
How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers - itsbenlee
https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uqt0neYHCPxu-aUl4CuSQ/edit
======
throwaway6694
Nicely formatted PDF version:
[http://v.fastcdn.co/u/61275824/34126901-0-33906331-0-The-
Fir...](http://v.fastcdn.co/u/61275824/34126901-0-33906331-0-The-First.pdf)

~~~
checker659
Or, better yet, thank the author himself by downloading it straight from his
own website : [https://first100.yobenlee.com/](https://first100.yobenlee.com/)

~~~
Kaveren
Why do I need to give my name and email so I can be added to a mailing list
before I can even see the content?

Obviously this isn't a problem because the submission has the content, as does
the other commenter's direct link, but I just hate this sort of UX.

Let me see the value of your content (not a sales page) and if I really like
it I'll subscribe to a mailing list _after_.

~~~
quakenul
Why does the author have to write a book just to get your E-Mail? It's a
transaction. Obviously as the consumer you would prefer having the upside
without the downside. The same is true for the vendor.

We usually meet somewhere in the middle and call it a day.

~~~
freehunter
GDPR would strongly disagree with you. Your personal information is not a
currency and you should never be forced to part with in in exchange for goods
and services. If you're worth dollars, you should be paying dollars.

~~~
fiatjaf
You're not being forced at all.

~~~
freehunter
According to GDPR you are. If your personal information is not required (from
a technical standpoint) in order to use the service, you're not allowed to
block access to the service if the user refuses to give you their personal
information. That particular law is quite clear that requiring someone to give
you their email address in exchange for digital goods that do not need your
email address in order to function (like a PDF) is in violation.

GDPR may not apply depending on what jurisdiction this site falls under, but
it sets the expectation for all digital goods anywhere in the world. If you're
demanding someone's personal information as a _currency_ rather than as a
_requirement_ , that is a scam.

If you want to make money, charge money. If you're not trying to make money,
there's no need to require my email address in exchange for the product.

~~~
quakenul
Interesting perspective!

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csytan
My wife and I are bootstrapping a business, and we're nearly at 100 customers
(92 right now). I would not say it's an easy road. We've been working on it
full time for 1.5 years so far.

A couple things I've realized while doing this:

1\. Business is a competition. Much like in sports, skills are only built up
through practice. For an entrepreneur this means actually selling something.
You will start at level 0. There is no substitution for actually doing the
work.

2\. The bigger you grow, the easier it gets. A year ago we were running around
like headless chickens not knowing what to focus on. Now that we've got a core
group of customers, and it's much easier to decide where to go. We can start
to plan a month or two months out now. Opportunities such as partnerships also
present themselves as your business grows larger.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
> The bigger you grow, the easier it gets

I guesstimate it's easier to grow until start hiring, and hit the point where
you can no longer directly manage everyone who works at the company. And if
you've never hired & managed people, being new to having employees is it's own
kind of adventure!

~~~
goatherders
My perception from going through growth again this past year is that the
sooner you can get your organization organized the easier it gets. I can't
recommend the eMyth books enough for most anyone starting a business.
Systemizing things, particularly the things that are rudimentary, is the
fastest way to get to a healthy business. I also ran around for months like a
chicken with my head cut off. Once I hired some help (contractors mostly) to
do some of the tiny tasks that were massive time sucks my life got easier and
my business got healthier.

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mikekchar
This is a really interesting document. I literally _cringe_ reading it. At
first I thought that I'd really like something like this document but with
less random quotes, less facile language, less cheer leading, less fill in the
blanks, etc. But then I thought... I wonder if I am reacting this way because
this is exactly what I need to be reading. What if the way of thinking
espoused by this document is precisely why I never start a business? Maybe
it's the fact that I roll my eyes and completely disregard what people are
saying when they start talking in this fashion that I haven't actually done
anything.

