The first 2-3 customers almost without exception come from the founder's warm network, including friends, former colleagues, school classmates, or people connected by a single introduction.
Link to this point #1Y Combinator
How to Get Your First 10 Customers
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Overview
Max Kolysh of Y Combinator explains practical tactics for startups to acquire their first 10 customers. He emphasizes the importance of founders leveraging their personal networks and implementing unscalable methods, rather than relying on automation tools or cold emails.
Key points
A healthcare startup founder made it their primary job for several months to respond to complaints on Reddit and Facebook, posting 2-5 times a day. Although they were shadow-banned from several subreddits, they acquired many customers.
Link to this point #2One founder contacted salespeople up to the weekly connection limit on LinkedIn, and spoke with 200 salespeople before even building the product. About 50% of connection requests were accepted, and 20% of those converted into calls.
Link to this point #3A founder selling to lawyers offered to pay them $100-$200 per hour in exchange for product feedback, and about 30% of people accepted this offer. This method is especially effective in markets with high contract values.
Link to this point #4In-person customer visits are more effective than Zoom meetings. One founder flew to a single executive customer four weeks in a row, and despite the customer repeatedly rescheduling, eventually secured the deal.
Link to this point #5A single real conversation at a small, industry-specific conference shows a much higher conversion rate than sending a cold email to the same person. Founder dinners or happy hours for 6-10 people are more effective than large-scale events.
Link to this point #6Outreach emails should be kept under 75 words. The most important element is a clear call to action, and you must clearly state what you want from the recipient.
Link to this point #7Customers 1-3 typically come from your personal network, customers 4-10 come from unscalable methods, and only at the stage of customers 10-50 do automation tools like Apollo, Clay, and email sequences truly start to make sense.
Link to this point #8Framing sales outreach as 'asking for advice,' 'seeking mentorship,' or 'requesting a product review' is often a more effective foot in the door than a pure sales pitch.
Link to this point #9Reddit threads persist for years and appear in Google search results, so the work you do today will continue to pay off for a long time.
Link to this point #10Put this knowledge to work.
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