How to Get First Customers for Your App (Full Guide)
TL;DR
Before scaling marketing, founders must achieve product-market fit through manual customer discovery with their first 100 customers. The core insight: early-stage and late-stage go-to-market are completely different phases, and almost all common marketing channels are wrong for early-stage startups. ---
Key Concepts
Product-Market Fit
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Alignment between the right customer segment, the right pain point they'll actually pay to solve, and a working business model
Rule of One
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The ideal startup state — one customer type, one pain point, one product, one channel, one business model
Beachhead Market
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The smallest, most accessible customer segment that can get you to $1M in revenue
Customer Discovery
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Structured interviews with potential customers — explicitly not sales — designed to extract insight about pain points, language, and willingness to pay
Product-Channel Fit
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The post-PMF phase of finding which marketing channel scales best
First 100 Customers
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The manual, unscalable phase of acquiring customers to learn what makes them tick before attempting scalable marketing
Growth Loop
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Product mechanic where each new customer refers another (e.g., SurveyMonkey's branded surveys, Lovable's badge)
Wizard of Oz MVP
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Appearing to offer a full product while manually fulfilling the backend — validates demand before building full automation
Outbound
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Highly personalized direct outreach via email or LinkedIn; primary recommended channel for early-stage startups
Notes
§The Core Problem
- Most founders are obsessed with building; getting customers requires a separate, deliberate skill set
- "Build it and they will come is not a strategy — it is a prayer." — Steve Blank
- "First-time founders are obsessed with product. Second-time founders are obsessed with distribution." — Justin Kan (Twitch founder)
§Finding Product-Market Fit
- PMF requires getting three things right simultaneously:
- Most founders have 3 potential customer segments — pick one to test first
- You don't have to be right; you just have to run the next experiment
- Use an LLM to generate a detailed ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) from your rough description of the customer
§Qualifying a Customer Segment
- Has the pain and is aware of it
- May already be trying to solve it (strong signal)
- Can be reached
- Has money to pay
- Exists in sufficient numbers
§The Messaging Framework (also your landing page structure)
§Two Distinct Phases of Go-to-Market
- Phase 1 — First 100 Customers: Manual, unscalable, in-person/on-call; goal is feedback and insight
- Phase 2 — Scalable Marketing: Ads, SEO, content, email sequences; only works once you know what makes people buy
§Why Most Channels Are Wrong Early On
- SEO: Results take 6–12 months; too slow for early feedback loops
- Social media / Content: Builds audience over years, not weeks
- Paid ads: Useful only as cheap experiments ($100 tests); don't rely on them for customers before PMF
- Influencer marketing: Expensive, low response rate
- Affiliates: Good eventually, but complex to set up early
§Best Early-Stage Channels
§Running Outbound (3-Step Process)
- Target a very specific ICP (e.g., yoga teachers in SF running classes at a larger studio)
- Look for signals — indicators of high intent (e.g., registered for a startup event, recently changed jobs)
- Sources: LinkedIn events, LinkedIn people search with filters, Facebook groups, forums, communities
- Ask an LLM to find online and offline communities where your target customer hangs out
- Gather: email, phone, LinkedIn URL
- Gather context: last LinkedIn post, what their company sells, job change triggers, headline
- Goal: enough info to write something personal and relevant
- LinkedIn: short, conversational, 3 lines max
- Email: slightly longer but still tight
- Structure: personalized first line (reference their recent post/work) → brief compliment → clear ask
- Ask for a customer discovery call, not a sale
- Explicitly signal "this is not a pitch"
- Expect ~30% open rate, ~5% response, ~1% show-up — this is normal; treat it as a funnel
- The difference between 1% and 2% conversion can double your business
§Customer Discovery Interviews
- Ask about the last time they experienced the problem — without mentioning your product
- Goal: understand their language, pain ranking, and willingness to pay
- End with: "Can I contact you when the product is ready to test?"
- This naturally converts into a warm sales pipeline
- Do at minimum 10–20 before drawing conclusions; 20+ interviews will reveal which pain point wins
§The Marketing Funnel (applies to all channels)
- Awareness → Consideration → Conversion → Loyalty → Growth Loop
- Every channel, every campaign follows this structure
§Two-Sided Marketplace GTM Strategy
- Solve the chicken-and-egg problem by seeding inventory first
- Pitch to suppliers: "We bring you customers, you only pay if we close them"
- Scrape/import existing listings with permission (Airbnb did this city by city)
- Determine minimum inventory threshold needed for buyers to have real choice
- Don't build automatic payments early — manual connection is fine for first 10–30 transactions (Wizard of Oz MVP)
- Once inventory exists, shift focus to acquiring buyers
§Scaling Marketing (Post-PMF)
- Only invest in scalable channels after you know:
- The right outcome to promise
- The right benefits to highlight
- The objections to bust
- Email sequences: Get every signup into an automated drip
- Email 1: Welcome / onboarding value
- Emails 2–N: Free templates, tips, insight (pure value)
- Final email: Soft offer, possibly discounted
- Content / Personal brand: Long game — builds trust, attracts inbound; pair with retargeting website visitors who match your ICP
Actionable Takeaways
- Write down your 3 candidate customer segments; pick one to test first
- Generate a full ICP using an LLM for that segment
- Frame your offer as: Promise → Benefits → Features → How It Works → Objections
- Book 10–20 customer discovery interviews before spending on marketing — ask about their problem, never pitch your product
- End every discovery call with: "Can I reach out when we're ready to test?"
- Build a LinkedIn list of 100 targeted prospects with signals of high intent
- Write 3-line personalized outreach messages — first line references something specific to them
- Get every email subscriber into an automated value-first drip sequence
- Run paid ads only as $100 experiments to test messaging, not to acquire customers at scale
- As founder, personally do 30–100 sales calls before delegating — you need the raw feedback to make big pivots
Quotes Worth Keeping
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"Build it and they will come is not a strategy. It is a prayer." — Steve Blank
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"First-time founders are obsessed with product. Second-time founders are obsessed with distribution." — Justin Kan
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You don't have to be right. You just have to have the ability to test out each one of these assumptions one by one.
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As soon as you fall out of love with your startup and fall in love with the process of experimenting with these hypotheses — that's when you start unlocking these big things.