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Ask HN: How do you get first 10 customers?

18 points jcofai | 4 comments | 12 Jul 25 19:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.937s | source

Building is super cheap now but standing out among all AI noise has become so hard. I am seeing barely any response to my email and LinkedIn messages. These are not generic messages. They are personalized.

I am hearing similar stories from people I know. May be it is my network bias. I am building following on LinkedIn but I honestly hate it. I hate the facade of putting of expert hat and writing in stupid one sentence per line style.

The bar for customer acquisition is so high right now.

What can I do to get first 10 customers?

Please suggest for someone who don’t have much of a network.

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waldopat ◴[15 Jul 25 15:17 UTC] No.44572044[source]▶
Totally agree. It's easier and easier to build a product and harder and hard to market/sell your product.

Here’s what I’ve seen help in getting those crucial first 10 customers:

Be brutally specific about who you're helping: Which ones, where, with what exact pain, and why now. This is your ICP.

Write your Dream 10 list (real names, real companies). These are your early believers. Go deep into their problems and show up where they already are.

Your unfair advantage right now is your founder network, your story and your industry experience. This is where the “why you” matters most. And honestly, every B2B founder needs to be able to pull in 10 clients from their own network off the bat.

Early traction comes from being focused, obsessed and specific. You need to be honest with yourself and get those first three things down before you build or go make lists with Apollo.

replies(1): >>44572264 #
1. Davidon4 ◴[15 Jul 25 15:36 UTC] No.44572264[source]▶
You are correct, founders forget their best edge early on is them, their story, their network, their obsession.
replies(1): >>44573042 #
2. waldopat ◴[15 Jul 25 16:38 UTC] No.44573042[source]▶
Another way to think about it is it is very, very hard to break into an industry as an outsider. Impossible? No, but you'll need to be very savvy on the marketing front and really do the homework. So not having much of a network is likely going to be the riskiest part of the OP's startup.
replies(1): >>44574992 #
3. yumlogic ◴[15 Jul 25 19:35 UTC] No.44574992[source]▶
I am facing somewhat similar problem. I do know a couple of folks who are kind of guiding our product development. But, we need experts and it is indeed very hard to break in as an outsider.

Have you found any solutions or hacks that worked for you?

replies(1): >>44575182 #
4. waldopat ◴[15 Jul 25 19:56 UTC] No.44575182{3}[source]▶
Sure thing. TL:DR; If your market won't even respond to a friendly email or outreach for you to learn from them (not sell), how will you market to them later? That's your first test. Can you talk to 20 people who you think are your ICP?

Here are some pearls of wisdom from over a decade building B2B SaaS aka there are no hacks:

1) It's definitely easier to build a product than to build a business. VCs invest in businesses.

2) Sales & Marketing need to be a step or two ahead of product development (as a product person, I hate to say this but it's true) so that you build the thing the market wants, not just what the founder wants

3) It's a grind. All the break out successes are either outliers or took 7 years of hard knocks to get there or are well capitalized and the founders have diluted themselves away. Either way, it's a grind

4) Do not skip customer discovery. Feel free to pick up a heavy book by Steve Blank to learn more, but this is probably the most important step. I see so, so, so many startups in GSD mode and realize they don't actually know their market

5) Your founding team needs to lead marketing, sales and product, not hired guns, fractionals or advisors. You'll spend a lot of money going nowhere if you're not careful.