Totally agree. It's easier and easier to build a product and harder and hard to market/sell your product.
Here’s what I’ve seen help in getting those crucial first 10 customers:
Be brutally specific about who you're helping: Which ones, where, with what exact pain, and why now. This is your ICP.
Write your Dream 10 list (real names, real companies). These are your early believers. Go deep into their problems and show up where they already are.
Your unfair advantage right now is your founder network, your story and your industry experience. This is where the “why you” matters most. And honestly, every B2B founder needs to be able to pull in 10 clients from their own network off the bat.
Early traction comes from being focused, obsessed and specific. You need to be honest with yourself and get those first three things down before you build or go make lists with Apollo.
Another way to think about it is it is very, very hard to break into an industry as an outsider. Impossible? No, but you'll need to be very savvy on the marketing front and really do the homework. So not having much of a network is likely going to be the riskiest part of the OP's startup.
I am facing somewhat similar problem. I do know a couple of folks who are kind of guiding our product development. But, we need experts and it is indeed very hard to break in as an outsider.
Have you found any solutions or hacks that worked for you?
Sure thing. TL:DR; If your market won't even respond to a friendly email or outreach for you to learn from them (not sell), how will you market to them later? That's your first test. Can you talk to 20 people who you think are your ICP?
Here are some pearls of wisdom from over a decade building B2B SaaS aka there are no hacks:
1) It's definitely easier to build a product than to build a business. VCs invest in businesses.
2) Sales & Marketing need to be a step or two ahead of product development (as a product person, I hate to say this but it's true) so that you build the thing the market wants, not just what the founder wants
3) It's a grind. All the break out successes are either outliers or took 7 years of hard knocks to get there or are well capitalized and the founders have diluted themselves away. Either way, it's a grind
4) Do not skip customer discovery. Feel free to pick up a heavy book by Steve Blank to learn more, but this is probably the most important step. I see so, so, so many startups in GSD mode and realize they don't actually know their market
5) Your founding team needs to lead marketing, sales and product, not hired guns, fractionals or advisors. You'll spend a lot of money going nowhere if you're not careful.
Getting your sales channel right is its own part of the work. LinkedIn is not the only platform. You can sell office SaaS on TikTok too. There's the ad platforms. There's funky stuff like Tumblr and Pinterest. Discord, Facebook groups, etc. Try tools like Blotato which lets you build a following in multiple platforms.
PMF isn't getting to 10 customers - you simply don't have it right now. That doesn't mean the product needs a change, it could mean you're targeting the wrong market. Or you could be selling the wrong part of your product.
You should absolutely not rely on network too, and it's one of the more inefficient ways to market.
Where did you find the first 10 people you talked to when making sure you were building a product people want in the first place? Call them back. Have them try it. If they like it, tell them to tell other people.
I think the point they were trying to make is that all of this is much easier if you get customers before you start building anything. Then you know you're actually building something that people will pay for instead of possibly just wasting time on something no one wants.
The first 10 customers have to be your close friends and acquaintances. For that push start, they should support you, or else some people become their own first customer to get the number on the dashboard showing "10 sold."
Like the RL strategy that works for sellers when someone tells you to park their car in front of their cart to trick people into believing you are their customer.
The first few customers always have to be your friends or acquaintances. Or in some cases you have to be your own customer to get that "10 sold" tag on your site
You know that RL strategy that works for sellers when they make you park their car in front of their cart to trick people into believing you are their customer/buyer.
Customers in what space? Enterprise bears minimal resemblance to Pre-K Education, which bears minimal resemblance to Small Business, which bears minimal resemblance to ...
When we started our voice AI company 8 years ago, the first customers came from doing a ton of free consulting work. We'd reach out to companies in target industries and offer to analyze their customer service call data for free, then show them what voice AI could do with their actual data.
It felt like being taken advantage of sometimes, honestly. We'd spend weeks building custom demos and proof-of-concepts without any guaranteed return. But when you don't have a network in the industry, you have to do that kind of work to prove your credibility.
The breakthrough was realizing we weren't just giving away free work - we were learning what these companies actually needed vs what we thought they needed. Those free consulting projects taught us more about product-market fit than any survey could have.
By the time we had 10 real paying customers, we'd probably done free work for 30+ companies. The key was setting boundaries about when to transition from free to paid. You have to judge that timing yourself based on the relationship and how much value you're providing.
Not sure what your audience is but have you tried actually trying to sell to these people in person? I think the vulnerability of it is exactly why people respond to it more.
Are there any events where they might hang out in? If you live in a major city, Lu.ma is a good place to check, but also Meetup as well. How about conferences or social events?