Food for thought.

~~~
icu
My encouragement for you to start a business is this, 'become unstoppable'.
How you become unstoppable is finding your 'why' for doing it. I think this is
the hardest part... and more important than finding 'a business opportunity'
because I think you need the meaning of your 'why' to sustain you through the
difficulties of new venture creation, especially as you iterate through to
product market fit.

I think once you have your why, you'll find yourself naturally doing whatever
it takes to execute, which sharpens your focus away from noise like what
you're describing (i.e. other people's communication styles) and allows you to
'take what you need' from resources, such as this book, and ignore everything
else.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Is... Is this some kind of parody / troll comment?

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EtienneK
Not at all. It's based on one of Simon Sinek's most well known TED talks:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...](https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action)

~~~
icu
Kind of... Simon Sinek distilled what I already knew to be true, and what I
live as I work towards a company that "looks after people". The rest is from
hard won wisdom AKA (temporary) failure.

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daniel_iversen
Looks very interesting, but the doc is very busy right now. If you want to
download a PDF copy of the doc for reading on the go, here's the link (let it
load for a while):
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uq...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/104qgagSsp2rQQEDORGbYC0uqt0neYHCPxu-
aUl4CuSQ/export?format=pdf)

~~~
jonathansorum
As someone further up in the thread posted: give the guy some love and
download it from his website AND get it nicely formatted with a proper layout.
Go here [https://first100.yobenlee.com](https://first100.yobenlee.com)

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encoderer
I will circle back and read this over the weekend but my advice is this:

Get to 10 customers, and then double down on anything that worked.

Some ideas for the first 10:

\- write an essay about something interesting that you can weave your business
idea into, submit to tech blogs like hackernoon

\- join a maker group that can help you in an informal quid pro quo with
social media shares and upvotes

\- launch on hacker news, product hunt and indie hackers. All have their
rituals. Spend a little time, not too much, to get it right.

\- contact all the people you talked to before/during product development (bc
you did talk to people, right?)

\- use an seo keyword research tool or just start searching for things and use
the suggestions at the bottom of the google results. Write actual content on
your website that is directed toward answering these questions. Seo compounds
slowly so start early.

\- find places your customers are (questions on quora or stack overflow;
Facebook groups; etc) and learn about them and interact without being spammy.

These are the techniques we used to take Cronitor to 10 customers and then
hundreds more.

~~~
gamzer
> find places your customers are

> we used to take Cronitor

You clearly have skin in the game due to following your own advice.

------
MuffinFlavored
I have an interesting question.

Say there is an already established business that has more than proven the
idea is viable.

What does it take to... join the same market space? Can you offer the same
features at the same price? Can you offer the same features at a lower price?
Can you offer less features at a lower price?

Are there cases where there is only room for one player and no matter what you
do, you will not be able to steal any sizable amount of market share from
them?

~~~
boxcarr
Super simple. No matter the industry, you can beat the competition with AI +
blockchain written in Rust.

~~~
dgut
And an amazing team: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TZ-
QFPLJjt470c3pc7...](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TZ-
QFPLJjt470c3pc7A3kQ.png)

~~~
wetghost
Me myself and I, go team go

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funkaster
> Helped launch more than 500 mobile apps

I don't want to discredit the author... but that number seems way too high.
500 apps for a period of "more than 10 years" (which usually means prob is
just 10 years or really close to it) implies that you would've had to release
(on average) 4 apps per month non-stop during 10 years. How can you have time
to do anything else?

I get you're not developing each app, but if you're helping them, then you
must allocate some reasonable amount of time per app, otherwise your
contribution would be close to zero (not relevant).

Was that a typo? I could believe 50, but 500?

~~~
fyfy18
My understanding was OP has been a consultant for startups, in the traditional
sense of advising what works and what doesn't. Depending on how involved OP is
and how high level they are working, that may only involve spending a few
hours per week per client - I'd imagine even just joining a weekly
retrospective and advising a team would be pretty valuable.

------
rolleiflex
This is super timely — looking forward to take a look at this in the evening.
Wish this was in an ebook format so I could stick it into my Kindle and read
it that way though. You might want to check out Calibre, it's an app that
automatically converts to more ebook-friendly formats. Might be worth a shot.

BTW - you might want to just host the PDF on your website behind an email wall
and put it behind Cloudflare. I just spent 10 minutes trying to get the PDF,
it's that busy on Google Docs.

