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. Battle-tested referral advice from the person who turned Airbnb's host referral program into its biggest driver of supply... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read Building a Referrals Program Lenny Rachitsky
  2. The most quoted essay on the mechanics of fundraising, distilled from YC Demo Day advice. It reframes fundraising as a sales... paulgraham.com Article · 45 min read How to Raise Money Paul Graham
  3. The single most reassuring and clarifying essay for a founder on the edge of quitting, Graham's core insight that startups die... paulgraham.com Article · short How Not to Die Paul Graham
  4. The definitive, brutally honest account of 'The Struggle', the emotional and operational reality of running a company when... HarperBusiness Book · long The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz
  5. The essay that explains why one badly-placed meeting can destroy a founder's entire day of building, and what to do about it.... paulgraham.com Article · short Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule Paul Graham
  6. A brutally honest primary account of taking the VC 'go big or go home' leap and the freedom of choosing a leaner path instead,... sahillavingia.com Essay · ~4,500 words Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company Sahil Lavingia
  7. The definitive research-backed case for 'give before you ask', Grant shows that generous givers, not takers, build the biggest... adamgrant.net Book · long Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success Adam Grant
  8. The uncomfortable truth of enterprise sales in one line: the shorter the sales cycle, the likelier the win, and this piece... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read The Most Surefire Way I've Found to Win Enterprise Deals Anand Chopra-McGowan
  9. This is the essay that forces the honest question underneath your idea: are you building a growth company or a good small... Paul Graham Essay · ~20 min read Startup = Growth Paul Graham
  10. This is a working investor's honest read on when deep industry knowledge is a real edge and when it is just familiarity. It is... Wildfire Labs (Startup Stories from the Treehouse) Podcast · ~40 min The Rise of the Domain Expert Founder: Why Industry Insiders Are Winning the Startup Game Todd Gagne and Mike Vetter
  11. Most "validate your idea" advice was written for consumer apps, where a landing page and a few hundred signups tell you... Lean B2B Essay The 3 Ways Startup Founders "Sell" Their First Products in B2B Etienne Garbugli
  12. Andrew Chen ran rider growth at Uber and now invests at a16z, so this is the canonical breakdown of how marketplaces get off... andrewchen.com Essay · ~20 min read Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays Andrew Chen
  13. Video · ~20 min How to do customer interviews? | Rob Fitzpatrick, author of "The Mom Test" Rob Fitzpatrick
  14. When there is no category report to point at, you have to build the number yourself, and this is the essay that teaches you... Andreessen Horowitz Essay · ~20 min read 16 More Startup Metrics Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen, Jeff Jordan
  15. This is the sharpest write-up of the exact trap in your question: a past exit buys you trust from investors and hires, and the... NFX Essay · ~12 min read Second-Time Founders: How to Win and Avoid the Common Mistakes James Currier
  16. For a two-sided marketplace, the first real decision is which side to define and win first, and this essay makes the case... NFX Essay · Long read (about 25 minutes) 19 Tactics to Solve the Chicken-or-Egg Problem and Grow Your Marketplace James Currier
  17. This is the most concrete answer to which of your two customers to define first, built from interviews with 17 major... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Long read (about 20 minutes) How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business, Part 2: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem (Supply vs. Demand) Lenny Rachitsky
  18. Instead of theory, this is hundreds of interviews with real solo founders who started a profitable business on the side of a... Apple Podcasts Podcast · episodes run 45 to 75 minutes Indie Hackers Podcast Courtland Allen
  19. This is a ready-to-run interview script written for the exact moment you have an idea but nothing to show, so a non-technical... Deploy Empathy Template · One page, full script Customer Interview Script: Discovery Phase (before you've built anything) Michele Hansen (Deploy Empathy)
  20. PostHog gives you product analytics and session replay in one place, so you can see both what people did (events, funnels) and... posthog.com Tool PostHog PostHog
  21. The biggest tracking mistake in an MVP is measuring everything and learning nothing. This Amplitude piece walks you through... Amplitude Article Every Product Needs a North Star Metric: Here's How to Find Yours Julia Sholtz
  22. When people sign up and vanish, the first fork is: did they never hit the moment where the product clicked (activation), or did... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to determine your activation metric Lenny Rachitsky
  23. Video · About 25 minutes Building Product Michael Seibel
  24. Shapiro gives you a concrete framework you can apply the same afternoon: write a header that is fully descriptive of what you... julian.com Article · Long read, about 30 minutes Startup Handbook: Landing Page Copywriting Julian Shapiro

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 →