How/Where did you find your first 1, 10 and 100 customer?

Here's a post I put together a few years ago where 19 successful founders shared how they found their first users.

For example, Guan Xun Chew — founder of WriteMapper ($1,000/mo) — shared how he got his first users reaching out to mainstream press outlets:

I started actively reaching out to mainstream online press outlets that looked like they would be willing to cover a newly released macOS app. I searched as many app news sites as I could within a day, making sure to identify journalists that had previously written about other Mac apps. From there, I was able to create a shortlist of 24 journalists to contact, and sent each of them a short and concise email pitch. This effort got WriteMapper featured on Forbes and Cult of Mac.

I have been writing to 20,000 subscribers around Micro SaaS every week on trends, ideas, reports for Micro SaaS.

Here are a few more:

• IH
• Reddit
• Twitter
• Product Hunt
• BetaList
• Slack groups
• Discord groups
• Closed communities
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Marketplaces like AppSumo, Picthground
• Deals sites.
• Collaboration with Newsletters
• Building side projects and driving traffic
• SEO
• Quora
• LinkedIn

Here's how I acquired the first 100 users for my SaaS product:

— Utilize personal and professional networks: Share your product.
— Leverage social media platforms: Use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit for promotions.
— Start a blog: Share industry insights and guest posts to widen reach.
— Engage in online communities: Be active on ProductHunt, forums, and groups. Initiate your own community on Slack or Discord.
— Offer early access: Use platforms like Betalist, BetaPage, and StartupList for initial feedback.
— Collaborate with influencers: Provide them free trial or discount codes to share.
— Implement SEO strategies: Use tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush to optimize your website.
— Execute targeted ad campaigns: Utilize platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.
— Establish a referral program: Offer incentives like discounts or free trials.

Remember to tailor these tactics to your product and/or startup's unique needs and target audience. And - I want to emphasize that while following these steps doesn't guarantee success, they will improve your odds.

I am sharing my experience with EarlyBird - how we get our first 1, 100, and 500 customers:

EarlyBird is a no-code landing page builder for early-stage startups to pitch and validate business ideas fast.

• First 1 customer: myself, I built this product to resolve my own problem - I was always looking to register a new domain, and take time building a product with it and it turned out to be a false demand in the last, so I need a landing page builder for idea validation.

• First 100 customers: I launched EarlyBird on Product Hunt on Christmas Day, and our first 100 customers milestone was achieved in a few hours.

• First 500 customers: I spread the word about our Product Hunt launch far and wide, on social media as well as sites like Hackernews, Reddit, and Indie Hackers. We even reached out to people in Slack communities, Discord groups, and Telegram groups. Our efforts paid off and we got our first 500 customers within 3 days!

I wrote an article on how we made our first 500 customers in 3 days after launch, hope it's helpful to you guys.

We used Facebook ads for our fist few users, then a few DAO programs, and now we're turning to Betalist and then Producthunt.

We attracted them by posting high quality content on social media, mainly Reddit and https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=scrapingfish.com.

I think Twitter, Indie Hacker, Discord, Telegram, and Slack communities an excellent way to start. Yout get a lot of feedbacks and POVs

We have found first 10 clients via direct sales. We just got on the phone and a car and started visiting potential clients. Then we’ve found next ~40 mostly by word of mouth and few thanks to a lot of Instagram posting. All other tactics (seo, ads, exhibition stands got us nowhere). Unfortunately we had to shut down the product at the beginning of last year.

I was having the same idea of a post for indiehackers. I am still struggling to find a good strategy for making my SaaS more visible to people. I am trying several seo tools, making a list of potential blog posts inside the website blog etc. I hope I can find more inspiration in the replies. Thank you for your post!

I'm slowly approaching 100 first users, but they all came from single post off reddit.

My post on Reddit had 14k views, and since been attracting new users.

I had best results posting on Reddit

It depends a lot on the product and service you offer, for example: you have a language application, a place where there is an audience for this niche is in facebook groups, instagram pages, twitter, discord... You can advertise in Colleges, language schools...

I'm building a mobile app for dog and puppy owners, so my approach was simple: follow the dogs and you'll find their owners.
Luckily, I have a dog too, so I just went to a dog park and talked to a bunch of puppy owners. I asked them for feedback on my app, and got my first subscriber in 3 days.