Edit: I just tried to convert it, it works _okay_ , not super great, since the
source is PDF. I'm sure you have the raw text document, you can flawlessly
convert from that to EPUB/MOBI if you want.

~~~
itsbenlee
Will check out Calibre. Appreciate the feedback!

You can get the PDF downloadable link here: first100.yobenlee.com.

Will work on EPUB/MOBI formats!

~~~
asadlionpk
Please do those formats. Many read on iBooks and pdf is hard to work with. I
also tried calibre on the PDF, but that doesn't produce a good output. Thanks
for this.

~~~
itsbenlee
Already pinged my designer. If you want to opt-in on my page, I’ll make sure
we push these formats before the holidays! Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
asadlionpk
Awesome

~~~
itsbenlee
EPUB formats have been pushed live on my page!

------
defenestration
Very insightful. While reading the article, I realised that having freedom is
my core motivation. And that (a bit of extra) freedom is the biggest thing my
company can give people. We enable people who are diagnosed with cancer to be
in charge. To not feel defeated, to make decisions and set their path. Will
use this to update our messaging. Thanks for the article!

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sscarduzio
"Roadmapping: a pre-development product workshop that helps founders validate
their app idea against the marketplace. [...] With more than 500 Roadmapping
sessions under our belt, we can say definitively that it works: 18% of our
alumni raise more than $250,000 in pre-product seed capital"

How on earth is raising money a synonym of successful product market fit?

~~~
CosmicShadow
Yeah, once I read that I couldn't stand to read on, it was like, oh, this is
just BS then, that's not a signal of success or market fit, it's a sign of
convincing investors there is.

------
abraae
I do like your agency brand (Rootstrap) but as you may have found, its one of
those words that has unexpected meanings in other cultures :)

------
anongraddebt
I took a startup course in the MBA program at one of HBS/GSB/Wharton/Kellogg
that was taught by a (in my estimation) great VC. Arguably the most insightful
class I've ever taken. I'll give two sets of insights: anecdotes and
principles.

(A1) The founders of a successful custom apparel startup didn't get even close
to 100 customers until after they had tried two different distribution
channels. First, they opened a store and that didn't work. Second, they tried
to sell on-line and that didn't work. Finally, with implosion imminent, they
tried a hybrid model where you get measured in the store, but every purchase
is made on-line and then delivered. It worked.

(A2) Co-founder of one of the publicly-traded food delivery companies told us
how he started out. Was hungry, realized he couldn't order online, so he sits
down and codes an initial web page (as well as an API). Asks a friend of a
friend that runs a restaurant to let him list the restaurant on his new site.
Guy gives him $140 for one month.

Figures he'll just knock-on doors to add restaurants, but managers kick him
out with no meeting. Realizes if he walks in the back door (alley) and
pretends to have a meeting with a manager he might get somewhere. So, he walks
through the kitchens of 100's of restaurants and they ask him who he is there
to see, tells them he has a meeting with the manager. 50% of the time he gets
kicked-out, the rest of the time he gets restaurants to agree to being listed.

(A3) My VC professor's fourth business was a bridal gown website he purchased
with his co-founder. They didn't use paid SEO. Rather, they came up with
creative hacks to drive traffic to the site. One of the better ones:

Pay writers in India to compose short articles about stuff happening in the
bridal space. The writers read the first articles to be published that morning
(UK time) in the BBC, etc., then write up the same stuff, and publish it on
their bridal gown page right as (US time) the same stories were hitting
presses at the NYT, etc.

Using such hacks, they got their site to number two on google search results
without paid SEO.

\-----

(P1) "Half of the difficulty is going from zero customers to one customer.
Everything after that is the other half."

(P2) Every startup is a science experiment. Come up with a hypothesis, test
it, and see what worked and what didn't. Rinse, repeat.

Following a structured, hypothesis-driven process is key. Literally, write in
a journal what your hypothesis/assumption is, how you are going to test it,
and what you hope to learn from the test. Next week, write-out what your
hypothesis is, what you need to do this week to make further progress on
validating/invalidating it, what progress you made the week before in
validating/invalidating it, and what your plan for the following week is.
Continue writing out these four things every single week to stay organized.

(P3) If you feel extremely strapped for cash, view this as a blessing in
disguise. There is some creative hack that will allow you to
validate/invalidate your hypothesis or set of assumptions - you just haven't
found it yet. Running solid, structured experiments (i.e. process) is most
important. Love process.

\-----

Unless you have blown way past 100 customers, the sciency/experimental aspect
of a startup doesn't change. And even inside unicorns, management is
(hopefully) still ultimately just running a never ending series of
experiments.

