95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products _ Jason Evanish

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95 Ways to find your first customers for customer

development or your first sale

11 August 2013

₁₈ CYou can have the best idea in the world, but until you ﬁnd someone besides yourself that wants it, it’snot really a business To ﬁnd those people, as Paul Graham wrote in a recent essay, you have to “DoThings That Don’t Scale (h p://paulgraham.com/ds.html).” The problem is, it is often unclear what those

“Things” are.

Fortunately, the internet is full of help In particular, I was inspired by recent posts on someone goingfrom zero to revenue in 5 weeks using customer development

(h p://notes.casualcorp.com/post/55805301226/how-to-go-from-zero-to-revenue-in-under-ﬁve-weeks)and validation by Melissa Tsang (h p://melissatsang.com/2013/07/21/week-1-choosing-an-idea-

validating-a-market-need-and-bridging-focus/) for her new startup Cusoy (h p://cusoy.com) I’ve alsofound the advice for Joel of Buﬀer about his start (h p://joel.is/post/6687368692/startup-bootstrapping)and the advice from this post by Jason Cohen of ASmartBear blog (h p://blog.asmartbear.com/get-ﬁrst-

customers.html) to be spot on With all that advice though I still hadn’t seen anyone tell you where to look.

How to use this post:

Before we get into the massive list of tactics below, I want to be clear on what to do with this list andwhat to expect when you ﬁnd a few tactics you want to follow:

1 Your initial goal should be learning

In the immortal words of Lean Godfather, Steve Blank, “No Plan Survives First Contact With

Customers.” (h p://id8ireland.wordpress.com/tag/steve-blank/) With that in mind, the last thing you

want to do is be hard selling your idea to them Instead, you want to interview your customers to

understand their problems You can learn how to do customer development interviews here

(h

ps://jasonevanish.com/2012/01/18/how-to-structure-and-get-the-most-out-of-customer-development-interviews/)

2 Understand you’re going to have a low success rate

There is no silver bullet for ﬁnding users for your startup, just tactics like the ones below that work tovarying degrees depending on your idea and market Even for good channels, a 10-20% response rate

is normal, so don’t get discouraged

3 Don’t worry about scaling!

None of the ideas below are really scalable when taken literally However, like Paul Graham said in

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takes to ﬁnd people and the scalable methods will emerge later If you have a cofounder worriedabout scaling early, have them read the Paul Graham essay.

4 Remember your manners and personalize

You’re likely asking people to talk to you when you have nothing but an idea and maybe a prototype

of some sort Be respectful in communicating with them Also realize that no one likes a form note, sothe more you personalize it and make it feel like they’re special, the be er chance you have of a

response Elizabeth Yin (h ps://twi er.com/launchbit) of Launchbit (launchbit.com) has an awesomeslideshare with advice on reaching out to customers eﬀectively

(h p://www.slideshare.net/dunkhippo33/lean-startup-circle-boston-april-28-2011)

5 Don’t get banned

If you abuse any of the tactics below, many of the sites and groups will ban or block you Pay

a ention to restrictions to how often you can do certain things (like Meetup.com allows you to

message 12 users per day) Realize the more times you break a terms of service, the more likely youare to get noticed and banned On the ﬂip side, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission Justdon’t be egregious

A special thanks to these people that helped edit & provide ideas for this post:

Thomas Schranz (h ps://twi er.com/ tosh), Cofounder of Blossom.io (h p://blossom.io)

Eric Jorgenson (h ps://twi er.com/EricJorgenson), Marketplace Manager at Zaarly

(h p://zaarly.com)

I’m writing a book on How to Build Customer Driven Products (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9)

You can sign up (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9) for updates and early access to chapters that will help you build

product customers will love by signing up here (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9)

95 Ways to Find Your First Customers for Customer

Development and Sales

Linkedin:

1) Use Linkedin Answers: Look for people asking questions around your problem and market or ask

your own

2) Join Linkedin Groups: Join Linkedin Groups for your target market Engage in discussions there,

reach out to people that post relevant ideas or questions, or post looking for help

3) Use Search + InMail: If you know the kind of person you want to talk to, try searching for them (like

VP Marketing at companies between 25-200 employees) and using InMail to message them

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(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/gabriel-prat-inmail-example1.jpg)

4) Check your existing connections: People change careers a lot more than you may expect You may

have also lost touch with an old classmate that is now in just the right market Either way, your existingconnects are very likely to respond and you’ll have access to their email address, which is be er thantheir LinkedIn inbox