I spent 3 years at a B2C app startup.

We called bars and restaurants, found out their happy hours, as well as any other info that might draw people in (patio dining, weekly food deals, bar games, etc.).

Our first customers came to us via in-person networking. We went to events in New Orleans and gave out stickers and merch, or bought people drink. This probably got us to 1000 users and 20 or so paying customers (we sold a subscription that allowed users to get additional deals at participating restaurants.)

For our next 5000 users and 100 or so customers, we leveraged instagram foodie influencers and google ads which bid on terms like "new orleans happy hours".

We got to about $20k in MRR when Covid hit. The restaurants withdrew all their deals, as most of them went to take-out only. We eventually came back with a strong SEO play, using AI to turn our happy hour database into listicle content.

It's still going strong! Though I am not there in a full time sense anymore.

While many think restaurants were hardest hit by the pandemic, I'd argue restaurant-centric services like ours, that DEPENDED on dining out were hit even harder. Not that it's a contest.

• Cold outreach ( asking for feedback first ) is a good way to start according to my personnal experience.
• PH, Indie Hacker, Blogs in your niche are also helpful !

We did this by using our software for LinkedIn outreach. We got around 50 beta testers, that got a special price for testing the tool and using it, after a couple of months of talking with them and seeing what they needed and how the tool worked we started to go hard on LinkedIn. It's still one of our main channels.

I found my first client from a friend that I meet in a community called Freelancer Fam

This thread is gold! Thanks so much to everyone who's shared tips here.

For my first 10 customers/sign-ups I asked the mods on a subreddit if I could promote my app, they said yes so I posted it and it did pretty well, I got about 14 registrations!

I have various concernings with this topic, by now I started my first side project 4 months ago (https://www.gptube.ink). Now I am doing two tasks finding early customer until I could setup the payments system and finding more and more customers since my project is intended to be for small-medium sized youtube content creators. So I started to subscribe to Facebook groups of youtubers to promote gptube, also posting my advances on twitter for the indie hacking community. Since my project is based on AI, I was posting gptube on AI directories too (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tXc4ZwaO8sWDMyiKBOPcsYs0LP0dOxRh_g3E_gfcJJU/edit#gid=1104226860).
Finally I know is hard when you are not a marketer but is not a hard skill to learn nowadays anyone can get his first client from a well done post on almost any social media.
Good topic by the way 👍

I know a lot of people recommend personal connections to use your product in the early stages but I am just afraid of judgement from people I know, I have not even told anyone yet that I am working on a startup on the off chance it fails, does anyone experience the same thing?

I used to offer VA services for agency owners, I wrote them on IG and then booked a call with those agency owners. The cool thing was when they jumped on a call with me, I could close them 100%, 'cause they were already interested. I always tried to improve my outreach, therefore I made spreadsheets and used Power BI to get a better overview and to answer my question on how to get better.

Started with pure cold calling and cold emailing back in the 2018. Enterprise SaaS software. Now we are at 60+k MRR. Still the same channels work. My tip for you is that find a channel that you enjoy and it gets you results, get damn good at it and then scale it.

Our first group of subscribers(https://chatwizardai.com/) come from the PH launch.

The easiest way for Agriquery was to conventions / trade shows that had the vendors that we wanted on the site. It was much easier convincing people in-person.

1st Customer From Hunter.io, 10th customer from the Hunter.io. Yet to reach 100 customers, but hopefully word of mouth might help with this :)

The most important question is "What is the business about?". Some businesses like social media, others not that much. For example, would you follow Instagram profile of your boiler repair shop? Don't think so :D However, you would probably follow some travel agency that promotes traveling in exotic countries with great photos on their profile.
So The question is .. what is the business about?

A lot of Twitter, Indie Hackers, LinkedIn Outreach. Also Slack really helped with spreading the word about Geeks and Experts

A bunch of different ways, but for the first website I sold I got all of my initial subscribers/customers through Reddit

Most of the first 30 came from hackernews. My TinyUX (https://tinyux.app) "Show HN" post made front page briefly. Not yet at the 100, but the idea is to improve the app, post updates on Linkedin with short videos. Also hope that Google, and Google Play store start making it easier to find the app over time.

