"How did you actually get your first 10 customers?" gets asked in founder communities over and over. It has its own threads in r/SaaS and r/FounderFAQs, for example. The answers are remarkably consistent, and none of them are "I ran ads" or "I went viral."
This post turns those answers into a plan you can start today, and shows where AI (ChatGPT, Claude, or similar) can save you hours without writing the kind of message people ignore.
What the people who did it say
Look at how founders describe their first customers and the same few sources keep coming up:
- People you already know, and their introductions. Kevan Lee wrote that his agency Bonfire's first ten clients came from four friends, four referrals, and two former colleagues (Around the Bonfire #506).
- Targeted strangers. The same issue quotes Lenny Rachitsky's review of how more than 100 consumer companies found early users. It lists seven levers, starting with "reach out to friends and colleagues" and "reach out to targeted strangers." Kevan's observation: five of the seven levers come down to reaching out to people.
- People already describing the problem in public. In r/SaaS's "How did you actually get your first 10 customers?" thread, founders describe answering people who were publicly asking for exactly what they'd built, plus narrow ICP, founder-led outreach, and high-touch onboarding.
For customers one through ten, conversations beat channels. Scalable marketing comes later, once you know what those ten people had in common.
Step 1: Narrow until you can search for it
"Small businesses" isn't a target. "Two-person Shopify stores where the founder still answers support emails personally" is one, because you can see it: the founder's name on replies to reviews, a Gmail address on the contact page, a job ad for a part-time support assistant.
That's the test for a good early ICP: can you name the public signals that show someone has the problem right now? If you can't, you'll end up messaging people at random.
Free prompt: ICP card
My offer: [WHAT YOU SELL + WHO IT'S FOR + PRICE]
Candidate customer groups: [3–5 GROUPS]
Groups I already have access to: [NETWORK / COMMUNITIES / PAST JOBS]
Score each group 1–5 on: urgent pain now; already spending time or money on a workaround;
I can find 50 of them this week; I can tell from public info that they have the problem.
Show a table, pick ONE winner, then write an ICP card:
- Who (max 15 words)
- 5 trigger events I can SEE publicly (posts, job ads, reviews, launches, tool changes)
- Current workaround and its cost — mark guesses [assumption]
- Specific places to find 50 of them this week
- 3 disqualifiers
Check the "specific places" line critically. If it says "LinkedIn," ask again: "Name exact searches, groups, or directories."
Step 2: Start warm, even if it feels like cheating
Your first conversations should be with people who'll open your message: former colleagues, past clients, people in communities you've actually taken part in. They aren't necessarily buyers. They're the fastest route to honest feedback and to introductions, which is where a lot of early customers come from.
Make introductions easy to give. Write a two-sentence blurb that someone can forward without editing: who you help, the problem, and what you're offering. Then ask for one specific type of person, not "anyone who might need this."
Step 3: Build a list where every row has a reason
Aim for 30–50 people. For each one, record an observed detail: something true and specific you can mention. It could be a post, a launch, a review, a job ad. No detail, no message. This one rule does more for reply rates than anything you can do to the wording.
AI helps most at this stage. Paste a prospect's public info and have the model pull out the relevant detail, score the fit, and suggest an opening line. Keep it grounded: tell it to quote only from what you pasted and to say "skip" when the fit is weak.
Step 4: Write short, specific messages, then follow up
Three rules cover most of it:
- Open with the detail you observed, not your name or a pleasantry.
- One idea, one question. "Is this on your radar?" beats "Can we book 30 minutes?"
- No invented proof. If you don't have case studies yet, don't imply them. Offer something small and free instead, like a five-point teardown or a redraft of one page.
Free prompt: the draft critic
Run this on every template before you use it widely.
Act as a skeptical [THEIR ROLE] who gets 20 cold messages a day.
Here is my draft:
[PASTE DRAFT]
1. Would you reply? Yes/no + the honest reason in one sentence.
2. Line by line: keep / cut / rewrite, and why.
3. Flag any claim that sounds invented or unverifiable.
4. Rewrite with 20–30% fewer words, same voice, same facts. Do not add facts.
Plan two follow-ups, and make each one add something new: a useful resource, a different angle, or a simpler ask. Then stop. (The cold outreach prompt guide has copy-paste prompts for the first email and follow-ups.)
Step 5: Make the first "yes" small
Your first deal should be easy to agree to: a paid pilot, a fixed-scope first project, or a single product. Put scope, price, timeline, and how to say yes on one screen. When it's delivered, ask for introductions to one specific type of person. That's how one customer becomes three.
Free prompt: the referral ask
What I delivered: [WHAT YOU DID]
Real result they saw (leave blank if none): [RESULT]
Who I'm looking for: [ICP IN ONE SENTENCE]
Write:
1. A referral ask (max 70 words) naming the exact type of person I want — not "anyone."
2. A 2–3 sentence blurb they can forward as-is.
Do not claim results that aren't in "Real result."
A daily rhythm you can sustain
About 45–60 minutes a day:
- 10 min: answer every reply the same day.
- 20 min: research five new prospects and log them with their observed detail.
- 15 min: send five personal first messages.
- 5 min: send the follow-ups that are due.
- 5 min: update your tracker and write one sentence about what you learned.
At five a day across two working weeks, you'll have started around 50 real conversations. How many turn into customers depends on your offer and your list, and nobody can honestly promise you a number. But you'll know far more than you would after two weeks of polishing a landing page nobody visits.
Where AI helps, and where it doesn't
Good uses: turning messy notes into a clear offer, pulling your buyers' own words out of reviews and forum posts, research briefs, first drafts, critiquing your drafts, and sorting replies.
Bad uses: mass-generating "personalized" emails from thin data, inventing proof, and replacing the conversations themselves. Your first ten customers buy partly because a real person paid attention to their problem, so keep that part.
The one-line version
Pick a group narrow enough to search for, start with people who know you, message people with a visible reason, keep it short and honest, follow up twice, and make the first yes small.
Originally published as the full guide: How to Get Your First 10 Customers as a Solo Founder.
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