~~~
devons
Those are excellent insights, thank you.

Do you have any pointers to get started on this for someone whose last
practice of scientific method was a middle-school science fair project?
(Asking for a friend)

I picked up the book "Uncontrolled" by Jim Manzi, which is ostensibly about
this subject. Would love to hear any recommendations you picked up from
learning about this material and applying it.

~~~
anongraddebt
I just created a gmail account you can contact me at ( anongraddebt@gmail.com
). I'll give you the syllabus, assorted materials, and a bulleted list of
take-aways that I've written up for others in the past.

------
h3ft
most detailed guide drop I've seen in a while on here, thanks

~~~
itsbenlee
Appreciate it! I'll be pushing some bonus material next week. Here's how to
get on the list yobenlee.com -> Read My Book

------
goatherders
This is nicely put together - thank you.

My entire business is actually in helping people get customers and at least
half of our clients are those seeking P/M fit who partner with us to get early
demos of their product (or even pre-demo conversations) scheduled. I have a
sketchbook full of cool SAAS ideas that I'm not savvy enough to build. But I'm
good at getting customers so _viola_ that's my business.

I would offer these tips if you are trying to start a business - any business
- and need a nudge to get your first few customers.

1\. You don't need to be different. The world is HUGE. Most of your potential
customers have never heard of your competitors. In fact, they may well be
saying "I wish this-thing-that-solves-a-need existed" without knowing that 20
versions of that thing exist. We tech folks drastically overestimate the
amount of time and energy people put into finding ways to solve problems they
have. Most folks just live with the misery.

2\. Your competition sucks. If you pick up the phone and start the process of
selling than you already way ahead of most of your competitors. Why? Because
most of them act like they sell but they really just sit and agonize over one
more line of code or one more feature instead of getting out there in front of
customers. Use this to your advantage! Your product is already good enough, so
stop developing it and go find users.

3\. Your network is a goldmine. We had a potential customer approach us to
help set 20 demos a month for their SAAS product. So far they had scheduled
zero demos even though all 3 founders had over 1000 LinkedIn connections.
Instead of taking them on as a client I consulted with them for a couple of
hours on how to reach out to people they already knew. (Side note: If you
won't put your product/service in front of EVERYONE you know who is a
potential customer than you are lacking confidence. This can be solved, but
selling to people you know is MUCH easier than selling to strangers. Offer
something you believe in and the conversations come easy).

4\. People hate cold callers, spammers, and unsolicited messages. So make warm
calls (after an introduction) and send relevant emails (how it is you know
they have this problem and how you can help). Do not be fearful of reaching
out! People ARE interested in real things that solve real problems and they
will pay real money for that.

5\. Charge more. Charging a low price doesn't motivate buying any more than a
high price discourages it. Don't price your SAAS at $2 a month because you are
afraid no one will pay $5. Don't price it at $10 because you are afraid no one
will pay $50. Especially in B2B when purchasers aren't often spending their
own money. Problems in the business world are worth more than $5, $10 or even
hundreds of dollars to solve.

Good luck to all of you. Finding new customers can and should be fun, not a
source of stress. And seeing the first official sale or first dollar in the
bank is a high that never gets old.

C

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cvaidya1986
This is fantastic!

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georgiebest
Great guide, very well detailed! Just what I needed, thanks!

~~~
itsbenlee
Awesome!

------
exodust
Presentation is not good. Endless headings followed by double space followed
by short paragraph or bullet points.

Hard to read, annoying to scan. I can see a lot of generic fluff. There may be
pearls in there, but I didn't spot any on quick glance.

~~~
yetihehe
> There may be pearls in there, but I didn't spot any on quick glance.

I've read 1/4 but carefully and already found several pearls. Mind you, some
people will already know 80% of knowledge in this book, but it's not the same
80% for anyone. I won't tell you what is usable because this book is very
general and different parts are usable to different people.

