Startups to Investors Venture Hacks (Naval Ravikant & Babak Nivi)
  12. Written by the President of TDK Ventures, this is a sitting investor naming exactly what separates a disciplined cold email... TDK Ventures (Nicolas Sauvage) Essay The Cold Email VCs Want TDK Ventures (Nicolas Sauvage)
  13. This piece pulls direct, attributed advice from named investors, including Jason Lemkin, Michael Seibel, and other operating... LeadLoft Article How to Cold Email Investors: 19 Tips From VCs & Angels LeadLoft
  14. Visible builds tools for founder-investor communication, so this guide is oriented around what actually gets a reply rather... Visible.vc Article How to Cold Email Investors in 2026 (Templates + Tips) Visible.vc
  15. Streak is a Gmail-based CRM built for exactly this workflow: sending outreach and tracking whether it's actually being opened.... Streak Tool Streak: How to Write a Cold Email to an Investor Streak
  16. Read the actual law once, at least the consent and notice sections, so you are not relying on someone else's paraphrase.... Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India Article · ~30 pages The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (Official Text) Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India
  17. Translates the DPDP Act's consent rules into what actually changes for a business, not a legal treatise. It is the piece to... India Briefing (Dezan Shira & Associates) Article · ~8 min read Understanding India's DPDP Consent Management Rules for Businesses India Briefing (Dezan Shira & Associates)
  18. One paragraph of the actual regulation, the one that says direct marketing can count as a legitimate interest under GDPR. When... gdpr-info.eu Article · 1 page GDPR Recital 47: Legitimate Interest and Direct Marketing gdpr-info.eu
  19. The regulator's own explanation of what a compliant commercial email looks like in the US, including the part founders skip:... Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Article CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
  20. The UK regulator's own walkthrough of the three-part test (purpose, necessity, balancing) that decides whether you can cold... UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Article When Can We Rely on Legitimate Interests? UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
  21. A fill-in-the-blanks worksheet for documenting why your cold outreach counts as a legitimate interest, before a regulator or an... UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Tool Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA) Template UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
  22. Written by a company that sells a cold email tool, so it is pragmatic rather than legalistic: what to put in your first email... Hunter.io Article · ~6 min read How to Do Cold Emailing After the GDPR Hunter.io
  23. The single-page comparison table you want the moment your outreach list spans India, the US, the EU, and a couple of other... Overloop Article · ~7 min read Is Cold Email Illegal? Country-by-Country Legal Guide Overloop
  24. A real founder community arguing, in public, about where cold outreach tips into being annoying: templated openers, I loved... Indie Hackers Thread Indie Hackers, Stop Sending Cold Emails David Delahunty (poster)

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 →