Most founders, somewhere in the first few months of building, start thinking about marketing. They wonder whether they should be running Google Ads, posting on Instagram, building a content strategy, or hiring someone to handle all of it.

The impulse is understandable. Marketing is how businesses grow. If you need customers, you do marketing. That is how it works.

Except it is not how it works at the very beginning. Not for the first 10. Not usually for the first 50.

The founders who get their first customers fastest are rarely the ones who figured out their marketing funnel first. They are the ones who picked up the phone. Who sent a direct message to someone they knew three years ago? Who posted something honest in a community forum and responded to every single reply. Who walked into an industry event and had eight real conversations.

This post is about exactly that. Where your first 10 customers will realistically come from, what to say to them, and how to turn a conversation into a paying relationship without feeling like you are selling to your friends.

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Why marketing rarely works for the first 10?

Before we get into where your first customers do come from, it is worth being clear on why conventional marketing struggles to deliver them.

Marketing, in the traditional sense, is a broadcast mechanism. You put a message in front of a large number of people and rely on the fact that a percentage of them will be interested. This works well once you know what that message should be, who exactly it is for, and how to reach those people efficiently. At the stage where you are looking for your first 10 customers, you almost certainly do not know any of those things clearly enough for marketing to work.

Your messaging is not yet tested. Your ideal customer profile is still a hypothesis. Your value proposition sounds compelling to you, but you have not yet found out which specific part of it actually moves people to act. Running paid ads before you know these things is not marketing. It is paying to find out what does not work.

There is also a fundamental trust problem. Marketing reaches strangers. Strangers have no prior reason to believe your claims, no relationship with you that reduces their perceived risk, and no incentive to give you the benefit of the doubt on a product that has no track record. Converting a stranger from ad impression to paying customer is a long and expensive journey.

Your first 10 customers are rarely strangers. And that is not a workaround or a shortcut. It is the actual, fastest path.

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Where do your first 10 customers actually come from?

Your warm network

The warm network is the single most reliable source of first customers for almost every type of B2B product, and it is significantly underused by founders who feel awkward about mixing personal relationships with business.

Your warm network is everyone you know who has some level of professional relevance to your product: former colleagues, people you went to university with who are now working in relevant roles, clients from previous jobs, mentors, people you have collaborated with on side projects, contacts from industry events you attended years ago.

The key insight is that these people do not need to be perfect prospects themselves. They need to either have the problem you are solving, or to know people who do.

According to Nielsen’s 2024 Trust in Advertising report, 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know above any other form of communication. In a market where trust is the primary barrier to a first purchase, a warm introduction from a mutual connection is worth more than any piece of marketing content.

Here is the practical approach. Go through your LinkedIn connections, your email history, your phone contacts, and your calendar from the last two years. Build a list of every person who works in your target industry or who might know people who do. Do not pre-filter aggressively. Your goal is to get to 50 to 100 names. Then start reaching out, not with a pitch, but with a genuine request for a conversation.

The message that works is honest and specific. Something like: “I am building a product that helps [specific type of person] with [specific problem]. You have spent years in this space and I would really value 20 minutes of your perspective on whether I am solving the right thing.” That message has a high reply rate because it is flattering, low-commitment, and genuine. You are asking for input, not asking for money.

Some of those conversations will turn into customers. More of them will turn into referrals to people who become customers. Both outcomes are valuable.

Former colleagues and industry contacts

This deserves its own section because it is slightly different from your general warm network and often more powerful.

Former colleagues know how you work. They have seen you deliver results. The professional trust is already established in a way it simply is not with someone you met once at a conference. If they are working somewhere that has your problem, they are both a potential customer and an implicit endorser of your credibility.

The same applies to former clients if you have a consulting or agency background. People who have paid you for work before have already made the judgment that you are worth paying. Reaching out to them about a new product is not selling to a stranger. It is continuing a professional relationship.

A 2024 study by LinkedIn found that B2B deals that originated from existing professional relationships closed at a rate 3.6 times higher than deals that originated from cold outreach. That number should shape how you spend your first customer-acquisition hours.

Be direct with former colleagues. You do not need to build up to the ask over three interactions. You can say: “We have a product in early access that solves a problem I know your team faces. I would love to get your honest feedback and, if it makes sense, have you as one of our first customers.” That is a comfortable conversation between people who already have a professional relationship.

