How did you get your first paying customers?
Edward Cederlund
87 replies
Hi everyone 👋
Would love to hear what you did to get your first paying customers outside of your family and friends group.
We’re about to roll out our product and I’m curious what has worked for you.
Thanks for sharing 🙏
Replies
Denis Ciccale@tdecs
Figma to Tailwind CSS
In 2004 I created a post in a couple of forums of back then, offering web development services in Argentina. I was 16yo, still in highschool, and someone contacted me through the forum, later by landline telephone, and it became my first customer.
He lived 400km away from me, and needed a website for his hardware store.
flash intros where hot back then, it's a pity because unfortunaley I don't think I can recover any of that website or anything I did back then, the computer was my parents' and they have switched device meanwhile, funny thing is that when I asked my mom if she formatted the disk before giving her computer away, she didn't understand what I was asking, so I like to believe that those projects of mine still exist somewhere.
Finally, I had 100% profit because I would use a combination of free services like, hosting providers, dns providers, and local domains in Argentina (.com.ar) were free back then, so I did not have any cost for hosting the website and keeping it online.
Share
Figma to Tailwind CSS
@cederlund I was living in Buenos Aires province (city called "Pilar") and my customer was somewhere near "Mar del Plata" (in the coast). Eeither between "Chascomús" (200km away from my address back then) and "Mar del Plata" (400km away) is what I remember.
The store was called "Pixel Computación" and he paid me through my dad's bank account, I charged 30$ ARS (or Argentine pesos) for the entire website, minus 4$ of the transfer cost which I didn't know that was gonna be paid by me, so I received a total of 26$ (ARS). which at the current conversion would be equivalent to 0.14 USD
anyhow I was so happy about this transaction
a part from the story, what I am trying currently to get a first paying customer, in very early stage is working closely with whom could be my potential customer, understand what I could solve for them in order for them to switch or to start using my product or service.
however the "working closely" looks like, could be me being their customer if I am offering a competing tool they currently use, or me doing free work for them and learn if my product/service does fix some problem they would pay for solving.
Sequoia: Men's Sexual Wellness
I would like to tell not about my first paying customer, but about first payments I got from my pet-projects.
I started my tech career with creating custom add-ons to Minecraft. After completing the first version of one of them, I started to publish it through author-content-delivery systems.
But the launch is not only about writing code and publishing release.
It is also about marketing and support. So I started to write on different forums, chats, groups... And after the first month of hard-working, I got my first payment.
intribe | Tinder for Brand Partnerships
Twitter DMs
Cold emails
Brand partnerships are our biggest source
@sven_radavics nice! would love to hear more about what you're doing with your brand partnerships. do you mind sharing an example? thanks a lot
intribe | Tinder for Brand Partnerships
@cederlund Sure. If very much depends on your product. Checked out MicroMove and you're a health & wellness app as I understand it.
I could see you partnering with other wellness apps that aren't competitive like meditation apps, sleep apps etc. You could do a webinar together, guest post, straight up link exchange to/from existing content etc.
You could also do social media give away competitions and not just with other apps but physical goods like protein bars/products, neutropics, vitamin companies, wellness retreats etc.
The list is endless.
Here's an example of a webinar I did last week that was a joint webinar with a partner where we talked about partnerships for giveaways/sweepstakes etc.
@sven_radavics thank you so much for writing all this. very insightful. have shared with the team and we will definitely explore this further. seems like you're interested in wellness?
intribe | Tinder for Brand Partnerships
@cederlund Absolutely interested in wellness. I'm no fanatic but I believe a lot of issues most people have are under our own control. In my early 30s I had 'back issues', high blood pressure and was borderline pre-diabetic.
My excuse was that I was away from home 3 weeks out of 4 and often would work full days in five different countries in one week. Lots of hours 'sleeping' on planes instead of hotel rooms.
All those issues I fixed for myself with reasonably simple lifestyle changes. I'm no saint and still have bad habits but at 51 I have zero back pain, long way from pre-diabetic and only slightly high blood pressure.
So yeah, kinda into wellness and active lifestyles.
intribe | Tinder for Brand Partnerships
@cederlund Whoa, I didn't realise that would embed 🤦♂️😂
I just shared this on a growth hacker tv interview and it was from Craigslist! Free to advertise still to this day!
My product isn't yet launched. But so far, two exciting customers have found me. They look forward to using the product to run political campaigns for 1/20th of the usual cost while forming actual relationships with voters. They discovered me through SEO and search.
