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95 Ways to find your first customers for customer
development or your first sale
11 August 2013
₁₈ C
You can have the best idea in the world, but until you find someone besides yourself that wants it, it’s
not really a business. To find those people, as Paul Graham wrote in a recent essay, you have to “Do
Things That Don’t Scale (h p://paulgraham.com/ds.html).” The problem is, it is often unclear what those
“Things” are.
Fortunately, the internet is full of help. In particular, I was inspired by recent posts on someone going
from zero to revenue in 5 weeks using customer development
(h p://notes.casualcorp.com/post/55805301226/how-to-go-from-zero-to-revenue-in-under-five-weeks)
and validation by Melissa Tsang (h p://melissatsang.com/2013/07/21/week-1-choosing-an-ideavalidating-a-market-need-and-bridging-focus/) for her new startup Cusoy (h p://cusoy.com). I’ve also
found the advice for Joel of Buffer about his start (h p://joel.is/post/6687368692/startup-bootstrapping)
and the advice from this post by Jason Cohen of ASmartBear blog (h p://blog.asmartbear.com/get-firstcustomers.html) to be spot on. With all that advice though I still hadn’t seen anyone tell you where to look.

How to use this post:
Before we get into the massive list of tactics below, I want to be clear on what to do with this list and
what to expect when you find a few tactics you want to follow:
1. Your initial goal should be learning.
In the immortal words of Lean Godfather, Steve Blank, “No Plan Survives First Contact With
Customers.” (h p://id8ireland.wordpress.com/tag/steve-blank/) With that in mind, the last thing you
want to do is be hard selling your idea to them. Instead, you want to interview your customers to
understand their problems. You can learn how to do customer development interviews here
(h ps://jasonevanish.com/2012/01/18/how-to-structure-and-get-the-most-out-of-customerdevelopment-interviews/).
2. Understand you’re going to have a low success rate.
There is no silver bullet for finding users for your startup, just tactics like the ones below that work to
varying degrees depending on your idea and market. Even for good channels, a 10-20% response rate

is normal, so don’t get discouraged.
3. Don’t worry about scaling!
None of the ideas below are really scalable when taken literally. However, like Paul Graham said in
his essay (h p://paulgraham.com/ds.html): don’t worry about scaling right now. Just do whatever it
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takes to find people and the scalable methods will emerge later. If you have a cofounder worried
about scaling early, have them read the Paul Graham essay.
4. Remember your manners and personalize.
You’re likely asking people to talk to you when you have nothing but an idea and maybe a prototype
of some sort. Be respectful in communicating with them. Also realize that no one likes a form note, so
the more you personalize it and make it feel like they’re special, the be er chance you have of a
response. Elizabeth Yin (h ps://twi er.com/launchbit) of Launchbit (launchbit.com) has an awesome
slideshare with advice on reaching out to customers effectively
(h p://www.slideshare.net/dunkhippo33/lean-startup-circle-boston-april-28-2011).
5. Don’t get banned.
If you abuse any of the tactics below, many of the sites and groups will ban or block you. Pay
a ention to restrictions to how often you can do certain things (like Meetup.com allows you to
message 12 users per day). Realize the more times you break a terms of service, the more likely you
are to get noticed and banned. On the flip side, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Just
don’t be egregious.
A special thanks to these people that helped edit & provide ideas for this post:
Thomas Schranz (h ps://twi er.com/__tosh), Cofounder of Blossom.io (h p://blossom.io)
Eric Jorgenson (h ps://twi er.com/EricJorgenson), Marketplace Manager at Zaarly

(h p://zaarly.com)
I’m writing a book on How to Build Customer Driven Products. (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9)
You can sign up (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9) for updates and early access to chapters that will help you build
product customers will love by signing up here. (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9)

95 Ways to Find Your First Customers for Customer
Development and Sales
Linkedin:
1) Use Linkedin Answers: Look for people asking questions around your problem and market or ask
your own.
2) Join Linkedin Groups: Join Linkedin Groups for your target market. Engage in discussions there,
reach out to people that post relevant ideas or questions, or post looking for help.
3) Use Search + InMail: If you know the kind of person you want to talk to, try searching for them (like
VP Marketing at companies between 25-200 employees) and using InMail to message them.
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(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/gabriel-prat-inmail-example1.jpg)
4) Check your existing connections: People change careers a lot more than you may expect. You may
have also lost touch with an old classmate that is now in just the right market. Either way, your existing
connects are very likely to respond and you’ll have access to their email address, which is be er than
their LinkedIn inbox.
5) Ask your connections for intros: It’s quite possible the perfect people to talk to aren’t already a
connection, but they may be one degree away. Don’t be afraid to ask connections you have a good
relationship with for an intro.

