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Dmitry Kalinchenko

How did you land your first customers?

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What has worked for you in landing your first few customers? We've just launched a public beta with a couple of initial customers and looking to onboard more. I'm curious what worked for others, especially in b2b saas space. P.S. Apologies if this topic has already been explored but I haven't found anything relevant.

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Justin Buchanan
hey @dmitry_kalinchenko! it's a really great question. we're actually in a similar position right now. one of the strongest channels we've had has been live demos (virtually through zoom). it's been a great way to get in front of warm potential customers, friendlies, etc and try to get that early validation. let me know if you find good sources! we're actually launching on PH today 🤞😬 and would love any feedback you might have! :) https://www.producthunt.com/post...
James Carlin
@dmitry_kalinchenko @justintbuchanan Also in the same boat working to lock in our first few customers for our B2B software. Are these demo events you participated in or one-on-one chats you arranged with customers?
David Deisadze
@dmitry_kalinchenko @justintbuchanan love the idea of demos! Do you have an email list where you market the demos? Curious how do you get leads for those sessions?
Henry Feng
@justintbuchanan Suitable for SasS product, but might not be good for tool and other user product? I was wondering the ROI for live demos?
David T. Kim
Hey @dmitry_kalinchenko, We got around 1600 first time customers for free on the day of the launch. Method 1. Engaged in online communities that needed our product well before launch 2. Collected emails without spamming 3. Updated potential users consistently 4. Converted them on launch. In my opinion, the biggest issue is always "retention", not acquisition. Hope that helps.
Rajan Soni
@dmitry_kalinchenko @david_t_kim WOW! 1600 customers on day 1 sounds amazing. What communities did you engage in and how many email were u able to collect pre-launch. I am assuming it'd be atleast upwards of 5k
Mata Mokwala
@dmitry_kalinchenko @david_t_kim "In my opinion, the biggest issue is always retention, not acquitioin." Very important insight.
David T. Kim
@dmitry_kalinchenko @rajansoni Yes, it was at least 5k emails. We got customers from mostly social communities like Indie Hackers, Reddit, Facebook Groups and some discord.
Rajan Soni
@david_t_kim That sounds fantastic. How long before the launch did you start engaging in the communities. Also, post launch did you continue nurturing the communities?
Local seo
@dmitry_kalinchenko @david_t_kim In my opinion, the biggest issue is always retention, not acquitioin." Very important insight.How To Open FAB Bank Account?
Kanan Tandi
We got the first client through Social Media. Continuous updates on all our social media platforms. got us more traction and our first client.
David Deisadze
@kanan_tandi personal social media accounts or did you start a business account and targeted your segmented audiences? Curious what was the timeline from when you first started the channel -> 1st customer?
Vinh
Before official launch, I tried to chime in into conversation on social media when people search for that. I run https://hanami.run and example I google "Cloudflare email forwarding" and join the dicussion like this https://community.cloudflare.com... Eventually I land the first customer that way.
Justin Buchanan
hey @kureikain! I checked out your product - I love the clean design and rich documentation. one extra thought for you to consider, I love your pricing (very affordable!), but the colorful design almost looks like it could be "100, 600, 1500" at first glance if you don't see the periods. Maybe consider just staying "$1, $6, $15"? I actually think that'll look and feel cheaper to the users. Just a thought! :)
Vinh
@justintbuchanan thanks so much for such a valueable feedback. That's totally right now that you said it. Thanks so much again. Gonna make a quick change :-)
Brayden W
Networking. It’s important to have a good connection with people who connections with other and so on.. It helps get the word around for sure!
Agnieszka
Hi! We already had a strong product LiveChat (https://www.producthunt.com/post... ) when we started working on our product suite. Our second product was @chatbotcom . The first paying customers came from LiveChat's customers database (the tools work smoothly together). Also, we bought a strong domain (chatbot.com) that gave us organic, well-converting traffic. A similar story happened with our third product - HelpDesk. First customers came from LiveChat's database (with HelpDesk we covered some customer cases that LiveChat doesn't cover). Also, we bought a strong domain (HelpDesk.com) and got organic traffic. As far as I remember, the first paying customer came from Product Hunt, actually. :) (https://www.producthunt.com/post...)
