How does one go about acquiring the very first costumer?

You must go where your customers are. Unless you sell to developers, sharing on Product Hunt won't get you any sales, but it can give you a little bit of credibility for non-tech people – “Oh, this big shiny tech site shared his product, it must be decent then.”

If it's a high-ticket sale, think anything above $100+ per sale, then cold outreach is your best bet. What most people do wrong is they start selling from the first contact with the customer, which is ridiculous. Focus on providing as much value as you possibly can, build relationships, and build trust. Offer a free trial; if they accept, then unconsciously they will feel like they owe you something. Keep asking questions and offering solutions. Make their life easier. Once people discover something that makes their life easier and workflow more productive, there is no going back; you have a customer for life or until something better comes up on the market.

To put it in simple terms - you need to go where they are.

It's unlikely that many of your potential customers (in the HR example) are using ProductHunt. Some certainly are, but not enough of them to make it worthwhile.

LinkedIn, Twitter, direct outreach etc. are all your best bets in that situation.

BUT - something to bear in mind.

Only a tiny percentage of any target audience is actively looking to buy the product you sell. In your HR example, only a small percentage of HR professionals are actively looking to buy a new tool to help them with their work.

These 'active buyers' are really hard to find, the majority of people (if not all) of the people you will be reaching will not be interested in buying a new tool right now. As a result, pitching these people your product is highly ineffective (they'll just ignore you).

Instead, you need an approach that a) captures their attention, b) convinces them that they do need your solution and need it now.

The approach that I advocate does exactly that. I've detailed it quite a lot on here but you can find all the details (with case studies) on my website - www.thebluntmethod.com

Any questions don't hesitate to ask!

Best

Chris

Target small companies (<5 people) first. For bigger companies, they'll likely want to see something like SOC-2 compliance to ensure that their data will be safe, and that's too expensive to get until you validate your idea and ideally get funding.

I'd say even if you haven't had your first sales yet put out some testimonials from eg. friends, so when somebody lands on your page they won't feel like your first customer.

Have you thought about going to some places HR people gather IRL? It might be good to walk some people through what you're building and get their feedback in real time. Are there any upcoming conferences in your area?

Hey it is all about connecting with the person who is having the problem you are solving. You can't just rely on posting or catching eyeballs. It's all about giving value.

PS: We are creating a community where we intend to help people who are trying to acquire new customers here's the link https://t.me/saasMarketee

LinkedIn would be a good source. We provide AI services to a very niche market and they would not be looking online. We only do cold outreach with demo and it works for us.

The short answer is spending lots of time emailing and/or DMing people in HR depeartments. Maybe use LinkedIn to find them.

I don't think many HR managers hang out on Product Hunt so yeah, relying on those probably wont' work for you.

Also, I would do the cold outreach before building the MVP. See if you could get in touch with them, talk to them about the problems they're facing, try to see if there's a tool they'd pay for. If you can't get in touch with them or if you can get in touch with them but you can't come up with a tool that they seem excited to pay for, then it doesn't seem worth building an MVP.

Also, see Your first 10 customers by Patrick McKenzie at Stripe and How to get your first ten customers by Michael Seibel at Y Combinator.

I wrote about multiple ways at Zero To Founder but to answer your question for your case of 'a tool to assist on HR operations' - You should go with ColdOutreach + LinkedIn as you have super targeted niche.

I don’t know the answer, but I am exactly in your situation. Mvp is ready, trying to find the first customer.

Here is what i have been doing. Our solution is in Third Party Risk Management, so I reach out via linkedin to people in sourcing and risk management community who manage third party relationships for their company. I try to ask few open ended questions on how they manage third party risks today, is it in real time or once in an year activity as a checkbox. Then i talk about a product we are building that provides real time risk intel so that you can avoid the risk or create a risk mitigation plan in place.

People who are serious about managing third party risks and business continuity become excited, others give me an excuse. I ask them if they’d be okay to try it out as free trial. If they agree, then i share a test id. I am hoping that they’d like the product and hoping that it eventually turns into a sale.

Not sure if that is a right way to go, but you can try and connect to people who would actually use your product and show it to them. To value their time, I don’t have anything in cash, so I offer them to publish an interview on our blog. That provides them some publicity.

I’d be open to other ideas. Thanks.

For B2B customers, product hunt might not be ideal. You will have to try different routes like LinkedIn and perhaps even cold outreach to your connects and ask for referrals.

nycc