6) Post to the Linkedin Social Network: Linkedin now has status updates you can post. It’s a lot less
active than other networks, but it can’t hurt to see if anyone notices.
7) Run Linkedin Ads: Linkedin is the network for professionals and their careers. If your startup idea
has them as the target customer (say marketers or executives), then an alternative to the high
maintenance of Linkedin Groups can be to run ads. Linkedin also has a partner network for a lot of
business content sites which can further the reach. There’s a great guide on KISSmetrics for Linkedin
Ads here (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-linkedin-ads1/).

Facebook:
8) Look up your friends: For most people, their closest people in their life now and in the past are on
Facebook. If you haven’t already exhausted your existing network on Linkedin, definitely look to see if
any of your friends are in the market and worth talking to.
9) Ask your friends: There’s also a lot of random people you met in college and other times. You never
know who knows who so you have to ask. I just got introduced to another person in tech through
someone I was in a beirut league with in college.
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10) Look for Fan Pages: There’s fan pages for just about anything you can think of. People that run those
pages in your market are great people to talk to both as potential customers and to see if they’ll post
something on your behalf on their page. Friends who have leveraged this have found it cheaper than
Facebook ads, even when they pay the Fan Page owner. Just click the “message” bu on on the fan page.

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/fan-page-message-bu on.jpg)
11) Run Targeted Facebook Ads: If you think you really know your audience demographics, then

running a small set of Facebook ads to a landing page, can be a great way to garner interest.
12) Try the new Graph Search: I haven’t had a lot of success using it, but it’s worth searching for things
related to your market to see if anything else turns up, especially now that you can message people you
aren’t friends with. In particular, Facebook has a great geographic filtering ability you won’t find on
Twi er or otherwise.

Twitter: (My personal favorite)
13) Ask your followers: If you have any kind of follower base at all, you should definitely tweet about
who you want to talk to. If you don’t have a big follower base, ask the people with bigger followings
you’re friends with to ReTweet you. As you develop your idea, you may want to tweet different
requests, which may be seen by different people since no one sees every tweet of their followers.
14) Ask your followers for referrals: It’s not just about who you know. The bigger benefit is who your
network knows so be sure to not just ask people you follow or follow you if they’re a fit, but ask others
for referrals.
15) Run Twi er Ads: Twi er ads can be a cheap way to reach people you’d never know otherwise. We
got thousands of sign ups for MyAnalytics App (h p://www.myanalyticsapp.com/) at KISSmetrics using
them. Like any channel, the more mature it gets, the more expensive it will become
(h p://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shi y-clickthroughs/), so by 2015, this may not be nearly as
economical (like many Adwords today).
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16) Ask Twi er Accounts to tweet on your behalf: Just like you can ask Fan Pages on Facebook to talk
about you, you can reach out to Twi er accounts in your target market to see if they’ll tweet something
for you or ReTweet you. If it makes sense for your business, you can also ask some celebrities via tools

like BuySellAds (h p://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/by/tweets) and Sponsored Tweets
(h ps://app.sponsoredtweets.com/tweeters).
17) Search for relevant Hashtags: Hashtags are a big part of Twi er for many markets. For example, in
the analytics market, there’s #Measure (h ps://twi er.com/search?q=%23measure&src=typd). Find
accounts using the hashtag and reach out to them and join the conversations happening. Find relevant
hashtags by asking others or checking out sites like Hashtags.org (h p://www.hashtags.org/)

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-10-at-4-01-48-pm.png)
18) Join a Twi er Chat: Many groups have regular chats that can be found based on the group’s hashtag
they use. A great example is the Community Manager chat, #cmgrchat (h ps://twi er.com/search?
q=%23cmgrchat&src=hash). This is a great way to ask questions and engage your target audience if
they’re holding Twi er chats.
19) Search Twi er for People Talking about your Problem: Remember that time you were really
annoyed at a company? What did you probably do? You tweeted about it. Try searching different ways
for people talking about frustrations and you’re bound to find people happy to talk because they’re
excited someone is going to make things be er. I’ve successfully used this to talk to people about, of all
things, email migration (h ps://twi er.com/search?q=email%20migration%20hate&src=typd).
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Email:
20) Email relevant friends/contacts: There’s a right way and wrong way to do this. Yes, you can spam all
your contacts in one big dump asking for help. What will yield a be er result is if you invest the time to
be more targeted in who you reach out to. Close friends and family won’t mind and those actually
related to your target industry.