My experience: I've had a service called HRM.monster, the domain is up for renewal on the 19th of this month, and am thinking on letting it lapse, for a name change - it is off a product called HRMgo, I have had 0 users since the purchase a year ago, and spent $750 for it from a Flippa ad thinking I hit the money spot. Eventually ended up finding out that the software was $69 package download and not custom built, as the main website led me to believe. I tried to build relationships with various people to gain their trust in providing services to them for a bridge to their clientele (not compete, but add additional support services), a win win with the company and their clientele. No one wanted to talk with me. I heard comments later-on that said I wasn't made for being in the business. It's brutal.
While my experience may be different than yours, there are other factors at play in with God having something todo with it. There is no greater thing than word of mouth, and the house is the answer.
I been trying for over a year and too chose to use email as letting clients know I existed, I didn't get anything in return.
I would try talking to influencers who you think would benefit by a simple DM or email; you might want to look into LinkedIn's higher tiered contact searching for better contact specific to your demographic, and services such as audience lab if you have the ability of spending $500/mo you can get a few contact lists that have an excess of 300k+ lines of info w/ various other relevant data that you could also sell additional services to.
There's also building relationships through advertising on Facebook, Google, etc., there's also vibe.co, and caasie.co... budget minded services for getting your name and caasie allows targeting specific towards your industry through video ads... where as vibe puts you on billboards.
While I don't have all the answers, having something different than the crowd is also a sell, like creating a service and building that need that answers a problem you deal with at work problem; something that you could turn into a serivce, and that also is viable for other people en masse.
It is really an inundation of services out there as you've stated. The early ones caught on, had fewer people contacting them.
The ones with financial backing win, because of the marketing factor, and the NEED building for the product. The best thing is to think of a project that women need, as they're the hard core consumer. I can't think of buying myself anything except food in the last 10 years, the occasional new pair of shoes, and slacks/shirt. I've used the same computer for the last 10 years, and its virtually my life rn...
It's best to join a chamber and sell your services to on what you can do vs your product, you sound pretty sound in the AI generated apps, so you've got that going for you, just need ideas, keep building until someone finds a need for your services, you could essentially steal someones idea, unless you end up getting requested to sign an NDA with said person if you went through the chamber.
Totally agree. It's easier and easier to build a product and harder and hard to market/sell your product.
Here’s what I’ve seen help in getting those crucial first 10 customers:
Be brutally specific about who you're helping: Which ones, where, with what exact pain, and why now. This is your ICP.
Write your Dream 10 list (real names, real companies). These are your early believers. Go deep into their problems and show up where they already are.
Your unfair advantage right now is your founder network, your story and your industry experience. This is where the “why you” matters most. And honestly, every B2B founder needs to be able to pull in 10 clients from their own network off the bat.
Early traction comes from being focused, obsessed and specific. You need to be honest with yourself and get those first three things down before you build or go make lists with Apollo.
You are correct, founders forget their best edge early on is them, their story, their network, their obsession.
Another way to think about it is it is very, very hard to break into an industry as an outsider. Impossible? No, but you'll need to be very savvy on the marketing front and really do the homework. So not having much of a network is likely going to be the riskiest part of the OP's startup.
I am facing somewhat similar problem. I do know a couple of folks who are kind of guiding our product development. But, we need experts and it is indeed very hard to break in as an outsider.
Have you found any solutions or hacks that worked for you?
Sure thing. TL:DR; If your market won't even respond to a friendly email or outreach for you to learn from them (not sell), how will you market to them later? That's your first test. Can you talk to 20 people who you think are your ICP?
Here are some pearls of wisdom from over a decade building B2B SaaS aka there are no hacks:
1) It's definitely easier to build a product than to build a business. VCs invest in businesses.
2) Sales & Marketing need to be a step or two ahead of product development (as a product person, I hate to say this but it's true) so that you build the thing the market wants, not just what the founder wants
3) It's a grind. All the break out successes are either outliers or took 7 years of hard knocks to get there or are well capitalized and the founders have diluted themselves away. Either way, it's a grind
4) Do not skip customer discovery. Feel free to pick up a heavy book by Steve Blank to learn more, but this is probably the most important step. I see so, so, so many startups in GSD mode and realize they don't actually know their market
5) Your founding team needs to lead marketing, sales and product, not hired guns, fractionals or advisors. You'll spend a lot of money going nowhere if you're not careful.
I built a Facebook group / community of my target market.
0. Created Facebook Group
1. Optimized my FB profile as a landing page for this community
2. Join all of the other similar groups
3. Send friend reqs to prominent members in other groups
4. Post statuses on personal profile / in FB group creating value for this audience
5. Funnel / invite people into the FB group
Launched 2 products, both failed, but the community came through for me.
#1: Got to $14k MRR in 8 months
#2: Sold ~30 annual subscriptions with a PPT pre-launch
Ok. What was the product?
Getting your sales channel right is its own part of the work. LinkedIn is not the only platform. You can sell office SaaS on TikTok too. There's the ad platforms. There's funky stuff like Tumblr and Pinterest. Discord, Facebook groups, etc. Try tools like Blotato which lets you build a following in multiple platforms.