5) Ask your connections for intros: It’s quite possible the perfect people to talk to aren’t already a

connection, but they may be one degree away Don’t be afraid to ask connections you have a good

relationship with for an intro

6) Post to the Linkedin Social Network: Linkedin now has status updates you can post It’s a lot less

active than other networks, but it can’t hurt to see if anyone notices

7) Run Linkedin Ads: Linkedin is the network for professionals and their careers If your startup idea

has them as the target customer (say marketers or executives), then an alternative to the high

maintenance of Linkedin Groups can be to run ads Linkedin also has a partner network for a lot ofbusiness content sites which can further the reach There’s a great guide on KISSmetrics for LinkedinAds here (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-linkedin-ads1/)

Facebook:

8) Look up your friends: For most people, their closest people in their life now and in the past are on

Facebook If you haven’t already exhausted your existing network on Linkedin, deﬁnitely look to see ifany of your friends are in the market and worth talking to

9) Ask your friends: There’s also a lot of random people you met in college and other times You never

know who knows who so you have to ask I just got introduced to another person in tech through

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10) Look for Fan Pages: There’s fan pages for just about anything you can think of People that run those

pages in your market are great people to talk to both as potential customers and to see if they’ll postsomething on your behalf on their page Friends who have leveraged this have found it cheaper thanFacebook ads, even when they pay the Fan Page owner Just click the “message” bu on on the fan page

(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/fan-page-message-bu on.jpg)

11) Run Targeted Facebook Ads: If you think you really know your audience demographics, then

running a small set of Facebook ads to a landing page, can be a great way to garner interest

12) Try the new Graph Search: I haven’t had a lot of success using it, but it’s worth searching for things

related to your market to see if anything else turns up, especially now that you can message people youaren’t friends with In particular, Facebook has a great geographic ﬁltering ability you won’t ﬁnd onTwi er or otherwise

Twitter: (My personal favorite)

13) Ask your followers: If you have any kind of follower base at all, you should deﬁnitely tweet about

who you want to talk to If you don’t have a big follower base, ask the people with bigger followingsyou’re friends with to ReTweet you As you develop your idea, you may want to tweet diﬀerent

requests, which may be seen by diﬀerent people since no one sees every tweet of their followers

14) Ask your followers for referrals: It’s not just about who you know The bigger beneﬁt is who your

network knows so be sure to not just ask people you follow or follow you if they’re a ﬁt, but ask othersfor referrals

15) Run Twi er Ads: Twi er ads can be a cheap way to reach people you’d never know otherwise We

got thousands of sign ups for MyAnalytics App (h p://www.myanalyticsapp.com/) at KISSmetrics usingthem Like any channel, the more mature it gets, the more expensive it will become

(h p://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shi y-clickthroughs/), so by 2015, this may not be nearly aseconomical (like many Adwords today)

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for you or ReTweet you If it makes sense for your business, you can also ask some celebrities via toolslike BuySellAds (h p://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/by/tweets) and Sponsored Tweets

(h ps://app.sponsoredtweets.com/tweeters)

17) Search for relevant Hashtags: Hashtags are a big part of Twi er for many markets For example, in

the analytics market, there’s #Measure (h ps://twi er.com/search?q=%23measure&src=typd) Find

accounts using the hashtag and reach out to them and join the conversations happening Find relevanthashtags by asking others or checking out sites like Hashtags.org (h p://www.hashtags.org/)

(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-10-at-4-01-48-pm.png)

18) Join a Twi er Chat: Many groups have regular chats that can be found based on the group’s hashtag

they use A great example is the Community Manager chat, #cmgrchat (h ps://twi er.com/search?

q=%23cmgrchat&src=hash) This is a great way to ask questions and engage your target audience ifthey’re holding Twi er chats

19) Search Twi er for People Talking about your Problem: Remember that time you were really

annoyed at a company? What did you probably do? You tweeted about it Try searching diﬀerent waysfor people talking about frustrations and you’re bound to ﬁnd people happy to talk because they’re