21) Start a personal newsle er: I’ve known some people to start a personal newsle er to have their
contacts *opt into* that then regularly updates them on your startup journey and can ask for specific
help then repeatedly in the newsle er. This works great for ge ing mentors and early supporters engage
in a small ask (just opt in) and later help more as you have different needs.

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-05-at-3-27-26-pm.png)
22) Use Rapportive to find emails & cold email: Somehow you may have stumbled upon someone
you’d *love* to talk to, but you don’t know them. You can use tools like Rapportive to guess the email
address and send them a personal note asking to speak with them about what you’re working on. You
can find more advice on this tactic here (h p://www.slideshare.net/dunkhippo33/lean-startup-circleboston-april-28-2011) and here (h p://lifehacker.com/use-rapportive-to-find-anyone-on-the-internetsreal-em-570745575).

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(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/finding-zuck-with-rapportive.jpg)
23) Make your GChat status a call for help/intros: This may seem simple and passive, but you’d be
surprised who reads your GChat statuses. Adding a note of what you’re looking for and leave it up for a
few days and you might just get a few people to help you out. This works for other chat tools as well, of
course.
24) Make your signature a call for help/intros: Just like your GChat status is a long tail way to get
people’s a ention, you can use your email signature the same way. Below your name in your signature
is the perfect place to let people know. Don’t forget to update your mobile app’s signature as well as
your computer’s.

Meetup.com:

25) Join & A end Meetups in your category: Meetup has become an amazing hub of groups around just
about any topic you can think of. Whether you’re making an app for LARPers or a hardware startup,
there’s a meetup group likely in your area you should join to meet and talk with group members in your
target market.

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(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-03-at-9-16-31-pm.png)
26) Ask organizers to message the group: Organizers have unique privileges to send messages to their
groups. You don’t get what you don’t ask for
(h p://quotationsbook.com/quote/3313/#sthash.EmQ0oVoz.dpbs), so don’t be afraid to reach out to
group organizers to talk to them (they may be a great target user) and see if they’ll message the group.
They often make no money in running their groups, so you can think of them like the Facebook Fan Page
owners previously mentioned.
27) Ask the organizer to allow you to address the audience at a Meetup: Potentially even be er than
ge ing into everyone’s clu ered inbox is the opportunity to address the whole group at one of their
events. This allows people most interested to immediately approach you. This can be a great consolation
ask if they don’t want to message their whole group since this requires no work on their part.
28) Mention in your Meetup profile what you’re looking for: Like the GChat status, this is a passive
move that alone won’t get you everyone to talk to, but you’d be surprised how often people read the
profiles of other new members in a group. Be sure to include your desired contact method if you want
Meetup members to reach out to you.
29) Message users on Meetup.com: Not every member of a Meetup group a ends every event and if
there’s no upcoming meetups or it’s a group outside your area, you can still reach users by sending them

individual messages. Per a great write up by Melissa Tsang (h p://melissatsang.com/2013/07/21/week-1choosing-an-idea-validating-a-market-need-and-bridging-focus/), Meetup has a limit of 12 messages per
day, which is still enough to get some quality responses as she writes in detail about.
30) Create a Meetup group: Just because a group doesn’t exist, does not mean there would not be
interest. Countless people have launched successful businesses based on the idea of organizing a high
value group. Just remember that if you do this, not only will you build trust and relationships with all
the a endees, you’ll be the organizer who can send all those messages, decide who addresses the
audience, etc.

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Your Blog:
31) Write a blog post about the problem you’re solving: If you feel you know some of the key problems
that users are facing in your target market, write about it (h ps://medium.com/onstartups/968ebef44a56)! If it resonates with them, they will share, upvote, tweet, etc it and some will
even sign up as long as you remember to have a call to action to sign up at the end. You can see an
example here (h ps://jasonevanish.com/2011/11/27/the-lean-product-life-cycle/), where 1,000 reads
turned into 10 sign ups and a look at some famous companies that started with a blog here
(h ps://medium.com/on-startups/968ebef44a56).
32) Post your blog to discussion sites in appropriate categories: Sites like Reddit
(h p://www.reddit.com/) and HackerNews (h p://news.ycombinator.com/) are awesome to access
established audiences for your market. Before posting, do your homework so you actually post it
somewhere it’s welcome; a baker would not be well served to post their baking innovation on
HackerNews, but a marketing startup would do very well posting to Inbound.org
(h p://www.inbound.org/). By posting it to these sites you’ll significantly increase the reach of #31 and
might also get some interesting commenters there you can reach out to like this example from Vero

(h ps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4129228).

