How did you acquire your first paid customer and what did you learn from it?
Sharath Kuruganty
51 replies
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Stefan Smiljkovic@stefan_smiljkovic
Wire Flow
The first paying customer actually acquired us. He found it somehow, and literally said "take my money, I wanna get in. I don't care if it's ready or not".
We were still creating Stripe checkout integration, but in the end, he ended up sending money directly over PayPal and we gave him access. Our first customer was worth $1,000
I am talking about the https://automatio.co project.
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Bakup.io
@stefan_smiljkovic Did you ever figure out how that user found you, very impressive for pre-launch!?
Wire Flow
@luke_embrey Well, he was one of the 4,600 people who subscribed for our early access (not paying subscribers) https://www.screencast.com/t/AcG.... He probably found one of my videos I created back then and shared on YT, FB groups, IH and other communities.
When you build something people really need, they will find you.
I had a chat with someone about my work and she became my first paid subscriber.
My story is rather simple.
Someone liked what I was wearing and I told them I made it. Word of mouth is evergreen.
Sober October Challenge
I accidentally triggered an "end of free trial" paywall to be sent to all users. Face with tears of joy
Surprisingly some who had only just started their free trial converted.
Very anti-climatic haha
Poppins
@kyleighsmith this is pretty good!
Summitry
@kyleighsmith Love to know the story behind that 'accident'!
I wrote a series of post on the problem with startup marketing that was picked up by TechCrunch. (A few months of organic traffic). The client came from reading the article, signing up to a startup marketing project I offered. I learned customers from this source speak a different way to startup founders that come in from, say, social media. I also learned that if you stick "growth" in front of services, it opens up the market a little more ;)
Our first paid customer was from Russia and came through Product Hunt soon after our launch.
Resumey.Pro was a free product when we first launched it. But after receiving positive feedback from the PH community and suggestions to monetize it, we introduced payments. It was a game-changer for us! Seeing users actually paying to use our platform was surreal. It also motivated us to build more and build better to help our users.
First customer is always bring hope to success of business and service.
Metaschool
I was approaching creators to try Airschool.com. I think after 50 cold emails, one creator agreed to try and I made my first dollar too.
PHPRunner
In 2003 I released a product, uploaded it to download websites, and had a dozen of customers in the first month.
I won't say things were that easy back in the day but having a reasonably priced product and a good product-market fit helped a lot.
We got an inbound query on LinkedIn from the founder of another startup. He wanted to use our platform for something we had not even thought of.
Finalized commercials on the first call.
But this was after months of no paid customers.
For us it took a decent amount of time. We are a browser company so we made sure the user falls in love with product and sets it as their default browser before asking for any form of payment. We learned to build publicly with our users makes them a lot more likely to trust us enough to pay us!
Undefeated Underdogs Podcast
MyFocusSpace
We got our first customers by posting on discord https://www.myfocusspace.com and also through referrals on medium!
Our Product Hunt launch got picked up by a very legit news source that wrote a review about our tool. Several readers immediately signed up for our premium plan 🙌
👉 Credibility & trust do matter!
@soleneoudet Thats great, Can I please know more info on how you got that opportunity
This was many years ago but it was quite simple. We just went down to a local meetup for new business owners and casually asked if someone wanted our services. We got our first two customers the very same evening. I guess the learnings here is the not disregard the offline world :)
URL Shortener
I am still working on getting my first paid customer for https://url.cafe [URL Shortener]. Right now I have bing ads and I am planning to get in touch with some digital marketers.
When I start a new project, it is free until it is good enough to add a premium version. Once I hit that level, a small percent of users are converting to the premium version.
I learned that users have no problem paying for the premium if the free version is good and useful.
HackerPulse
By doing things that don't scale - just talking to customers, offering them trials, extended trials and building personal relationships!
Intent by Upflowy
My first time ever selling software, I got an introduction from a friend to the decision maker. I created a powerpoint mockup and presented it like I would a live app and managed to get them across the line.
My learning was you can sell software before you have software but you have to paddle incredibly quickly to deliver, lots of communication dealt with the speed of delivery!
@matthew_browne1 Totally agree with you, There's plenty of examples for this
Many of my early customers tend to be face-to-face, networking, or 1st and 2nd degree connections. Selling face to face (or at least over Zoom or on the phone) helps me pick up on all sorts of cues you miss when you're fully virtual right out of the gates. I can see when they are confused, when they have questions, which pitches work or don't work, what their actual objections or issues are specifically, etc. Then, I use that to refine my copy, my FAQs, my marketing in other places, and just kind of expand from there.
I was like wow, God is in control and about making it for me. This is real OMG