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20) Email relevant friends/contacts: There’s a right way and wrong way to do this Yes, you can spam all

your contacts in one big dump asking for help What will yield a be er result is if you invest the time to

be more targeted in who you reach out to Close friends and family won’t mind and those actually

related to your target industry

21) Start a personal newsle er: I’ve known some people to start a personal newsle er to have their

contacts *opt into* that then regularly updates them on your startup journey and can ask for speciﬁchelp then repeatedly in the newsle er This works great for ge ing mentors and early supporters engage

in a small ask (just opt in) and later help more as you have diﬀerent needs

22) Use Rapportive to ﬁnd emails & cold email: Somehow you may have stumbled upon someone

you’d *love* to talk to, but you don’t know them You can use tools like Rapportive to guess the emailaddress and send them a personal note asking to speak with them about what you’re working on Youcan ﬁnd more advice on this tactic here (h p://www.slideshare.net/dunkhippo33/lean-startup-circle-boston-april-28-2011) and here (h p://lifehacker.com/use-rapportive-to-ﬁnd-anyone-on-the-internets-real-em-570745575)

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(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/ﬁnding-zuck-with-rapportive.jpg)

23) Make your GChat status a call for help/intros: This may seem simple and passive, but you’d be

surprised who reads your GChat statuses Adding a note of what you’re looking for and leave it up for afew days and you might just get a few people to help you out This works for other chat tools as well, ofcourse

24) Make your signature a call for help/intros: Just like your GChat status is a long tail way to get

people’s a ention, you can use your email signature the same way Below your name in your signature

is the perfect place to let people know Don’t forget to update your mobile app’s signature as well asyour computer’s

Meetup.com:

25) Join & A end Meetups in your category: Meetup has become an amazing hub of groups around just

about any topic you can think of Whether you’re making an app for LARPers or a hardware startup,there’s a meetup group likely in your area you should join to meet and talk with group members in yourtarget market

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26) Ask organizers to message the group: Organizers have unique privileges to send messages to their

groups You don’t get what you don’t ask for

(h p://quotationsbook.com/quote/3313/#sthash.EmQ0oVoz.dpbs), so don’t be afraid to reach out togroup organizers to talk to them (they may be a great target user) and see if they’ll message the group.They often make no money in running their groups, so you can think of them like the Facebook Fan Pageowners previously mentioned

27) Ask the organizer to allow you to address the audience at a Meetup: Potentially even be er than

ge ing into everyone’s clu ered inbox is the opportunity to address the whole group at one of theirevents This allows people most interested to immediately approach you This can be a great consolationask if they don’t want to message their whole group since this requires no work on their part

28) Mention in your Meetup proﬁle what you’re looking for: Like the GChat status, this is a passive

move that alone won’t get you everyone to talk to, but you’d be surprised how often people read theproﬁles of other new members in a group Be sure to include your desired contact method if you wantMeetup members to reach out to you

29) Message users on Meetup.com: Not every member of a Meetup group a ends every event and if

there’s no upcoming meetups or it’s a group outside your area, you can still reach users by sending themindividual messages Per a great write up by Melissa Tsang (h p://melissatsang.com/2013/07/21/week-1-choosing-an-idea-validating-a-market-need-and-bridging-focus/), Meetup has a limit of 12 messages perday, which is still enough to get some quality responses as she writes in detail about

30) Create a Meetup group: Just because a group doesn’t exist, does not mean there would not be

interest Countless people have launched successful businesses based on the idea of organizing a highvalue group Just remember that if you do this, not only will you build trust and relationships with allthe a endees, you’ll be the organizer who can send all those messages, decide who addresses the

audience, etc

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Your Blog:

31) Write a blog post about the problem you’re solving: If you feel you know some of the key problems

that users are facing in your target market, write about it (h

ps://medium.com/on-startups/968ebef44a56)! If it resonates with them, they will share, upvote, tweet, etc it and some will

even sign up as long as you remember to have a call to action to sign up at the end You can see an

example here (h ps://jasonevanish.com/2011/11/27/the-lean-product-life-cycle/), where 1,000 reads

turned into 10 sign ups and a look at some famous companies that started with a blog here

(h ps://medium.com/on-startups/968ebef44a56)

32) Post your blog to discussion sites in appropriate categories: Sites like Reddit

(h p://www.reddit.com/) and HackerNews (h p://news.ycombinator.com/) are awesome to access

established audiences for your market Before posting, do your homework so you actually post it

somewhere it’s welcome; a baker would not be well served to post their baking innovation on

HackerNews, but a marketing startup would do very well posting to Inbound.org

(h p://www.inbound.org/) By posting it to these sites you’ll signiﬁcantly increase the reach of #31 andmight also get some interesting commenters there you can reach out to like this example from Vero(h ps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4129228)

(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/getvero-hackernews.jpg)

33) Update your About Page for what you’re looking for: Just like #23 and #28, it is always beneﬁcial to

list what your looking for on your About page (h ps://jasonevanish.com/about/) The most engagedpeople on your blog are likely to click to your about page to see who you are and if they see this, theycan help even if they don’t read your speciﬁc blog post about your idea