I decided that Twitter was getting too stupid for non-business reasons, but I used to post updates there too and reach out to people where creating low-fi wireframes, then quickly recreated those wireframes with my app.

Now also posting updates on Mastadon. First user was actually from Mastadon btw.

My first sale happened after I write a few posts here and tweet about it.

simple, use promotee dude. Reddit is the best way to find initial customers and early adopters.

I am currently developing a file management tool, but have not yet found the first customer...

I have tired to avoid Family and friends. All I did is using reddit, producthunt and indiehackers. My journaling app is now about a year out on the market and I have got over 1050 downloads. And had at somepoint 4 Subscribers for the Plus Service. Now only one.

I havent done any marking for a few month now but I am planing to improve the app much more so the subscription can be more attractive

For a B2B app, one approach is to get your first 5-10 customers to join as Design Partners. You pitch them on your idea, before you've even built anything. Ask them to give you time and feedback in exchange for X months free after the product ships. If it's a compelling idea, they should be willing to "pay" with their time, and you get early reference customers plus feedback.

One thing we did that worked well was actually have a formal application process for our Design Partnership Program, then had them sign a design partner agreement and mutual NDA. It helped ensure they had some skin in the game too. You can get a free design partner agreement template at CommonPaper

1st user: Twitter
10th user: Twitter
100th user: Twitter
🤷‍♂️

I just launched on January 1st. I don't have any customers since I'm a newsletter, but my first few subscribers definitely came from texting friends and using my personal socials. I'm now trying to grow organically on Twitter + Reddit, and I've begun using LinkedIn a bit, but I'm less verse in that world.

All the best!

Great question, for us, huudle, our first 1000 users came from first contacts and now going to launch on Product Hunt to acquire more users and reach more people. What do you suggest us to expand our community?

I use public forums, share my web site, then I Continuously updating website.

Hi Mate,

Getting your first couple of visitors could be a ray of sunshine after a stormy day. It's difficult but not impossible. However, it all depends on how much effort we put in to get better results. Just like any startup, I have recently initiated my own and have been working on it tirelessly, without thinking of failure, and that's what will get me my first 100 visitors sooner.

1st customer: Twitter
10th customer: Discord community
100th Customer: Word of mouth from someone who found us on twitter.

Eventually, your customers will get the word going after you get past 50 customers :)

I would say i got my first 1-100 Users from Reddit where the Idea of an Auto Swiper for Dating Sites Developed. After that i got most from the Chrome Webstore.

Now at over 8000 active users and around 700 active subscriber.

• close relationships
• referrals from close relationships
• 2nd degree contacts
• groups and communities you are already a part of
• interactions/features on platforms and forums (specifically under content/group of interest)
• Product hunt, indie hackers, twitter, etc.

LinkedIn inmails to current connections that already know me.
Paid social ads.

linkedin
personal connections
friends of friends

From our perspective, 1st customers were for sure friends, and crossfit community :) we are into the sports markets so we find interesting to propose our solution to them.
the other one are coming from WOM, and we offered to them special price and lifetime license!

Thanks for sharing. We got our first customers for productlogz mainly from Twitter Dm's, Reddit, launching on AppSumo, FB groups. We are still iterating and pushing hard on cold outreach, cold emails. Experimenting on other platforms & community as well.

I found my first 10 by launching my idea on LinkedIn, IG, and TikTok. I also messaged friends. I'm in a school that helps us take idea to mvp in 6 weeks. Each week we iterate.

I'm currently still looking to get a larger level of interest but we've gotten to close to 100 people across all platforms

I got mine through AppSumo, after launching there I got my first sale after 1 week.

The listing stayed up for a few months generating more sales but nothing major, it gave me motivation to keep going and got some user interviews to help me iterate. However engagement was terrible, with these marketplaces, a lot of people will buy your product just because they think it's a good deal but don't end up using it. A lot of buyers didn't even redeem their code.

Best of luck!

I'm about to be needing this post in about a month, I have some ideas but I would like to see what has actually worked for people.

first, google seraching
second, Social media, linked, facebook etc
third, phone

We seeded our user base for Ganddee, the "Google Maps for sustainable shops", by leveraging our extended network (friends, friends of friends etc), visiting relevant shops in person to tell them about the platform, communicating on social medias (relevant subreddits, linkedin, insta etc), showing up - in person - at relevant meetups in London, creating a blog to answer common questions and inform readers on sustainable consumption and Ganddee, etc.
Doing so, we were able to engage with a first set of users. We then made it very easy for them to provide feedback, and we've been growing organically since then.