LinkedIn outreach done right

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful first-customer tools available to B2B founders, and one of the most consistently misused.

The misuse is familiar: a connection request with no message, followed immediately by a long pitch about the product, its features, and a request to book a demo. This approach treats LinkedIn as an email list. It rarely works, and it damages your reputation in your industry network.

LinkedIn outreach done right looks like this.

Start with warm engagement before the outreach. Spend a week commenting genuinely on posts from people in your target audience before you message any of them. Not hollow comments (“great post!”) but substantive ones that add a perspective or ask a thoughtful question. This puts your name in front of relevant people in a low-pressure context.

When you do send a connection request, include a personal note. Reference something specific: a post they wrote, a role they are in, a company they work at, a problem they mentioned publicly. One sentence that shows you read something they wrote is worth more than three sentences about your product.

Once connected, wait. Do not immediately send a pitch. Send a message that opens a conversation. Something like: “I noticed you have been working in [specific space] for a while. I am building something in this area and I am trying to understand the problem better before I get too far. Would you be open to a quick conversation? I am not looking to pitch you, I genuinely want to learn from someone who knows this space.”

According to LinkedIn’s own 2024 Sales Navigator data, personalised InMail messages that reference a specific detail from the recipient’s profile or recent activity have a 42% higher response rate than generic outreach. The investment of two minutes to personalise a message pays for itself many times over.

The goal of the first LinkedIn conversation is never to close a sale. It is to get a real conversation. The sale, if it happens, happens in the conversation.

Online communities and forums

The founder who shows up in the communities where their target customers spend time, contributes genuine value over time, and lets that visibility drive inbound interest is running one of the oldest and most effective customer acquisition strategies in existence. It just does not feel like marketing, which is exactly why it works.

Your target customers are almost certainly active in specific communities. SaaS founders in communities like Indie Hackers and SaaS founders Slack groups. Marketing professionals in communities on Reddit’s r/marketing and specific LinkedIn groups. Developers on GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Discord servers. HR professionals in specific Facebook groups and Slack communities. Identify two or three communities where your ideal customers genuinely spend time.

The approach is the same in all of them: be genuinely helpful before you mention your product. Answer questions. Share the knowledge you have. Contribute to threads where you have something real to add. Do this for two to four weeks before you say anything about what you are building.

When you do mention your product, do it in the context of solving a problem that someone else raised. “I actually built something that addresses exactly this. It is in early access if anyone wants to try it.” That framing, where your product is the answer to a question someone else asked, converts infinitely better than a promotional post about your launch.

A 2024 report by the Community-Led Growth Foundation found that startups that acquired their first 50 customers primarily through community engagement reported 40% higher retention rates at six months compared to those that relied primarily on paid acquisition. The logic makes sense. A customer who found you because you solved their question in a community they trust is a customer who already has a positive association with you before they ever sign up.

Direct cold outreach to highly targeted prospects

Cold outreach gets a bad reputation because most cold outreach is terrible. It is generic. It is long. It asks for too much too soon. It is about the sender, not the recipient. Done badly, it is one of the most ineffective acquisition channels available. Done well, it is one of the most powerful.

Good cold outreach at this stage has three characteristics.

It is extremely targeted. You are not sending 500 emails to everyone on a list. You are sending 20 emails to 20 people who you have specifically chosen because they match a very clear profile. Each one should be someone you could explain why you chose specifically.

It is short. Three to five sentences maximum. Your recipient does not know you. They have no reason to read a long email from a stranger. Get to the point in the first sentence, show you understand their specific situation in the second, and make a single, low-commitment ask in the third.

It asks for very little. At this stage, your ask is a 20-minute conversation, not a purchase decision. “I would love 20 minutes to share what we are building and get your reaction” is a much easier yes than “I would love to show you a demo and discuss pricing.”

The subject line is the entire battle in cold email. According to Salesloft’s 2024 email benchmark report, cold emails with subject lines under six words have a 42% higher open rate than longer ones. Specific and curiosity-inducing beats clever and vague every time. “Quick question about [specific thing they do]” consistently outperforms “Exciting new solution for [their industry].”