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/getvero-hackernews.jpg)
33) Update your About Page for what you’re looking for: Just like #23 and #28, it is always beneficial to
list what your looking for on your About page (h ps://jasonevanish.com/about/). The most engaged
people on your blog are likely to click to your about page to see who you are and if they see this, they
can help even if they don’t read your specific blog post about your idea.
34) Make a page on your blog just about your market: Depending on your blogging platform, this
could be easy or hard, but it can never hurt to organize your information in a way that people can easily
navigate it. If you’re writing a whole series of items or have already created a lot of related content, this
can be a great way to assert your expertise and act as a honeypot to draw in interested potential
customers.
35) Start a blog just to talk about your industry: Don’t already have a blog or don’t want to talk about
your startup on your existing blog? Then start a new one. It helps to have more content than just one
post, so if you go this route, try to have a few posts you can post over a few weeks. If you know your
startup’s domain, you can make this the start of your company’s blog
(h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/ultimate-guide-startup-marketing/). Especially for blogs like this, try to get
users to either sign up for an email list or to explicitly sign up for customer interviews.

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Other Blogs:
36) Reach out to other bloggers for interviews: Chances are, there are other people writing about the
market and potentially even the problem you’re interested in solving. These people are generally very

knowledgable on the market and so they make great customer interview candidates and can also shed a
light on more places to look for people in your market.
37) Ask other bloggers to run an ad for you: Many bloggers, like those fan page owners, don’t make a
lot of money, so they may be willing to run an ad for you for very cheap or mention you in a relevant
post just because they’re nice or like you.
38) Ask other bloggers to write about you: Going beyond an ad (which may be seen on multiple posts)
you can see if a blogger is willing to write a whole post about you. If you’ve already interviewed them
and they’re excited about your idea, this may be an easier ask than you think (and thus do it for free).
39) Ask to write a guest blog post: If your own blog has no audience, the best thing you can do is get a
post you’d write on your market/problem on a blog that does have your desired audience. Bloggers love
having more content to share, so if it’s a good post, they’re very likely to be willing to publish it. Look for
guidelines and advice on guest blogging (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/guest-blogging-forkissmetrics/) on sites you want to write for like on KISSmetrics’s blog.

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/guest-blog-post-image.jpg)
40) Use Blog lists to find the right blogs: Not sure who to reach out to? Sites like Technorati, Blog
Catalog (h p://blogcatalog.com)and AllTop (h p://alltop.com/) are great for finding out top blogs for
things like Top Fashion Blogs (h p://technorati.com/blogs/directory/living/fashion/) or just about any
other category. You can also look for other influencers on sites like Klout (h p://klout.com) and
PeerIndex (h p://www.peerindex.com/).
41) Reach out to commenters: If you see passionate comments on someone else’s blog, follow the link
and the profile/name from the comment to find out who they are and reach out to them. People usually
will include a link back to their own blog, About.me profile or Twi er account from such a comment.
This will give you a more direct, personal way to reach them, and avoid writing a bunch of comments,
which the blog owner may then mark as spam and never be seen.

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Q&A Sites like Quora (), Quibb (quibb.com), &
Answers.Onstartups ( />42) Reach out to people that ask relevant questions: If you can see who asked a good question related
to the problem you’re solving, reach out to them using any methods the site allows to see if they’ll do an
interview.
43) Answer questions about your problem/market: If you’re already knowledgable on your market,
don’t be afraid to jump in and answer open questions. The people that ask can become great people to
talk to and are more likely to be responsive if you already helped them with your answer. Don’t be
afraid to drop a mention of what you’re working on right in the answers. Thomas Schranz
(h p://www.quora.com/Thomas-Schranz/answers/) at Blossom.io (h p://blossom.io) has done a great
job of doing this in a helpful, non-spammy way.

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/thomas-good-answer-quora.jpg)
44) Reach out to great answers: If you see someone who has given some great answers, they are likely
very knowledgeable in your market and the problem you’re solving. Reach out to them to do an
interview. Obviously, you’ll want to be careful it’s not a competitor. ;)
45) Ask questions to see who answers: There’s no reason not to join the conversation by asking
questions as well. Reach out to the authors of any answers you find satisfactory or interesting. The best
part of asking your own questions is that virtually every Q&A site will send you alerts when your
question gets answered so you can easily keep track of them even if you ask a few.

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46) Put Calls to Action in your Profile and Answer Subheadings: Sites like Quora allow you to put
whatever subheading you want below an answer, so don’t be afraid to mention something about your
startup there. Also, like the other sections, always put in your profile what you’re up to so anyone that
checks you out (even for answers you may have wri en in other areas) can find you and potentially
reach out.