I recently launched a design studio. My first customer was actually someone I had done work with several years ago while I was a student. So within my 'network'. We had kept in touch as I used her services, florist, at my wedding. She reached out to me once she had seen a social media post I had made regarding the launch of my studio, Kind Design Studio. I'm grateful that my first client at the new studio got to be someone I had an existing working relationship with.

My next two clients also came from social media. Both from me spending time engaging in niche facebook groups and eventually mentioning that I could provide design services for those in the groups.

This is small scale growth, but it has been a nice way for me to test out my processes with the first few clients. Eventually I would like to scale my marketing efforts.

Getting our network to participate can help get things moving, but it can be hard to sort through the bias. We've found more thoughtful blogs, newsletters, building in the open can help attract those early users that are passionate on the space. They are often not representative of a general user, so it's something to keep in mind as you make product or business decisions.

In my case, I sent a cold email or DM to people on social media.

This what I have done so far for my SaaS Doppio.sh :

• few google ads because my budget is limited,
• SEO articles, also the documentation of the service act as SEO,
• Cold contact over LinkedIn with a tool called waalaxy

Cold called small businesses that needed it most.

For my product (Runcaster on the Apple App Store), I got help from friends and family for my first 5, Twitter tweets and targeted hashtags for the first 100.

Thought Reddit would be a nice place, but self-promotion is really frowned upon in many communities. Or maybe I don't know how to use it yet.

I understand that finding customers can be challenging, especially in a competitive market. Keep persevering and exploring different strategies. It takes time and effort, but with persistence, you'll discover effective approaches to reach and engage your target audience. Stay focused and adaptable, and success will come your way.

I shared the offer (before there as a website, branding, name, etc) to full-service clients who were rolling off of our long-term engagements. I also shared it as a "down sell" to anyone who had a sales call with me but didn't convert to a client. Did my first 5 sales this way!

On Freelancer, believe it or not, and we actually stuck to it and lately became #1 trending

Started w/ the website then --> Indie Hacker, Product Hunt, TinyAlternatives, Linkedin.

I think LinkedIn is a great platform for finding first customers. But it is a long game. A simple sale never happens.
As in all things, think about it in the long run, what kind of company you want to lead, what emotions you want your customers to have when they think about you and your product.
Providing value and being authentic in your conversations with prospects on Linkedin will let you stand out.

Started with text messages to friends, then built a public instagram account that hit our niche, then finally was off to the races thanks to referrals

Thanks but i have complete this milestone .it works.

Well since my Auto-Swioer was a product of a reddit discussion i got directly most likely all my first 100 customers from there.

Later it got expended on the Chrome Webstore who is still the biggest bringer of new Customers.

1st , 10th and 100th customers are basically all from Product Hunt.

1st customer through Facebook Community. Yet to reach to 10th Customer

We have received initial customers from envato market

I got my first customer from Fiverr. It is really hard to find the customer in the start and build repo for the company.

I got my 1st project from my friend's reference.

First customer was one of my old companies that I used to work for. 10th customer, we got through our closed beta program (maybe I'll do a post about this). Hoping to hit 100 soon

I've grown our community of sales professionals from 0-1500+ in 1 year using only LinkedIn.

Post content about the problems your business solves, and reach out to people that engage. Rinse and repeat.

Leverage social media, Social media can be a powerful tool for reaching a large audience and driving traffic to a website. Creating social media accounts for DubaiVacanciez.com on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and use these channels to promote the website and engage with users helps me alot to grow my audiance.

https://www.dubaivacanciez.com

I started 281sport.com with contacts I had from sports I was involved in, same case for designsuccess.co

Through DMs first, then after setting my website, used these tools to learn more about my first customers and catch them:

• Loom: to get notifications when the video is first viewed, also viewing figures (as well as who viewed it)

• Hotjar: gives behavior analytics and feedback data to help empathize with and understand customers.

• Sendbird: instantly chat with the customers using a chatbot.

Here is a resource where i summarized this question based on personal experience:

https://friendsofsaas.substack.com/p/how-to-get-your-first-10-customers

Thanks, I am promoting my client's website https://jackpotwala.in/ through famous platforms.