Follow up twice over two weeks if you do not hear back. Three touchpoints are the maximum without a response. After that, move on. Persistence beyond three unanswered messages damages your reputation in a small industry network.

Design partners and beta participants

This approach works particularly well for B2B products and is underused by most early-stage founders.

A design partner is a company or individual who agrees to work closely with you as you build, giving feedback in exchange for early access, heavily discounted pricing, or the genuine opportunity to shape a product that will solve their problem. This is different from a customer, though design partners often become customers.

The pitch for a design partner is: “We are building this, we have validated that the problem is real, and we want to work with a handful of companies who live with this problem every day to make sure we build the right solution. In exchange, you get early access, significant input into the product roadmap, and pricing that will never be available again.”

This is a compelling offer for the right person. It is asking them to invest time, not money. The barrier to yes is much lower than a purchase decision. And the insight you get from a design partner relationship is categorically more valuable than what you get from a standard customer interaction.

Reaching out to potential design partners uses all of the same channels above: warm network first, then former colleagues, then LinkedIn, then communities. The framing is just different. You are not asking them to buy something. You are asking them to build something with you.

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The outreach sequence that actually works

Here is a practical sequence to follow when you are starting from scratch with no customers.

Week one: Make a list of 100 people from your warm network who work in or are adjacent to your target industry. Send 20 of them a personalised message asking for a 20-minute conversation. Frame it as a request for input, not a pitch.

Week two: Follow up with anyone who did not reply in week one. Send 20 more messages from your list. Join two communities where your target customers spend time and start engaging genuinely without mentioning your product.

Week three: Have as many of the conversations as you can from weeks one and two. Take notes on everything. At the end of each conversation, ask: “Is there anyone else you think I should talk to who has this problem?” That question generates referrals and extends your reach beyond your direct network.

Week four: Identify 20 highly targeted cold prospects based on what you have learned from the conversations. Write personalised outreach to each of them. Start sharing your perspective in the communities you joined, responding to questions that are relevant to your product’s problem space.

By the end of four weeks, you should have had between 10 and 20 conversations with real potential users. Some of those conversations will have identified people willing to be design partners. Some will have asked about using the product. Those are your first customers.

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What to say (and what not to say)?

The biggest mistake founders make in first-customer conversations is talking too much about the product and too little about the problem.

Your goal in any early conversation is to understand the other person’s situation, confirm that the problem you are solving is real for them, and find out whether the solution you have in mind would actually help. If you open with a product pitch, you bypass all of that. You end up performing rather than listening, and you miss the most valuable part of the conversation.

A simple structure that works: open with curiosity, confirm the problem, introduce the product briefly, and then listen.

Opening: “Tell me a bit about how you currently handle [the thing your product addresses]. Walk me through what a typical week looks like.”

Confirming the problem: “When that breaks down, what does it cost you? In time, in money, in frustration?”

Introducing the product: “We are building something that addresses exactly that. It is early, but the idea is [one sentence description]. Does that sound like something that would have helped in the situation you described?”

Listening: Stop talking. The answer to that last question is the most important thing in the conversation. If the answer is yes, ask when they would want to try it. If the answer is lukewarm, ask what would make it more relevant to them. If the answer is no, ask why.

What not to say: a list of features, comparisons to competitors, pricing before they ask about it, or anything that starts with “so basically what we do is.” That phrasing signals that you are about to pitch, which triggers defensive listening.

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How to turn a conversation into a customer?

Most first-customer conversations end without a clear next step, and then they die. The founder sends a follow-up email, the prospect says “sounds interesting, keep me posted,” and nothing happens.

The way to avoid this is to make the next step concrete before the conversation ends.

If the person is interested, do not say, “Great, I will be in touch when we are ready.” Say: “I would love to have you as one of our first users. Can we set up 30 minutes next week for me to walk you through what we have built and get your reaction?” That moves from abstract interest to a specific calendar commitment.

If they are not ready to use the product but found the conversation valuable, ask for a referral while the conversation is fresh. “Is there anyone on your team or in your network who has this problem even more acutely than you do? I would love an introduction.” Referrals are most likely to happen in the immediate aftermath of a good conversation, not two weeks later when you follow up.

If they want to think about it, make the follow-up simple and specific. “I will send you a summary of what we discussed and a link to the product. Can I check in with you on Thursday?” A specific day is more likely to produce a response than “I will follow up soon.”

