Video · About 25 minutes

How to Get Your First Customers (Startup School)

Gustaf Alstromer · Y Combinator (YouTube) Free Beginner

How to Get Your First Customers (Startup School)

This is the canonical short talk on winning your first users when you have no audience and no sales team. Alstromer (YC partner, former head of growth at Airbnb) makes the case that early on you do things that do not scale: you go where your users already gather, reach out directly, and talk to them one at a time. For a solo technical founder that is a relief, because it is closer to helping people in a community than to cold-call selling.

  • Do things that do not scale at the start: hand-find your first users in the communities and forums where they already hang out.
  • The founder should be the one doing early sales, because nobody understands the product and the problem better than you.
  • Charge early and watch who actually says yes; a real customer is a much stronger signal than a free sign-up.
Watch on YouTube ↗

It answers 14 questions

  1. How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me?
  2. How did real successful startups actually land their first customers?
  3. I only have a landing page and a waitlist, how do I turn signups into paying customers?
  4. What should my very first sales pitch actually say, and how long should it be?
  5. How do I get customers who don't already know me when I have no brand, no audience, and no case studies yet?
  6. Should I try to close my first 10 customers one by one, or run a small launch to get them all at once?
  7. How much of my week should I spend on sales versus building the product in the early days?
  8. What's a good response rate for cold email, and how do I know if mine is broken?
  9. What are the biggest mistakes founders make trying to land their first customers that I should avoid?
  10. Should I offer a free trial, a paid pilot, or a discount to close my first customers?
  11. I'm a solo non-technical founder with no audience. How do I launch when I have zero followers to post to?
  12. I'm building outside the big startup hubs with almost no budget. What's the cheapest no-code stack to launch a marketplace or directory?

And 2 more across the hub.

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. The authoritative handbook on founder-led sales, written for technical/first-time sellers building B2B SaaS. Readable free... foundingsales.com Book · book (~400 pages) Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook Peter Kazanjy
  5. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  6. Jen Abel has coached over 300 early-stage founders through their first sales, so this is grounded in what actually happens when... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · About 1 hour 16 minutes The ultimate guide to founder-led sales | Jen Abel (JJELLYFISH) Lenny Rachitsky with Jen Abel
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