Many founders start their customer search with cold email, LinkedIn, and prospecting tools. But the first 10 customers rarely come from a tool. It starts somewhere else: your network, showing up in person, and a willingness to do things that don't scale.
In this episode of Startup School, YC Visiting Partner Max Kolysh draws on dozens of YC founder stories to explain how to identify the right buyers, start conversations, and turn them into your first customers.
I guess I am very atypical.
My first customer came from Reddit outreach, and also my second, and third and so on. None came from personal network (never really even tried that, maybe i should)
I know its going to stop being so effective at at some point, but so far so good.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Imagine 3 states of a potential customer:
1. They have no knowledge of your product/service;
2. They are aware of it and consider it valuable and correctly priced;
3. They actually buy it.
Digital media (email/LinkedIn/Insta/X/etc.) moves people from 1 to 2.
Moving people from 2 to 3 ain't gonna happen with "awareness." You have to get in front of someone and close the sale. There is a lot of stuff in the store that I think is good and fairly priced. But I don't buy the entire store every time I visit. But, if someone in the store shows me one item and gives me a good story, pretty good chance I'm walking out with it. One item out of thousands. Why? Because a human moved me from 2 to 3.
Water doesn't boil at 100° - you have to add a little bit more energy to initiate a phase change. No different.
Many founders start their customer search with cold email, LinkedIn, and prospecting tools. But the first 10 customers rarely come from a tool. It starts somewhere else: your network, showing up in person, and a willingness to do things that don't scale.
In this episode of Startup School, YC Visiting Partner Max Kolysh draws on dozens of YC founder stories to explain how to identify the right buyers, start conversations, and turn them into your first customers.
There is related post from a year ago. 354 comments. Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970837
I guess I am very atypical. My first customer came from Reddit outreach, and also my second, and third and so on. None came from personal network (never really even tried that, maybe i should)
I know its going to stop being so effective at at some point, but so far so good. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
He says to use Reddit in the video! That was one of my takeaway messages.
Yeah, but he says customers 4-10, not the first and the second the third, he says use personal network for that, right?
Imagine 3 states of a potential customer: 1. They have no knowledge of your product/service; 2. They are aware of it and consider it valuable and correctly priced; 3. They actually buy it.
Digital media (email/LinkedIn/Insta/X/etc.) moves people from 1 to 2.
Moving people from 2 to 3 ain't gonna happen with "awareness." You have to get in front of someone and close the sale. There is a lot of stuff in the store that I think is good and fairly priced. But I don't buy the entire store every time I visit. But, if someone in the store shows me one item and gives me a good story, pretty good chance I'm walking out with it. One item out of thousands. Why? Because a human moved me from 2 to 3.
Water doesn't boil at 100° - you have to add a little bit more energy to initiate a phase change. No different.
Why the first 10? These tips might work for the first 20, 30 or even 50 customers, depending on how much time/money they require.
Ok, we've taken 10 customers out of the title above.
Who said it was base 10?
Every base is base 10.
I didn't specify base 10!
Base 3628800 is pretty unusual, I wouldn't have specified it either.