7/20/22 Week 4:

How to get your first users

Do things that don’t scale

myth: if you build, they will come.

truth: if you build, they won’t come.

get in the mindset that you have to recruit customers

• startups don’t take off by themselves
• startups take off because founders make them take off
• you have to manually recruit customers
• this is might be uncomfortable, but don’t avoid it!

Do NOT forget to onboard the customers after you sell, otherwise those customers could churn and then it won’t turn into revenue.

Tracking and targeting your sales

• Use a CRM, it can be simply, but keep track of people you reach out, their title, contact, company, etc

How to find your first customers?

• friends & personal network, co-workers, and then other sites for people you don’t know

  • LinkedIn, Reddit Forums, slack & discord communities, etc

• Think about what your competitive advantage is. Did you work at Google or another large company? tap into that resource, that is your advantage, sell to your network

  • Many YC companies sell to their YC Batch (again: use your network)