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. Sethi has spent years publicly refining cold outreach scripts and testing subject lines with real recipients, and this collects... Ramit Sethi Template 50 Proven Email Scripts Ramit Sethi In 3 answers
  2. The foundational text of customer development, 'get out of the building' started here and became the backbone of the Lean... steveblank.com Book · ~370 pages The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win Steve Blank In 2 answers
  3. The most accessible, practical intro to usability ever written, you can read it in a weekend and immediately fix your product.... sensible.com Book · ~200 pages Don't Make Me Think, Revisited Steve Krug In 2 answers
  4. Fifty-plus recent YC founders answer the exact question every early founder asks. The pattern across their answers is the lesson. YC Startup Library Article · ~10 min read Founder FAQ: How did you get your first customer? Y Combinator (50+ founders) In 2 answers
  5. The Neon Show (formerly 100x Entrepreneur) is one of India's deepest founder-and-investor interview podcasts, covering pricing,... neon.fund Podcast · podcast series (200+ episodes) The Neon Show, Indian Founders on Pricing, Sales & Building Siddhartha Ahluwalia In 2 answers
  6. A leading early-stage Indian VC firm answering the questions founders wish they could ask a VC face-to-face, including how they... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 30-50 min per episode Prime Venture Partners Podcast: Fundraising Masterclass for Founders Prime Venture Partners In 2 answers
  7. Altman's condensed operating manual for founders, including sharp guidance on focus, spending your time on what only you can... playbook.samaltman.com Article · long Startup Playbook Sam Altman In 2 answers
  8. CB Insights read hundreds of real startup postmortems and found that poor product-market fit (around 43 percent) is the single... CB Insights Article · ~15 min read The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail CB Insights In 2 answers
  9. Video · ~30 min Enterprise Sales | Startup School Pete Koomen In 2 answers
  10. Michael Seibel, who ran YC, makes the blunt case for shipping something almost embarrassingly simple and learning from real... Y Combinator Startup Library Video · ~10 min video How to Build an MVP Michael Seibel In 2 answers
  11. The book behind the "One Metric That Matters" discipline, which is exactly the mindset you need to judge whether a ship worked... O'Reilly / Lean Series Book · 440 pages Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz In 2 answers
  12. This is the honest, founder-written version of what selling to Indian SMBs actually looks like: high-touch, relationship-first,... Blume Ventures Article Selling Smart: The Insider's Guide to SaaS Success in India Blume Ventures In 2 answers
  13. This is the short, canonical essay that names the exact trap: people switch into a stiff, impressive-sounding written voice... paulgraham.com Essay Write Like You Talk Paul Graham In 2 answers
  14. This is the clearest argument for why a launch should not be a single spike: if you share the process continuously, every day... Austin Kleon Book · 224 pages Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered Austin Kleon In 2 answers
  15. If you want to fix the follow-up mindset for good, this is the book, and this is the author's own page for it. Blount is blunt... jebblount.com (official) Book · ~320 pages Fanatical Prospecting Jeb Blount In 2 answers
  16. When you have a name and a company but no address, Hunter is the default first stop: type the person and the domain, and it... hunter.io Tool Hunter Email Finder Hunter In 2 answers
  17. An Indian founder who actually built and scaled a SaaS business at home talks bluntly about pricing, instead of a generic... The Neon Show Podcast 7 Myths About Selling B2B SaaS In India (ft. Unicommerce founder Kapil Makhija) Siddhartha Ahluwalia (host), Kapil Makhija (guest) In 2 answers
  18. The global playbooks assume a US-style buying process; this one is written for the Indian enterprise reality, where the sale... Blume Ventures Article · 25 min read The Rough Guide to Building an Enterprise SaaS Dhandha in India Blume Ventures (with Aakrit Vaish, Haptik) In 2 answers
  19. Once you are testing an idea, this piece gives you concrete signals that tell you whether it is actually working, from... Lenny's Newsletter Article · about 15 min read How to Know If You've Got Product-Market Fit Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
  20. A step-by-step guide to running discovery when you have almost no data, aimed squarely at first-time founders. It is practical... First Round Review Article · 15 min read A Founder's Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery Jeanette Mellinger In 2 answers
  21. The free, original essay that defined the MVP before the book existed, written plainly by the person who coined the term. It... Startup Lessons Learned (Eric Ries) Essay · ~15 min read Minimum Viable Product: a guide Eric Ries In 2 answers
  22. Before you have any customer stories, your own founder story is the only pitch you have, and this piece shows you how to use... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read The Three Frameworks You Need to Kick-start Sales Whitney Sales In 2 answers
  23. Steli Efti built Close by doing founder sales the hard way, and here he answers the blunt questions founders actually ask about... Stripe Atlas Article · ~20 min read AMA with Steli Efti: Pricing, Selling and Building a Sales Team Steli Efti In 2 answers
  24. Video · 50 min Stanley Tang (DoorDash): Scaling the Unscalable Stanley Tang In 2 answers

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 →