IRL (In Real Life), aka “outside the building”
( />47) Approach people in native environments: Would your target customer be found in a coffee shop,
grocery store or mall? Then go there and try talking to people. Like anything this is a skill. This can come
off as harassing or creepy (and the store may ask you to leave) or it can work great. The founders
of Sincerely (h p://sincerely.com/) have been know to walk over to a nearby mall and offer strangers
money and app credits so they can see how a user uses their app.
48) Look for people unhappy with a service: Are you trying to make a real world activity (like finding a
locksmith or a good mechanic) be er? Then looking for disappointed people near that service may be
just the unhappy customers you could delight with your service. After taking a bad cab ride, you’d be
the perfect person to explain all the reasons you’d likely prefer to take an Uber
(h ps://uber.com/invite/7aoq6) next time.
49) Go to conferences for your target audience: Just about every industry has a few conferences related
to it. Established businesses get booths, thought leaders speak and many deals get done. You should be
there too (h p://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/100083/How-I-Hacked-The-Startup-Launch-ConferenceCircuit.aspx) as you’ll never find such a concentration of people in your industry. Take advantage of
a endee lists to figure out who you want to meet with. Offer to volunteer or just ask for a discount ticket
because you’re a startup and you’ll be surprised what you may get.

50) Go to trade organization events: Depending on the business you’re in there may be regularly
“Chamber of Commerce” (h p://www.chambersmallbusiness.com/2008/07/if-you-run-a-sm.html) style
events where your target customers may be. This would work especially well if you’re targeting people
who own brick and mortar stores or provide contract services.
51) Go to places you know they’ll congregate: Have an idea for people that own boats? Then going to
your local marina is a *great* place to find boaters to talk to. Golfers might just be at the golf course or

driving range, frequent fliers at an airport and teachers at a school. Timing is obviously everything, so be
cognizant of when someone looks like they’re approachable and have time to kill versus trying to hurry
somewhere else.
52) Ask people on long train rides or airplanes: I’m always amazed by the kinds of people I meet when
riding Amtrak or flying. Sometimes serendipity can work in crazy ways, so don’t be afraid to tell
random people you meet what you’re working on. They might just be helpful or someone nearby will
overhear and jump in.
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Your existing user base (even if small)
53) Offer a user Referral Program: You need a great product before you should be trying to aggressively
hack your growth, but that shouldn’t stop you from offering an incentive to your existing users to help
you get more users. They likely know where to find more of them (their social graph, emailing friends,
etc) so a li le incentive will get them to help you out. There’s a great Quora thread on the subject here.
(h ps://www.quora.com/Referral-Marketing/What-are-the-dos-and-donts-of-referral-invite-programs)

54) Ask your users via email: Especially in the early days, you should regularly talk to your users and
be updating your whole user base regularly. As part of those updates for new features, major bug fixes
and outreach, don’t be afraid to ask them for referrals to more users or people to talk to.
55) Always ask your users when you talk: Whether you’re doing a customer development interview,
usability testing or just talking to a user about a support case, remember that you don’t get what you
don’t ask for. (h p://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-merri -jones/squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease_b_3628600.html) Ask them both if they know anyone specific who might also be interested in your
startup as well as places they generally find other people. The la er may turn out to be a meetup, a
Twi er chat or something else that is very target rich for you, but you would never have known.


Craigslist
56) Look for relevant postings: Does your startup idea do anything that is relevant to one of the many
Craigslist categories? Quite a few companies have had great success building a massive business off just
1 category (see below). Try reaching out to posters to talk to them and later you can potentially scale
this. AirBnb is the most famous recent example, which Andrew Chen highlights well here
(h p://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/#).

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57) Make your own post: Just like you can respond to posters, you can also make your own posting in
the appropriate category and filter the ensuing responses to find the right people to talk to. A friend
working on a startup recently used this to success by making a basic post and then sending all
respondents a qualifying survey to make sure they were a match. A small cash incentive in the posting
will generally drive a solid response rate.

Forums, Micro Networks & Communities on the web
58) Join in the conversations on the sites: Just about any community exists on the web today. Many of
them are in places you would have no idea exists until you dig in. If you can’t find them initially, ask
some of the early users you meet using some of the other tactics listed in this post. Once there, look
around for people already talking about your problem you’re solving and join that conversation to learn
more. You can also post new discussions specifically on your target subject to see who is interested.

