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Edward Cederlund

How did you get your first paying customers?

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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 🙏

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Rand Strauss
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.
Frelan Hardware
Enhance your garage door's appeal with a touch of elegance and functionality. Imagine the stunning contrast of Antique Brass Door Handles against a backdrop of your choice – be it an artistic mural, a vibrant vertical garden, or even an interactive chalkboard for messages or reminders. Frelan Hardware offers the perfect blend of timeless style and practicality, allowing you to transform your garage door into a captivating feature that reflects your unique creativity.
Finn Guha
Had a 50% discount on my very first product and after promoting this ( by writing an article on Medium ) , I got my first customer quickly. So a discount worked for me
Edward Cederlund
@vimfinn interesting. many on PH seem to do discounts as well when they launch. do you have a link to the article?
Naveed Rehman
@vimfinn link please 😊?
Matt Koscielak
@vimfinn @naveed_rehman It seems like Finn uses the same handle on Medium.com like on PH, so you could easily find his articles :)
Finn Guha
@naveed_rehman @havoc_matt I ´m sorry, totally forget replying. I had already deleted the initial article but it was similar to this one https://medium.com/@vimfinn/use-...
Aaron McKeehan
@vimfinn Its funny, my first paying customer was the day after I ended a 50% off deal.
Sven Radavics
Twitter DMs Cold emails Brand partnerships are our biggest source
Edward Cederlund
@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
Sven Radavics
@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.
Edward Cederlund
@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?
Sven Radavics
@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.
Varun Varma
Founder led cold email to prospects
Kashi Ks
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.
Paris Vega
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
Gaurav Parvadiya
He found Twinr organically and setup a demo with us. After the demo he was convinced and purchased a subscription.
Maxime Beaupré
I literally walked door to door to speak with business owners.
Edward Cederlund
@maxime_beaupre ouff 🔥 this is probably the hardest way to sell. But if you can do this you can do anything! Respect 🫡
Elias Fares
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.
Edward Cederlund
@elifares congratulations! where did your first customer come from?
Elias Fares
@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).
Ivan Ralic
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 😄
Edward Cederlund
@ralic thanks great stuff! nice to hear that you got your first paying customers from here. lifetime deal offers is something we're also exploring. and i'm sure that interviewing first paying customers really helped you further define your ICP and get many valuable insights. congrats!
Ivan Ralic
@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 😄
Ghost Kitty
Comment Deleted
Denis Ciccale
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.
Edward Cederlund
@tdecs haha wonderful story! where in argentina were you, and where was your customer? love that place :)
Denis Ciccale
@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.
Edward Cederlund
@tdecs ahh what a wonderful memory. i love your country. i used to live in buenos aires and spent a lot of time around merlo (en el oeste). 2004... back then 26 pesos was good money!
Aliaksei Saskevich
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.
Sreenatha Reddy K R
Hello Ed, I got my first paying customer way back in 2004 through odesk. Later, They renamed the platform to upwork.
Edward Cederlund
@sreenatha i remember the days of odesk! golden times. what exactly did you do on odesk to get your first customer? thanks for sharing
Udit Tehri
It was 1 January. Got my new year present
Edward Cederlund
@udittehri nice. started off the year on the right foot, congrats! you mind sharing how did you get your new year present?
Ashok Singh
through personal network connections
Albin Aronsson
Cold reachout > demo meeting > pilot > paying
Nikhil Sharma
I got my first paying client, some one of colleuge refer me for web analytics tracking and data reporting through looker studio by adding sources like MySQL, Google analytics, event tracking through GTM
Daniele Pais
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!
Artem Holub
It was tough, in general through pain😂