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. Written by the team behind one of the most used email finder tools, so it walks through the same order of operations our answer... Hunter.io Blog Article · 10 minute read 10 Ways to Find Anyone's Email Address Ziemek Bućko
  2. A clear rundown from a company that does outreach at scale for its own work, covering lookup tools, pattern guessing, and... Ahrefs Blog Article · 8 minute read 6 Proven Ways To Find Anyone's Email Address Nick Churick
  3. Written from the recipient's side of the inbox by someone who gets hundreds of cold emails a week. It makes the case that... Ahrefs Blog Essay · 12 minute read I Just Deleted Your Outreach Email Without Reading. And NO, I Don't Feel Sorry Tim Soulo
  4. Once you've found or guessed someone's email, this is what to actually put in it, with word for word scripts from a founder who... First Round Review Article · 15 minute read Here are the Scripts for Sales Success: Emails, Calls and Demos That Close Deals Peter Kazanjy
  5. A straightforward alternative to Hunter that independent tests rate as more accurate on harder to find addresses. Useful as a... VoilaNorbert Tool VoilaNorbert VoilaNorbert
  6. This is the plain guess at the company's email pattern from our answer, made mechanical. Feed it a name and domain and it... Mailmeteor Tool Email Permutator Mailmeteor
  7. This is the verification step our answer insists on. Paste in a guessed or found address and it tells you whether the inbox is... NeverBounce Tool Email Verifier NeverBounce
  8. A large contact database that's worth trying when Hunter or VoilaNorbert come back empty, since it draws on a different index... RocketReach Tool RocketReach RocketReach
  9. Once you have a verified address, these are ready to adapt templates from a CRM built specifically for small sales teams,... Close Template · 10 minute read 15 Best Cold Email Templates That Actually Get Replies Steli Efti
  10. Ferrazzi's core argument is that the people worth reaching are found through relationships, not databases, so a connector who... Keith Ferrazzi Book · about 370 pages Never Eat Alone Keith Ferrazzi
  11. Video · about 10 minutes No Replies? Increase response rates using THIS cold email template Steli Efti
  12. A grounded conversation about when cold email is even worth the effort of finding an address for. Steli's rule of thumb is deal... Startups For the Rest of Us Podcast · about 35 minutes Episode 202: Outbound Sales for Startups with Guest Steli Efti Steli Efti
  13. A blunt, contrarian counterpoint from working founders and investors: several commenters argue you shouldn't be hunting down a... Hacker News Thread How to write cold emails to investors Hacker News
  14. Plain-language breakdown of every cold email metric (open, reply, positive reply, bounce) and what actually separates a healthy... Hunter.io Article Cold Email Metrics Hunter.io
  15. A short, practical checklist for raising reply rates once you already know your baseline is low. It walks through list size,... Hunter.io Article Improve Your Reply Rate Hunter.io
  16. Real platform-wide data across millions of sends, kept current, so you can see where your own numbers sit against a large... Woodpecker Article Cold Email Statistics Based on Sending Over 20M Cold Emails Woodpecker
  17. Written by a working copywriter who tracks her own reply and conversion rates on real cold pitches, so the advice comes with... Copyhackers Article How to Cold Pitch Effectively and Ethically Bree Weber
  18. Lemlist sends huge volumes of cold email through its platform and publishes some of the more specific length and... lemlist Article Outreach secrets: How to increase your reply rates lemlist
  19. This is the exact question our short answer addresses, asked and answered directly by a B2B investor and operator who reads a... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: Is It OK To Have a 5% Response Rate in My Personalized Cold Emails? Jason Lemkin
  20. This one flips the script: a CIO who actually receives startup outreach explains what makes him respond versus delete. Hearing... The Neon Show Podcast What Startups Can Learn from a $1.7B Co. Chief Information Officer (ft. Karthik Chakkarapani, Zuora) Karthik Chakkarapani (guest)
  21. A current, segment-by-segment benchmark report broken out by industry, list size, and company size, so you can compare your... Instantly.ai Article Cold Email Benchmark Report 2026 Instantly.ai
  22. A clear, simply written framing of the reply-rate tiers, broken, average, good, elite, that is easy to hold your own numbers... Apollo.io Article What Is a Good Reply Rate for Cold Outreach in 2026? Apollo.io
  23. This is an actual draft cold email, picked apart line by line by other founders in the comments, which makes it more useful... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read The Cold Email I'd Send to Get My First 10 Customers Indie Hackers
  24. Short, practical, and written for a founder with nothing to show yet, which is the exact reader we have in mind. It is written... Hustle Fund Article · 8 min read 5 Cold Email Suggestions from an Expert Hustle Fund

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 →