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59) Message individual users of interest: If you see someone talking a lot about the problems or
opportunities you’re working on, see if you can send a private message to them on the forum or at worst
just reply to one of their comments asking to speak with them. Anyone sufficiently passionate will be
excited to share their thoughts.
60) Reach out to moderators: If this is truly a community site (and not another company’s forums) then
the moderators are often the most passionate people of all. Reach out to them as great people to talk to
and learn from. As a moderator, they’ll be spending as much time as anyone following all the
conversations there so they could provide valuable insight beyond their own experiences. If it is a
company’s forum, then tread a bit more carefully depending on if your idea is competitive or
complimentary.
61) Ask Moderators to post on your behalf or run an ad: Many forums on the web are run with very
li le revenue and more as a passion project. Therefore, much like some of the previously mentioned Fan
Pages, etc, they may be open to posting on your behalf or running an ad for a very small fee. They’ll
know the ins and outs of the site, which will give you a be er chance of reaching the maximum
audience.

Google Adwords & other ad networks
62) Run Adwords with a landing page: An efficient (though at times costly) way to build an early user
list is to run a quick, targeted Adwords campaign linking to a sign up landing page. You can learn how
to set that up here (h p://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demandfor-your.html). There’s also good advice on evaluating the success or failure of such a campaign here
(h p://answers.onstartups.com/questions/44163/lean-startup-landing-page-test-how-do-i-measuresuccess) and here (h ps://www.quora.com/How-does-one-validate-a-startup-idea-with-GoogleAdWords). Realize that paying to get a bunch of people on a list doesn’t validate much on its own. It’s
then using that list to reach out to users and talk to them and ask them to pay for something that does.


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63) Run ads on lesser known networks: Google may have the largest audience, but not the cheapest or
best targeted. Consider your market and think about if other ad networks would work be er. There’s
everything to consider from Yahoo and Bing to mobile ad networks or blogger ad networks. You can find
a list of alternatives here (h p://www.webconfs.com/google-adwords-alternatives-article-46.php).
64) Have your SEO basics in order: What’s be er than the perfect Adwords campaign? Showing up
organically for searches on your problem. Great SEO takes time, but you can make sure to have the
basics right from day 1 so that you can at least get a trickle of interested users to your blog or site. There
are a lot of great tips on the KISSmetrics blog (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/?s=SEO+basics) including this
great SEO Guide for Beginners (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/).

Newsletters
65) Talk to newsle er owners: Just like passionate people often run forums simply for the love of it,
others will run newsle ers. If you already subscribe to them, don’t be afraid to just reply to the
newsle er and ask for a few minutes to talk to them. Most people are excited to hear from people who
read their work!
66) Buy Ads using a newsle er ad tool: There’s a great newsle er ad network
(h p://www.launchbit.com/) called Launchbit. It can be a great help in both finding out what newsle ers
exist in a category and allowing you to quickly set up an ad campaign across multiple such newsle ers.
67) Ask for mentions in a newsle er: In addition to talking to newsle er owners as potential early
adopters, you can also ask them for exposure. Many newsle ers have no formal advertising system like

Launchbit (h p://launchbit.com), so often you can just go direct to them to ask for a mention for li le or
no cost. The more excited they are for what you’re doing, the less likely it will cost you anything.
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68) Start your own industry newsle er: If you don’t find any newsle ers in your category or are think
there’s room for another one, then don’t be afraid to start your own!
(h p://www.quora.com/Startups/When-is-the-best-time-for-a-startup-company-to-start-sending-amonthly-newsle er) It will take time to build up an audience, but it’s a great way to put to work all
those signups you’ve been driving to your landing page. Often times, it’s easier to first get people on a
newsle er and then later convert them to a paying customer.

Complimentary Startups
69) Reach out to complimentary startups: No ma er your industry or idea, there will be others in the
market you compliment. At KISSmetrics, there were many other SaaS tools we were happy to integrate
with (h p://support.kissmetrics.com/integrations/) and swap customer/mailing lists. In most cases, our
analytics was something their users needed and many of our customers could use a support tool, call
tracking metrics or track a MailChimp email campaign. The best case for success with this method is to
target companies of similar size (ie- mailing lists and user bases are of similar size) as that assures an
equally mutually beneficial relationship.

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70) Ask to guest post on their blog: Just like there are industry blogs run by volunteers and people just
generally passionate about the space, there are also companies with prominent blogs. One of the biggest
challenges they often have is having enough content. Reach out to someone on the marketing team or
any contact info you see on the blog and propose topics that allow you to naturally link to what you’re
doing.
71) Find their users and reach out to them directly: If you think your idea would be helpful to that
company’s audience, look for people actively engaging and discussing the company on all the platforms
I’ve been writing about throughout this post. While it’s be er to ask for forgiveness than permission,
remember again to use tact so as to not be spammy or offend the company.