Pooran Prasad Rajanna
We went through our personal network to reach prospects for interview during beta. On boarded them on free plan as they could give us way to build better product. We recently pivoted and invited them for 15 min meeting and gave lifetime access to most features otherwise they had to pay for.
Niko Germish
@pooran_prasad_rajanna I often hear about the networking funnel, but is it easy to switch to other paid methods of acquiring clients after?
Ethan Halfhide
We are building in public, every new status update we have, such as the figma prototype being completed. We consultant with the founders who helped us validate our idea initially to walk them through the user journey. It increases buy in, relationship building and more.
Rajan Soni
@ethan_halfhide I like the idea about buy in. How did u get customers to follow you initially though? Did you already have the right following or email list?
Max
Ads on YouTube.
Dmitry Kalinchenko
To answer my own question, here's how we landed the first 2 users: 1. Before I was very serious about the idea, I listed our website on Wikipedia within a relevant article. We use a Decision Matrix to enable collaborative decision-making, so I posted the link on that page on Wikipedia. Eventually, got contacted for someone who was looking for a more mature version of what I had built. 2. A networking event for startups - randomly met a person with the exact need we were trying to serve. https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Usama Ejaz
We answered related quora questions and engaged in reddit communities
Tom
We were our first customer! Aside from that, we reached out to our target audience directly - individual + personalised cold emails worked for us! Now we grow organically (and we're gearing up for a marketing campaign). Don't be afraid to speak to your target audience directly!
DMan
First, I'd find customers (LinkedIn, Reddit, forums, ...) and speak with them 1-2-1 to understand their real priorities.
Rajan Soni
@randomdraw637484 I am pretty much planning to do just that. Find potential customers on linkedin and message them asking for 10 minutes to take their inputs
Dmitry Kalinchenko
@randomdraw637484 When you found and tried engaging your prospective customers, did you mention your product at all? Or just the general topic of the conversation?
Jonathan Garreis
First customer was our first business 😅 needed paperless.io for our document workflow at mankido.
Meghraj Suthar
At https://growcify.com, we received several requests from customers before even launching the product. And at https://localites.co, it was all about community spread.
Jevon Mao
Hi Dimitry! Well I am planning on launch my SwiftUI package (https://github.com/jevonmao/Perm...) within a few days, and I usually use Reddit, HackerNews, and social media platforms as initial promotion oppurtunities. Great products will bring customers!
LocalPin - Find Local Vendors Near You
By promoting LocalPin on LinkedIn. As you can see our portal is like a local business search engine and everyone can list on it to ind the best dealers for them which is 100% free and business get quality leads. So, a good marketing pitch on LinkedIn is always worth.
DeWayne Johnson
Hey @dmitry_kalinchenko! What worked great for us at Panther (https://www.withpanther.com/) initially is cold outreach. Prospecting the right people and companies, iterating a ton on messaging, digging deep in the open rates and reply rates, etc. When a company was (or wasn't) interested, we asked them, "what in our initial email led you to make that decision?" Outside of this, we took time to design a short presentation/demo that covers the problem, our solution, and what our product looks like.
Dmitry Kalinchenko
@dewayne_johnson did you use automation and email databases? At our launch, I tried out mass cold outreach - that yielded 0 result. Since then I've switched to doing more manual prospecting and custom message writing, which seems to be a bit more fruitful
Rahul Sharma
@dewayne_johnson @dmitry_kalinchenko High bounce rates, > 100 emails with essentially the same message in the email body will get flagged as spam. Do watch for that.
DeWayne Johnson
@dmitry_kalinchenko We don't use email databases but automation wise, we use tools like LinkedIn SalesNav, Hunter.io, Outreach, etc that speed up the prospecting and emailing process.
DeWayne Johnson
@dmitry_kalinchenko @nyootron Definitely. That's where a tool like Mailwarm (https://www.mailwarm.com/) comes handy!
Dr. Carl Juneau, PhD
Spoke to friends who used similar products already.
Igor Sha
💡 Early partnerships with other startups or top niche companies for testing and validating our approach worked incredibly well for us. Especially if your product has free plans or trials that you can extend for some time in favor of getting actionable insights.