PMF isn't getting to 10 customers - you simply don't have it right now. That doesn't mean the product needs a change, it could mean you're targeting the wrong market. Or you could be selling the wrong part of your product.
You should absolutely not rely on network too, and it's one of the more inefficient ways to market.
I don´t know anything about your project but maybe you can leave the office and go for it
Where did you find the first 10 people you talked to when making sure you were building a product people want in the first place? Call them back. Have them try it. If they like it, tell them to tell other people.
I never had 10 customers . Hence, the question.
One or two people who paid I had are looking for agency type solution and can't provide substantial feedback.
I think the point they were trying to make is that all of this is much easier if you get customers before you start building anything. Then you know you're actually building something that people will pay for instead of possibly just wasting time on something no one wants.
The first 10 customers have to be your close friends and acquaintances. For that push start, they should support you, or else some people become their own first customer to get the number on the dashboard showing "10 sold." Like the RL strategy that works for sellers when someone tells you to park their car in front of their cart to trick people into believing you are their customer.
The first few customers always have to be your friends or acquaintances. Or in some cases you have to be your own customer to get that "10 sold" tag on your site You know that RL strategy that works for sellers when they make you park their car in front of their cart to trick people into believing you are their customer/buyer.
Why did you comment twice?
Customers in what space? Enterprise bears minimal resemblance to Pre-K Education, which bears minimal resemblance to Small Business, which bears minimal resemblance to ...
Customers in SaaS for video marketing. Primarily targeted towards tech companies.
When we started our voice AI company 8 years ago, the first customers came from doing a ton of free consulting work. We'd reach out to companies in target industries and offer to analyze their customer service call data for free, then show them what voice AI could do with their actual data.
It felt like being taken advantage of sometimes, honestly. We'd spend weeks building custom demos and proof-of-concepts without any guaranteed return. But when you don't have a network in the industry, you have to do that kind of work to prove your credibility.
The breakthrough was realizing we weren't just giving away free work - we were learning what these companies actually needed vs what we thought they needed. Those free consulting projects taught us more about product-market fit than any survey could have.
By the time we had 10 real paying customers, we'd probably done free work for 30+ companies. The key was setting boundaries about when to transition from free to paid. You have to judge that timing yourself based on the relationship and how much value you're providing.
Not sure what your audience is but have you tried actually trying to sell to these people in person? I think the vulnerability of it is exactly why people respond to it more.
"have much of a network." There is your answer, basically walking up to them and talking to them.
This looks naive but where do I approach them to build the network?
Are there any events where they might hang out in? If you live in a major city, Lu.ma is a good place to check, but also Meetup as well. How about conferences or social events?
I'm still waiting for customer n=1.
Don't wait, go get them.
My experience: I've had a service called HRM.monster, the domain is up for renewal on the 19th of this month, and am thinking on letting it lapse, for a name change - it is off a product called HRMgo, I have had 0 users since the purchase a year ago, and spent $750 for it from a Flippa ad thinking I hit the money spot. Eventually ended up finding out that the software was $69 package download and not custom built, as the main website led me to believe. I tried to build relationships with various people to gain their trust in providing services to them for a bridge to their clientele (not compete, but add additional support services), a win win with the company and their clientele. No one wanted to talk with me. I heard comments later-on that said I wasn't made for being in the business. It's brutal.
While my experience may be different than yours, there are other factors at play in with God having something todo with it. There is no greater thing than word of mouth, and the house is the answer.
I been trying for over a year and too chose to use email as letting clients know I existed, I didn't get anything in return.
I would try talking to influencers who you think would benefit by a simple DM or email; you might want to look into LinkedIn's higher tiered contact searching for better contact specific to your demographic, and services such as audience lab if you have the ability of spending $500/mo you can get a few contact lists that have an excess of 300k+ lines of info w/ various other relevant data that you could also sell additional services to.
There's also building relationships through advertising on Facebook, Google, etc., there's also vibe.co, and caasie.co... budget minded services for getting your name and caasie allows targeting specific towards your industry through video ads... where as vibe puts you on billboards.
While I don't have all the answers, having something different than the crowd is also a sell, like creating a service and building that need that answers a problem you deal with at work problem; something that you could turn into a serivce, and that also is viable for other people en masse.
It is really an inundation of services out there as you've stated. The early ones caught on, had fewer people contacting them.
The ones with financial backing win, because of the marketing factor, and the NEED building for the product. The best thing is to think of a project that women need, as they're the hard core consumer. I can't think of buying myself anything except food in the last 10 years, the occasional new pair of shoes, and slacks/shirt. I've used the same computer for the last 10 years, and its virtually my life rn...
It's best to join a chamber and sell your services to on what you can do vs your product, you sound pretty sound in the AI generated apps, so you've got that going for you, just need ideas, keep building until someone finds a need for your services, you could essentially steal someones idea, unless you end up getting requested to sign an NDA with said person if you went through the chamber.
Sounds like you got a people problem though ;-)
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