Your Competition
72) Watch what they do: As the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Chances are your
competition has figured out at least a couple of spots where your customers exist and you can enter the
conversation there as well. In more modern terms, if something they do works, then consider Jobs’s
favorite quote, “Great artists steal.” (h p://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/) Like their
Facebook page, and follow the company and key employees on Twi er for some inspiration based on
what they link to.
73) Look for social mentions: Especially if you’re trying to disrupt a large incumbent, there’s likely
many people talking about your competition. Look for especially people complaining about the product
or experience. These are perfect people to reach out to learn from and hopefully convert to giving you a
try. This also works for other startups you’re competing with.

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74) Use research tools: Tools like MixRank (mixrank.com), which shows the ads a site has been running,
and Spyfu (spyfu.com), which shows you the expected ad spend and keywords purchased for
competition. If you’re looking for inspiration on the kinds of ads to try, those tools will help you get
there.

Data Research Tools
75) Use Datanyze (h ps://www.datanyze.com): This tool will tell you what apps any of the top
1,000,000+ websites are using as well as what they’ve recently quit. It’s transformed more than one sales
team I know and provides priceless information on the state of just about any web SaaS market. Their
free demo (h ps://www.datanyze.com/market-share/) can help you understand market share, while the
pricey version has alerts for specific tools and lets you see what any site is currently using.

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(h ps://www.datanyze.com)
76) Leverage tools that tell you contact info for key roles: If you know the persona of your target
customer, then a list like Hoover’s (h p://www.hoovers.com/) or Jigsaw (h p://www.data.com/Jigsaw/)
can help you find some of those types of users at especially bigger companies. Note that this lists they

have aren’t 100% accurate, nor are they cheap. Try to hustle access via a friend or advisor.

Your College, University or School
77) Ask your professors: Many professors live vicariously through their students, and are happy to help
out current students as well as alumni. If you had a professor that you had a particularly strong
relationship with that is relevant to your startup, definitely reconnect with them. Also realize that many
professors will talk to alumni who they never taught. Most professors have industry contacts they can
help you with introductions as well as be a great channel to their students as potential customers or hires
whether via emailing them or le ing you address the class.
78) Leverage your alumni network: Whether it’s old clubs you belonged to, a fraternity or sorority or
simply the alumni group for the city you’re in, you’d be amazed what people may be doing after school
regardless of major or study habits. Don’t be afraid to both reach out to old classmates and club
members as well as reach out to the clubs themselves for help from current members. Every student
group I was in loved to hear from alumni.
79) Use your alumni directory: Many schools have searchable alumni directories that can allow you to
track down contacts at some of the most powerful positions in the world. The shared experience of going
to the same school is often all you need to mention to get someone who normally would be unreachable
to suddenly be accessible to you for a meeting, mentorship or the right introduction.

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80) Reach out to student groups: Even if you weren’t a member of the group, student groups are usually
excited to hear from alumni. If any student group fits as a target customer for your startup, you should

reach out to them. Playing the alumni card often gets you a great response and can often lead to offers to
help you in many ways. They can email their list, let you address the group at a meeting or assist in
recruiting help.

Leveraging the Physical World
81) Post an offer in public places: Bulletin boards still physically exist in many places and people still
put up physical signs for all kinds of things. The stereotype are things like meetings and guitar lessons,
but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a ention being creative. If you know there are places your target
audience will go to or pass by, consider posting something to get their a ention. If you’re doing a
Concierge MVP (h p://sco lthompson.com/lean-lesson-flashback-the-concierge-mvp/) for your idea,
this is a great way to start.
82) Use handouts, fliers or mailers: If hanging something up and hoping people will read it and respond
doesn’t work for you, consider a more 1 to 1 communication through handouts you can give out or mail.
One person I met that had a parking ticket app would carry fliers with him and put their flier under the
wiper of a car that already had a parking ticket on it as well. It had a massive conversion rate. Get
creative!

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(h p://www.streetsblog.org/2012/01/10/turning-a-parking-ticket-into-a-bike-purchase/)
83) Buy someone’s service: So you want to start a business serving artists, or maybe housecleaners or
some other service? Try buying their service and take a few minutes before or after their service to talk
to them. If they care about customer service, they’ll be happy to discuss their problems with you. A
friend of mine started his mobile invoicing startup based on the problems his cleaning lady had tracking

payments.

Kickstarter & other funding sites
84) Look for products ge ing funded in your industry: Funding sites are booming which means all
kinds of companies and ideas are ge ing funded. Others in your industry can be incredible sources of
knowledge not just on how to run a campaign, but what they’ve learned from interacting with their new
customers.
85) Ask complimentary funded projects for help: A fellow crowd-funded project that has finished their
funding will be very busy trying to deliver their product to their supporters, but they might just be
willing to send a message, tweet or post on your behalf. If their funding is still open, you may be able to
swap promotion to your audience and theirs. Remember: You don’t get what you don’t ask for!

