frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: How do you get first 10 customers?

8•jcofai•18h ago
Building is super cheap now but standing out among all AI noise has become so hard. I am seeing barely any response to my email and LinkedIn messages. These are not generic messages. They are personalized.

I am hearing similar stories from people I know. May be it is my network bias. I am building following on LinkedIn but I honestly hate it. I hate the facade of putting of expert hat and writing in stupid one sentence per line style.

The bar for customer acquisition is so high right now.

What can I do to get first 10 customers?

Please suggest for someone who don’t have much of a network.

Comments

bell-cot•18h ago
Customers in what space? Enterprise bears minimal resemblance to Pre-K Education, which bears minimal resemblance to Small Business, which bears minimal resemblance to ...
jcofai•15h ago
Customers in SaaS for video marketing. Primarily targeted towards tech companies.
codingdave•16h ago
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.
jcofai•15h ago
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.

wild_egg•12h ago
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.
vinibrito•15h ago
"have much of a network." There is your answer, basically walking up to them and talking to them.
jcofai•15h ago
This looks naive but where do I approach them to build the network?
mips_avatar•12h ago
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.
mortsmel•12h ago
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 ;-)

muzani•11h ago
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.

Ask HN: Where are the AI-driven profits or promotions?

32•arduinomancer•10h ago•34 comments

Ask HN: How are you productively using Claude code?

7•nocobot•6h ago•6 comments

Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

314•jshchnz•1w ago•415 comments

Ask HN: How do you get first 10 customers?

8•jcofai•18h ago•10 comments

Ask HN: Has anybody gotten a Node.js MCP server to work with HTTP?

2•rglover•12h ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Are there any tools for tracking GPU prices over time?

2•jepeake•16h ago•2 comments

Attended Windsurf's Build Night 18 hours before founders joined Google DeepMind

5•schwentkerr•1d ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Looking for a directory of PS1 command prompts. Like awesome lists

2•simplecto•1d ago•2 comments

Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

91•Eatcats•5d ago•124 comments

Co-founder exiting after pivot – what's a fair exit package?

42•throwaway-xx•4d ago•78 comments

Ask HN: Bug Bounty Dilemma – Take the $$ and Sign an NDA or Go Public?

22•deep_thinker26•4d ago•14 comments

Helpful function to find memory leaks in JavaScript

3•EGreg•3d ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

80•NotAnOtter•1w ago•94 comments

Ask HN: People who work different timezones than your company. How sched?

17•tetris11•4d ago•27 comments

Ask HN: What do you do with your list of articles links?

4•electricant•1d ago•10 comments

Ask HN: How to Create Data Flow Diagrams?

4•shivajikobardan•2d ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Good non tech companies to work at

4•nzmkk•2d ago•12 comments

Ask HN: What techniques do you use to remember complex concepts and theories?

5•anonymzz•2d ago•4 comments

Tell HN: uBlock Origin on Chrome is finally gone

160•ipsum2•1d ago•150 comments

The computational cost of corporate rebranding

4•rileygersh•2d ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Does your on-call rotation suck? Can I join it?

11•asciifree•4d ago•23 comments

Ask HN: What's the verdict on GPT wrapper companies these days?

15•NewUser76312•5d ago•18 comments

Google fails to dismiss wiretapping claims on SJ, settles with app users

43•1vuio0pswjnm7•3d ago•8 comments

Ask HN: How can I invest in Solar Power?

4•idontwantthis•2d ago•10 comments

Ask HN: Any resources for finding non-smart appliances?

156•everyone•6d ago•132 comments

I built a AI transcription app because my girlfriend needed one for uni

4•ebukao•2d ago•9 comments