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@rand_strauss nice! Keep it up 👍
I started a whole podcast about this exact topic! It's called the First Customers podcast. I've learned that some of the most successful companies take time to connect with their target audience and build trust within the community they aim to serve with their product or service. After learning from the community, they launch with their messaging, product features, or service structure right on target. To learn about the stories, sales strategies, and tactics of other founders and entrepreneurs listen to the show:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@firstcu...
Podcast Platforms: https://anchor.fm/first-customers
@parisvega that’s smart! Thanks for sharing; will check it out :)
Hummin'
Hello Ed,
I got my first paying customer way back in 2004 through odesk. Later, They renamed the platform to upwork.
@sreenatha i remember the days of odesk! golden times. what exactly did you do on odesk to get your first customer? thanks for sharing
Cold reachout > demo meeting > pilot > paying
For me it's always organic traffic from Google, but I think it's not a good idea if you have something different that people are not looking for.
@koronowicz your SEO must be really good!
Flookup Data Wrangler
Listing on the Google Workspace Marketplace made users find Flookup before I had really started looking for them.
@getflookup that's interesting. did they have to search for something specific for Flookup to pop up?
Flookup Data Wrangler
@cederlund Yes! When they searched for words that are related to data cleaning and fuzzy matching, Flookup would appear amongst the first results.
All my SEO efforts built up from there.
Well, I guess most get first-paying customers from networks.
I would say it's better to go hard sell to people you do not know, this is a skill that every startup needs to learn. Here 3 simple ways you find them
* Go to startup networking events/marketing meetups to find those early adopters
* Write cold emails and LinkedIn messages asking people to try and buy
* Keep listing on sites and keep improving your SEO.
Keep writing FAQs till you get discovered for something unique your early customers want to solve. It's simple to write but super hard to execute. Once you overcome to
the initial hurdles the flywheel moves and as you iterate it starts spinning faster
Don't sell to people whose problems you cannot solve it will kill your energy and ability to move faster.
SocialBu
From online communities especially Quora & Reddit.
@heyumarkhan interesting. heard many do Reddit to engage with communities that share similar interests, build trust, and then convert if their product resonates with people. do you mind sharing what exactly you did on both Reddit and Quora to get your first paying customers? thanks
I talked about new web standards and CMS systems (early stages of WP and Joomla) to clients of the wine bar I was working for a few evening a week until a guy asked me if I could convert his HTML sites to Joomla...at that time I said yes....sure....than spent countless time learning the ropes at night after work or school...it was challenging....stackoverflow was not out yet....all learnt by hit and miss and a few websites that gave some basic suggestions...it was great overall...I would do it again!
@daniele_pais1 great side hustle! nice, thanks for sharing.
I literally walked door to door to speak with business owners.
@maxime_beaupre ouff 🔥 this is probably the hardest way to sell. But if you can do this you can do anything! Respect 🫡
Booomerang
We read the book TRACTION and started taking notes from there. So far we've...
- Launched our own website
- Launched our own blog
- Worked on SEO
- Got our social accounts setup (DMs)
- Cold emails
6 months after launching, we got our first paying customer.
Booomerang
@cederlund I'm working on an online marketplace for people to rent and lend items (www.booomerang.io). My first customer came from Facebook Marketplace - they wanted to rent a power tool (not buy one).
Collabwriting
I'm impressed how no one wrote ProductHunt 😂
Well, for Collabwriting we've got our first 10 paying customers by launching on ProductHunt.
➜ We were #3 product of the day
➜ We've made an irresistible short-lived Lifetime Deal Offer
➜ We've tested a lot beforehand our pricing, messaging & value proposition
➜ We've only launched our MVP
Product launching platforms give you a spike in visitors. So for us the main goal was to test if anyone would be interested in paying for our MVP and the bigger vision.
Don't hesitate to create a great offer for your early adopters. For us the interviews alone with our first paying customers, were one of the best things that happened since we started 😄
Collabwriting
@cederlund go with the LTD just make it short-lived (2-3 days) 😄
Their only purpose is to prove to you that you have super-early PMF.
Be aware that if you are planning on raising money investors really dislike LTDs so keeping them only as a proof and not a business model is important 😄
HuddleUp
Founder led cold email to prospects
@varunvarma91 good old cold outreach :) love it
@varunvarma91 never fails
Twinr - App Builder
He found Twinr organically and setup a demo with us. After the demo he was convinced and purchased a subscription.
@graham_patel that's great, congrats!
Twinr - App Builder
@cederlund thank you 🙏
@graham_patel Thats awesome!
LaunchPedia
Sharing on Communities and twitter
@karthik_tatikonda what did you share that you think worked best?
It was tough, in general through pain😂
@artem_holub_v hahah. no pain no gain uh