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86) Reach out to users that backed the project: Every Kickstarter has a tab for Backers which includes
their profiles, which you can click to see what else they’ve backed. While they have no messaging system
(Indiegogo does), with their full names on Kickstarter, you can likely Google or search Twi er or Linkedin
for them and message them there.
87) Put your idea on a funding site: If you feel you’ve validated your idea enough, then running your
own crowd-funding campaign is a great way to validate interest for your idea. There is tons of
information on the web about making the most of a campaign, just search on Google
(h p://lmgtfy.com/?q=kickstarter+best+practices) or Quora (h p://www.quora.com/search?

q=kickstarter).

Youtube
88) Talk to Youtube Channel owners: Youtube is filled with creators making content on all kinds of
markets. If you go to Youtube’s channel search (h ps://www.youtube.com/channels), you can search for
your category and see who has channels and how many subscribers they reach. Just like you can talk to
bloggers as experts in a market, you can learn a lot by interviewing channel owners.

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-06-at-4-31-39-pm.png)
89) Ask channel owners for promotion: If your idea resonates with the channel owner, there’s a good
chance you can get them to talk about you on one of their episodes or maybe even have you as a guest.
They may charge you a fee, but if it’s your exact target audience, it might just be worth it.
90) Start your own channel: If you think video is a great medium to communicate with your audience
then creating a channel to connect with them may be a great option. Just like starting your own Meetup
group, it can initially be hard, but once you’ve built an audience it will have a great, long-term payoff.
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91) Run ads on Youtube: Youtube leverages Google’s ad powers to run targeted ads. You only pay for
the ads people fully watch (not skip) so if video seems a powerful way to communicate with your
audience, it’s worth experimenting. Remember, Dropbox started with nothing but a video
(h p://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587) and got over 75,000
signups (although they did not run it as a video ad).

Your own Product:

92) Put your name on it: If any part of your product can be seen by a non-customer, make sure your
name is on it. This is easy, free marketing that your customers can provide for you simply in using your
product. KISSinsights (now Qualaroo (qualaroo.com)) had incredible growth without doing any paid
advertising because of a simple link in each of their pop up surveys.

(h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/qualaroo-powered-by.jpg)93) Make sharing an option
for more access: If your product has metered usage, then you will always have customers who are
uncomfortable moving up to a new, costlier tier. MixPanel has a free 50,000 events plan that can become
a free 175,000 plan if you put their logo on your homepage. (h ps://mixpanel.com/free/) I’ve seen countless
startups with that logo in their footer for just this reason, so don’t think your users won’t do it until you
try.
94) Build a product “worth tweeting about”: In the rush to build MVPs and move fast, it can be easy to
end up building a half assed product instead of half a product
(h p://makecheckthink.com/post/30180169203/build-half-a-product-not-a-half-assed-product). If you
instead solve a deep pain in a delightful way (h p://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/What-are-someof-the-techniques-Stripe-used-aggressively-for-early-user-acquisition), people will naturally rave about
it. Crashlytics (crashlytics.com), which was Twi er’s largest acquisition
(h p://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/02/05/twi ers-boston-acquisitions-crashlytics-tops-100mbluefin-labs-close-behind/) ever, used this strategy
(h p://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2013/06/25/four-pillars-of-leadership/) to experience viral
growth of their app crash reporting tool.

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Mobile:
95) Run ads in your side project apps: A number of my friends have built apps as side projects that end

up having a few thousand users that never really monetized or amounted to anything. As a free user
base you can always insert your own ads into your app. I met one of the founders at QBix
(h ps://qbix.com/) that built the Groups App for the iPhone (helping you organize your contacts) and
they used this tactic to drive people to their other apps. You can also send them to mobile landing pages
to avoid building anything.
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Woah…that was a lot. Thank you for making it to the end.
I hope a few of these have inspired you and point you in the right direction to find those difficult first
few users. While some of them are paid options, I hope you see how many alternatives there are to paid
acquisition on Day 1.
There are many, many more ways to find your first users, so let your creativity run wild (like making a
fake Vodka brand (h p://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/08/02/how-we-created-a-fake-vodkabrand-to-promote-our-startup/) to launch your events site) and just remember to focus on learning
(jasonevanish.com/2012/01/18/how-to-structure-and-get-the-most-out-of-customer-developmentinterviews/) and don’t worry about scaling on Day 1 (paulgraham.com/ds.html).
What are the most clever ways you’ve heard to find your first users?
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