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Common mistakes founders make when finding first customers

Waiting until the product is perfect to start talking to people. Your first conversations do not require a finished product. They require a clear problem and a credible founding team. Start the outreach now, even if you are still building.

Pitching instead of listening. Every conversation where you learn something meaningful about how real people experience your problem is a successful conversation, regardless of whether it results in a sale. The founders who treat early customer conversations as sales pitches miss the learning that would have made the next 100 conversations more effective.

Being too vague about what you are asking for. “Let me know if you would like to try it sometime” is not an ask. “Can we set up 30 minutes next week?” is an ask. Be specific.

Giving up after the first channel does not work immediately. Most founders try one approach, do not see immediate results, and conclude that outreach does not work for their product. The truth is that finding your first 10 customers usually requires working multiple channels in parallel, following up consistently, and adjusting your message based on what you learn. It is a few weeks of focused effort, not a few days.

Under-leveraging referrals. Every satisfied early user is a potential source of three to five more customers. Founders who do not ask explicitly for referrals leave most of that value on the table. After any positive interaction, ask directly: “Who else do you know who deals with this problem?”

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Frequently asked questions

What if I do not have a relevant warm network for my target market? Build one before you need it. If your product is for, say, restaurant owners and you have never worked in hospitality, start engaging in the communities where restaurant owners spend time, attending industry events, and reaching out to people in that space with genuine curiosity rather than a pitch. It takes a few months, but a small, relevant network is more valuable than a large irrelevant one. In the short term, cold outreach becomes more important when your warm network is thin, which makes the quality of your targeting and messaging even more critical.

How do I bring up pricing without it feeling awkward? Do not raise pricing until they ask. In the early conversations, your goal is to confirm the problem and establish interest, not to close a deal on the first call. When they do ask about pricing, give a direct answer. Vagueness about pricing signals uncertainty. If you are not sure what to charge yet, say: “We are in early access and pricing is not finalised. Early customers will get access at a significant discount. What would make this a straightforward yes for you at this stage?” That question is more valuable than any price you could name.

Is it acceptable to offer free access to first customers to get them in the door? Yes, selectively and strategically. Free access to a handful of design partners who will give you structured feedback and act as references is often worth it. Free access to everyone who asks is not, because it attracts users who are not really your customers and delays the important validation of whether someone will actually pay. A better offer than free is heavily discounted with a genuine reason: “You are one of our first ten customers and the pricing reflects that.”

How many conversations do I need to have before I find my first paying customer? The honest answer is that it varies widely. Some founders close their first customer in the third conversation. Others have 40 conversations before the first one. The range depends on how well-targeted your outreach is, how sharp your problem framing is, and how acute the problem is for the people you are talking to. If you have had 20 conversations and none have moved toward a purchase, the issue is almost always one of three things: wrong audience, wrong problem framing, or an ask that is too big for where the relationship is.

What if people say they are interested but never follow through? Stated interest without a concrete next step is not interest. It is politeness. The solution is to always leave every conversation with a specific scheduled action: a demo booked, a trial started, a follow-up call confirmed. If someone says they are interested but will not commit to a specific next step, they are almost certainly not going to become a customer without something changing. Ask directly: “What would need to be true for this to feel like a straightforward yes for you?”

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Final thoughts

Your first 10 customers are out there right now. They are former colleagues, people in your network’s network, members of communities you have not joined yet, people who wrote a post last month about the exact problem your product solves. They are not waiting for your ad to show up in their feed. They are waiting for a direct, genuine, human conversation with someone who understands their problem.

The founders who find their first customers fastest are not the ones with the biggest marketing budgets or the best content strategy. They are the ones who are willing to do the uncomfortable work of reaching out directly, having real conversations, and asking for the business without hiding behind a funnel.

Start with the people you already know. Then work outward. Ask for referrals at every stage. Be direct about what you are building and who it is for. Listen more than you talk.

Ten customers are not a marketing problem. It is a conversation problem. And you can start having those conversations today.

At Volumetree, we work with early-stage founders every day who are at exactly this stage: product built or nearly built, first customers needed, and not sure where to start. If you want a clear-eyed perspective on your go-to-market approach, we would love to have that conversation.

 

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