I posted marketing video on youtube and it was found by my first customer via organic search. Even 10 years ago, schemes were the same! :)

I've heard Facebook groups can be good.

I posted on revelant subreddits about an app I am planning to create to solve a problem and people suscribed to my landing page, now they are customers of the app

Starting selling my products for FREE to get 100 customers. Phewww! I create company profile templates, pitch deck templates, financial model templates, etc. View full product catalog - https://airpitch.gumroad.com/

Not related to business; but when I started freelancing, I often post my design services to Facebook groups, and through that I got my 1st ever client from South Africa.

Thanks for asking this... we just launched an incredibly early-stage product (plug) and customer acquisition (both now and later) is always on our minds.

This thread has been interesting to read through and I feel like recurring theme is "go to where your customers are". Feel like I should loop back here weekly to keep reminding myself of this, I keep getting sidetracked.

I got my first users from Twitter, by sending a lot of DMs and commenting tweets from people who could be interested in my product

First customer, a friend of yours or someone, you got to know personally.
10th customer, someone, you reached out to via mail, phone, marketing campain etc.
100th customer, someone, who has heard of your product by a blog post, social media article, in the news or another channel.

So, from 1st to 99th you have to INVEST (financially), to make it happen.

Starting a business can be challenging, especially when it comes to acquiring the first customers. Using family and friends is a great way to start, as they can provide a solid foundation of support and can spread the word about your business. Quora and private forums are also great platforms to reach potential customers and network with other businesses. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for connecting with people in your industry, and can help you find potential customers and business partners. By sharing your experiences, you can help others to get started and succeed in their own business endeavors.

I think that sites like ProductHunt and Co. are a good first place to present your product. But what becomes more and more important is that it has a good branding with information that has an added value for the customer. This can be e.g. a blog where you cover topics that have to do with the product. Also, it is still effective to write cold emails.

I'm using linkedin and its been amazing, its costly but amazing feedback.

For every product I launched, I first figure out where the people from my niche are active (facebook, twitter, instagram, etc), like groups, spaces etc. Then I snick into these and share value (article, free content..) or ask if anyone is struggling with the problem I'm trying to solve. Finally, I reach them and offer them a very good deal + a lifetime discount for my product if they are interested. And here you go, you got someone interested in your product and who paid for a year :)

Hey Hamed, first post here :)

My first customer was really myself. It's the only way I was going to attempt to build something -- I had to want to use it myself. Then from some tweets and building relationship with my community, I said I had a MVP product, made up pricing on the spot, and got my first sale.

We had a pretty niche product, and got super lucky that our first paying customer found us through a google search... and just so happened to be one of the worlds largest consulting organizations! Niching down to a specific problem for a specific audience helped make that possible.

AppSumo, Product Hunt

Hey Hamed, Try running a Lifetime deal for your product to acquire more users.

Honestly it's never been easy, I've been working hard to make easier.

This room is specifically made for indie hackers to show their product and connect

https://vibehut.io/rooms/6304c25f8ac27200164bd65f

Please use it, open 24/7 and subscribe to be notified when events are added (daily/ weekly)

At Investables I built a waiting list with my Co-Founder, then we literally posted in all across the web: reddit, discord, slack channels, forums, linkedIN.

We got like 20 investors at the end, probably not so bad, not the best result for a fintech app. Super important to have family & Friends to support you

Here’s the breakdown for me…

1 - Friends
10 - Facebook groups
100 - still trying to get there!

Thanks for posting. The answers are really interesting.

For Spinal (and all my previous SaaS too) the first handful where founder friends that needed a similar solution. Some word-of-mouth pushed it past 10 in the first weeks.

From there it really is content marketing (mostly high search intent pages, in the case of Spinal).

Quora is a great place where you can directly find a question and answer it with your solution.
Of course, the easiest way to achieve the goal is the good support from relatives and friends, but that is meaningless. Relatively speaking, doing business with strangers is easier to succeed.

First 5 came from talking w/ people about the new company when seeking their feedback on the biz model

Contribute to communities that involve potential customers, and than once you ready share with them your product

I won't consider friends and families because strangers tends to be good for business because friends and families pulls down business ideas and market, just my opinion