May 31 • General discussion
Hustle of getting a first customer
Hi all — I’ve been struggling with getting the first paying customer for my SaaS, and I know a lot of people here have been too.
I spent some time working through it last week, and here’s a simple approach I used that costs less than $10/month:
1. Stop building and start validating with real users.
I reached out directly to potential users (LinkedIn, Reddit, niche communities) and asked for honest feedback before adding more features.
2. Set up a simple landing page (Carrd / Notion / Framer).
No fancy product — just clear problem, solution, and a waitlist or “book a demo” button.
3. Offer a “done-with-you” early version instead of full service/automation.
Instead of waiting for a perfect SaaS, I manually delivered the outcome for the first users and learned what actually mattered.
4. Use a simple CRM + follow-up system (Google Sheets + Gmail templates).
Tracked every conversation and followed up every 2–3 days — this alone increased replies a lot.
5. Close the first users manually before building anything scalable.
Only started automating once I saw repeated demand.
The biggest shift was realizing the first customer doesn’t come from the product — it comes from conversations.
If anything is unclear, let me know. Hope this helps you 🙏
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Hustle of getting a first customer
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