How to Get Your First 10 Customers

Max opens by addressing a common challenge YC founders face: moving from identifying a target customer to actually finding and engaging them. He notes that while existing YC advice covers early-stage sales strategy well, this talk focuses specifically on the tactics for landing the first 10 customers.

The foundation of the approach requires founders to first understand where their target customers actually spend time, rather than defaulting to cold email and LinkedIn outreach. Max illustrates this with an example of a founder who wasted months on email to legacy industry prospects but closed more deals in 3 days at a trade show. The key is researching the customer's daily life: email habits, conference attendance, social media presence, and communication preferences.

For the actual customer acquisition process, Max outlines a clear progression. Customers 1-3 almost universally come from warm networks: personal connections, former colleagues, classmates, and people one introduction away. The rationale is that early customers buy based on trust in the founder, not just product quality. After exhausting personal networks, founders should leverage second-degree LinkedIn connections and AI-powered network tools like Happenstance.

A surprising finding from surveyed YC founders is that showing up in person significantly outperforms remote engagement. Examples include a founder who flew to meet an executive four weeks in a row despite reschedules, another who appeared uninvited at offices (and was sometimes asked to leave), and a third who flew to Hawaii for an 8-minute meeting that eventually became a major account. Small, niche-specific conferences also proved highly effective, with a mini-playbook involving pre-event emails, back-to-back calendar slots, and follow-ups during the event.

For online communities where customers congregate, Reddit emerged as a particularly effective channel. Founders have found success posting products for feedback, DMing commenters who complained about the problem being solved, and responding to complaints across Reddit and Facebook. One healthcare founder made customer interaction her primary job for months, posting 2-5 times daily.

Once warm networks are exhausted and in-person opportunities pursued, founders move to outbound prospecting using tools like Apollo, Clay, and LinkedIn Premium to build targeted lists. However, the framing of outreach matters significantly. Rather than direct sales pitches, effective early outreach often positions the conversation as asking for advice, mentorship, product reviews, or whiteboarding sessions. Max emphasizes this should be genuine, not deceptive.

Outreach copy itself should stay under 75 words, include a clear call to action, sound human (a simple test is reading aloud to a friend), and ideally provide value first—such as a vulnerability scan, app walkthrough feedback, or a customized audit. Follow-ups of 3-4 times over a couple weeks are recommended.

Max concludes by framing customer acquisition in three phases: customers 1-3 from personal network, 4-10 from unscalable manual work (the "tedious and manual" phase), and 10+ from higher-volume tools once a refined pitch and case studies exist. The advantage founders have is their personal willingness to invest time in a way established companies cannot fake.