34) Make a page on your blog just about your market: Depending on your blogging platform, this

could be easy or hard, but it can never hurt to organize your information in a way that people can easilynavigate it If you’re writing a whole series of items or have already created a lot of related content, thiscan be a great way to assert your expertise and act as a honeypot to draw in interested potential

customers

35) Start a blog just to talk about your industry: Don’t already have a blog or don’t want to talk about

your startup on your existing blog? Then start a new one It helps to have more content than just onepost, so if you go this route, try to have a few posts you can post over a few weeks If you know yourstartup’s domain, you can make this the start of your company’s blog

(h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/ultimate-guide-startup-marketing/) Especially for blogs like this, try to getusers to either sign up for an email list or to explicitly sign up for customer interviews

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Other Blogs:

36) Reach out to other bloggers for interviews: Chances are, there are other people writing about the

market and potentially even the problem you’re interested in solving These people are generally veryknowledgable on the market and so they make great customer interview candidates and can also shed alight on more places to look for people in your market

37) Ask other bloggers to run an ad for you: Many bloggers, like those fan page owners, don’t make a

lot of money, so they may be willing to run an ad for you for very cheap or mention you in a relevantpost just because they’re nice or like you

38) Ask other bloggers to write about you: Going beyond an ad (which may be seen on multiple posts)

you can see if a blogger is willing to write a whole post about you If you’ve already interviewed them

and they’re excited about your idea, this may be an easier ask than you think (and thus do it for free).

39) Ask to write a guest blog post: If your own blog has no audience, the best thing you can do is get a

post you’d write on your market/problem on a blog that does have your desired audience Bloggers lovehaving more content to share, so if it’s a good post, they’re very likely to be willing to publish it Look forguidelines and advice on guest blogging (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/guest-blogging-for-

kissmetrics/) on sites you want to write for like on KISSmetrics’s blog

(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/guest-blog-post-image.jpg)

40) Use Blog lists to ﬁnd the right blogs: Not sure who to reach out to? Sites like Technorati, Blog

Catalog (h p://blogcatalog.com)and AllTop (h p://alltop.com/) are great for ﬁnding out top blogs forthings like Top Fashion Blogs (h p://technorati.com/blogs/directory/living/fashion/) or just about anyother category You can also look for other inﬂuencers on sites like Klout (h p://klout.com) and

PeerIndex (h p://www.peerindex.com/)

41) Reach out to commenters: If you see passionate comments on someone else’s blog, follow the link

and the profile/name from the comment to find out who they are and reach out to them People usuallywill include a link back to their own blog, About.me profile or Twi er account from such a comment.This will give you a more direct, personal way to reach them, and avoid writing a bunch of comments,which the blog owner may then mark as spam and never be seen

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Q&A Sites like Quora (http://quora.com), Quibb (quibb.com), &

Answers.Onstartups (http://www.brightjourney.com/)

42) Reach out to people that ask relevant questions: If you can see who asked a good question related

to the problem you’re solving, reach out to them using any methods the site allows to see if they’ll do aninterview

43) Answer questions about your problem/market: If you’re already knowledgable on your market,

don’t be afraid to jump in and answer open questions The people that ask can become great people totalk to and are more likely to be responsive if you already helped them with your answer Don’t be

afraid to drop a mention of what you’re working on right in the answers Thomas Schranz

(h p://www.quora.com/Thomas-Schranz/answers/) at Blossom.io (h p://blossom.io) has done a greatjob of doing this in a helpful, non-spammy way

(h ps://jasonevanish.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/thomas-good-answer-quora.jpg)

44) Reach out to great answers: If you see someone who has given some great answers, they are likely

very knowledgeable in your market and the problem you’re solving Reach out to them to do an

interview Obviously, you’ll want to be careful it’s not a competitor ;)

45) Ask questions to see who answers: There’s no reason not to join the conversation by asking

questions as well Reach out to the authors of any answers you ﬁnd satisfactory or interesting The bestpart of asking your own questions is that virtually every Q&A site will send you alerts when your

question gets answered so you can easily keep track of them even if you ask a few

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46) Put Calls to Action in your Proﬁle and Answer Subheadings: Sites like Quora allow you to put

whatever subheading you want below an answer, so don’t be afraid to mention something about yourstartup there Also, like the other sections, always put in your proﬁle what you’re up to so anyone thatchecks you out (even for answers you may have wri en in other areas) can ﬁnd you and potentiallyreach out

