Podcast · Ongoing series, ~45 to 60 min episodes

Getting Your First SaaS Customers (Founder Interviews)

Omer Khan, The SaaS Podcast · SaaS Club Free Beginner

This is a curated run of founder interviews on The SaaS Podcast about landing the very first paying customers, and the recurring theme is exactly your question: the founders who got traction did it through direct conversations and pilots that led to a payment, not open-ended free access. Hearing several founders describe what actually converted (and what stalled) is more useful than one framework, because you see the pattern across different products. A good listen while you are still deciding how to price your first pilot.

  • Early traction almost always comes from direct, personal outreach and hands-on pilots, not self-serve funnels.
  • The first payment, however small, is the real validation signal; a free pilot that never asks for money teaches you little.
  • Founders repeatedly warn that a pilot without a clear end date and a yes-or-no decision point quietly becomes free forever.
Open on saasclub.io ↗

It answers 2 questions

  1. Cold email or cold LinkedIn/DM, what works better for reaching first customers?
  2. How do I get my first paying customer BEFORE I quit, so I have real proof and not just belief?

Read with it

  1. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  2. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  3. A tactical follow-on covering the channels and motions top B2B startups scale after the first ten. Grounds distribution... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to win your first 10 B2B customers Lenny Rachitsky
  4. Pete Koomen took Optimizely from zero to $100M+ ARR, and here he breaks the enterprise funnel down for exactly the person who... Y Combinator Startup School Video · ~35 min Enterprise Sales for Founders Pete Koomen
  5. Video · ~10 min How to get your first ten customers Michael Seibel
  6. Blomfield (founder of Monzo and GoCarchless, now a YC partner) gives the concrete mechanics of closing that first B2B deal:... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 25 min read The Sales Playbook for Founders Tom Blomfield
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