AI-generated key takeaway: For Apple Search Ads, polish your App Store page, track attribution, target exact competitor-name keywords, and start bids at Apple’s recommended maximum.
How to Get Your First Customers: Lessons From Founders
Every company starts with zero customers, and the first ones rarely come from the channels that work later. They come from founders doing things that do not scale: finding the handful of people with the problem, talking to them one by one, showing up in their communities, and launching wherever early adopters gather.
Curated content
AI-generated key takeaway: Interview customers about what frustrates them with existing solutions; Standard Bots found robot users struggled to set up and operate their machines.
AI-generated key takeaway: Give an AI agent context about your working product, use it to prepare a small launch, then talk to target users before adding features or widening distribution.
AI-generated key takeaway: Build a targeted prospect list, identify relevant decision-makers, and use outreach to learn about customer problems—not just to pitch your product.
AI-generated key takeaway: Build your waitlist before launch, then use targeted events to bring prospective customers together and make joining the product part of attending.
AI-generated key takeaway: Start with problem-aware prospects and helpful Reddit participation; add channels only after traction, and fix the funnel before chasing more reach.
AI-generated key takeaway: Offer a short diagnostic to uncover one costly manual bottleneck, then build a small, tailored demo before asking a prospect to buy.
AI-generated key takeaway: Start with a specific customer problem and a clear offer; find early clients through personal outreach and useful participation where those customers already gather.
AI-generated key takeaway: Study how category leaders acquired early users, then test a channel with a better opening: a job app used YouTube search when Google looked too difficult to crack.
AI-generated key takeaway: Talk to enough target customers to spot recurring needs, shape your offer around the outcome they value, then test delivery with three paying clients.
What this feed covers
This feed collects the most practical lessons on getting the first customers from founders on YouTube, X, Reddit and newsletters, and keeps only what a founder can act on:
- Finding early adopters: where the first users actually came from, and how founders found them.
- Unscalable tactics: cold DMs, onboarding users by hand, and the founder-led work behind the first 10 customers.
- Communities and launches: Reddit, Hacker News, Product Hunt and niche communities, with the numbers they brought.
- The first 1,000: how well-known apps and startups crossed their first thousand users.
- The first channel that worked: and what founders tried before it.
Every item is read by an AI editor that keeps it only when getting the first customers is its main subject, told with specifics. Scaling a product that already has traction lives in Growth & Distribution.
From the book
Explosive Growth is Cliff Lerner’s account of growing to 100 million users and losing $78 million along the way.