IRL (In Real Life), aka “outside the building”

(http://startupnook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/get_out_of_the_building.jpg)

47) Approach people in native environments: Would your target customer be found in a coﬀee shop,

grocery store or mall? Then go there and try talking to people Like anything this is a skill This can come

oﬀ as harassing or creepy (and the store may ask you to leave) or it can work great The founders

of Sincerely (h p://sincerely.com/) have been know to walk over to a nearby mall and oﬀer strangersmoney and app credits so they can see how a user uses their app

48) Look for people unhappy with a service: Are you trying to make a real world activity (like ﬁnding a

locksmith or a good mechanic) be er? Then looking for disappointed people near that service may bejust the unhappy customers you could delight with your service After taking a bad cab ride, you’d bethe perfect person to explain all the reasons you’d likely prefer to take an Uber

(h ps://uber.com/invite/7aoq6) next time

49) Go to conferences for your target audience: Just about every industry has a few conferences related

to it Established businesses get booths, thought leaders speak and many deals get done You should bethere too (h p://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/100083/How-I-Hacked-The-Startup-Launch-Conference-Circuit.aspx) as you’ll never ﬁnd such a concentration of people in your industry Take advantage of

a endee lists to ﬁgure out who you want to meet with Oﬀer to volunteer or just ask for a discount ticketbecause you’re a startup and you’ll be surprised what you may get

50) Go to trade organization events: Depending on the business you’re in there may be regularly

“Chamber of Commerce” (h p://www.chambersmallbusiness.com/2008/07/if-you-run-a-sm.html) styleevents where your target customers may be This would work especially well if you’re targeting peoplewho own brick and mortar stores or provide contract services

51) Go to places you know they’ll congregate: Have an idea for people that own boats? Then going to

your local marina is a *great* place to ﬁnd boaters to talk to Golfers might just be at the golf course ordriving range, frequent ﬂiers at an airport and teachers at a school Timing is obviously everything, so becognizant of when someone looks like they’re approachable and have time to kill versus trying to hurrysomewhere else

52) Ask people on long train rides or airplanes: I’m always amazed by the kinds of people I meet when

riding Amtrak or ﬂying Sometimes serendipity can work in crazy ways, so don’t be afraid to tell

random people you meet what you’re working on They might just be helpful or someone nearby willoverhear and jump in

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Your existing user base (even if small)

53) Oﬀer a user Referral Program: You need a great product before you should be trying to aggressively

hack your growth, but that shouldn’t stop you from oﬀering an incentive to your existing users to helpyou get more users They likely know where to ﬁnd more of them (their social graph, emailing friends,etc) so a li le incentive will get them to help you out There’s a great Quora thread on the subject here (h ps://www.quora.com/Referral-Marketing/What-are-the-dos-and-donts-of-referral-invite-programs)

54) Ask your users via email: Especially in the early days, you should regularly talk to your users and

be updating your whole user base regularly As part of those updates for new features, major bug ﬁxesand outreach, don’t be afraid to ask them for referrals to more users or people to talk to

55) Always ask your users when you talk: Whether you’re doing a customer development interview,

usability testing or just talking to a user about a support case, remember that you don’t get what youdon’t ask for (h p://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-merri -jones/squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease-_b_3628600.html) Ask them both if they know anyone specific who might also be interested in yourstartup as well as places they generally find other people The la er may turn out to be a meetup, a

Twi er chat or something else that is very target rich for you, but you would never have known

Craigslist

56) Look for relevant postings: Does your startup idea do anything that is relevant to one of the many

Craigslist categories? Quite a few companies have had great success building a massive business oﬀ just

1 category (see below) Try reaching out to posters to talk to them and later you can potentially scalethis AirBnb is the most famous recent example, which Andrew Chen highlights well here

(h p://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/#)

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57) Make your own post: Just like you can respond to posters, you can also make your own posting in

the appropriate category and ﬁlter the ensuing responses to ﬁnd the right people to talk to A friendworking on a startup recently used this to success by making a basic post and then sending all

respondents a qualifying survey to make sure they were a match A small cash incentive in the postingwill generally drive a solid response rate

Forums, Micro Networks & Communities on the web

58) Join in the conversations on the sites: Just about any community exists on the web today Many of

them are in places you would have no idea exists until you dig in If you can’t ﬁnd them initially, asksome of the early users you meet using some of the other tactics listed in this post Once there, look

around for people already talking about your problem you’re solving and join that conversation to learnmore You can also post new discussions speciﬁcally on your target subject to see who is interested

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