Getting Your First 10 Customers

Stripe Atlas: "Scrappily start your sales strategy (say that five times fast). If you build it, they will do absolutely nothing.

Entrepreneurs have to actively recruit their own few first customers. This is hard, important work, because the first few customers will help you refine your product, begin understanding how to position it in the market, and provide important social proof for your company. This will generally be via active sales rather than the customers passively stumbling upon your offerings. Early-stage companies do not yet have the marketing machinery which exposes them to steady streams of qualified leads acquired in a repeatable fashion. You will instead convince people to use your product one at a time.

Stripe Atlas: "Scrappily start your sales strategy (say that five times fast). If you build it, they will do absolutely nothing.

Entrepreneurs have to actively recruit their own few first customers. This is hard, important work, because the first few customers will help you refine your product, begin understanding how to position it in the market, and provide important social proof for your company. This will generally be via active sales rather than the customers passively stumbling upon your offerings. Early-stage companies do not yet have the marketing machinery which exposes them to steady streams of qualified leads acquired in a repeatable fashion. You will instead convince people to use your product one at a time.