How we got our first 10 customers

For a startup, there’s nothing harder than getting your first 10 customers. Here’s how we got ours.

A lot of early stage founders reach out to us asking how we got our first few customers at Clueso (YC W23). While it may vary from product to product, here are some things that worked for us:

Warm Intros

Reach out to your network – investors, friends, family – for intros to the right people in your target companies. Warm intros build trust from the start, which is really helpful when you’re very early in your journey.- Two of our first 10 customers came through warm intros! One was through an investor intro to their portfolio company and the other one was through an intro from one of our customers

Leverage your alumni networks

If you're part of any accelerator programs or University entrepreneur groups, reach out to fellow founders if they’re a good fit. They will surely try to help you out!- In our case, we were able to utilise the Y Combinator and Indian Institute of Technology, Madras alumni network to get 4 out of our first 10 customers!

Stay active in relevant communities

Join WhatsApp, Slack, Reddit, Discord communities relevant to your domain where your target audience hangs out. Be helpful, engage, and spot opportunities to showcase your product’s value.- One of our first 10 customers was through a whatsapp group I’m a part of.

Build in public

Stay active on LinkedIn and X. Continuously connect with relevant folks. Post things that are helpful to your audience, product updates, and learnings from your personal experience.- My cofounders and I try being active on LinkedIn by posting regularly. It has been working well for us and we get demo calls booked regularly through our LinkedIn posts.- Two of our first 10 customers came from our product/feature launches on LinkedIn!

Personalized Outreach

I used to manually go through hiring JDs of open customer success/education roles at companies to see if the job responsibilities included creating customer education materials. After that, I would reach out to them with how Clueso could help.- One of our first ten customers came through this channel.It took us close to 3 months to get our first 10 customers! Now, we’re onboarding close to 40 new customers a month. And at much higher contract values too!

‍

Keep pushing – with every new customer, there are new learnings and it gets slightly easier to close the next one! 💪