The first 10 customers of a SaaS rarely come from a tool, an ad or a launch page. In a Startup School talk, Y Combinator visiting partner Max Kolysh summarised what dozens of YC founders told him: the first 10 customers come from your network, from showing up in person and from a willingness to do things that don't scale. The same idea is the core of Paul Graham's essay Do Things that Don't Scale: "Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off."
Who are customers one to three?
They are people one introduction away from you. In Kolysh's founder survey, the first two or three customers came almost without exception from friends in the industry, former colleagues, classmates or people one intro away, and he found "no counterexamples" to that pattern. His explanation: early buyers are betting on you as a founder, not only on the product. Before choosing any channel, he also recommends one hour answering where your buyer actually spends time: one founder who sold to a legacy industry closed more in three days at a trade show than in three months of cold email.
How do you ask for an introduction?
Be specific. Kolysh says to tell your contact who you want to meet, why that person would care and what to write in the forwarded email, so the favour costs them almost nothing. Jason Lemkin of SaaStr gives the same starting point for the first 10 customers: start with your network and reach out to anyone who might be even remotely interested.
What do customers four to ten look like?
They come from manual work that will not scale, and that is the point. The founders Kolysh interviewed mentioned flying to meet a buyer, small dinners with six to ten target customers, direct messages to people who had complained about the problem on Reddit and offering a free consulting session. Doing it yourself also teaches you the language and the objections of your market. Describe the goal of each call to a copilot that uses your product context and it can suggest the next question while you talk, which helps when every one of these conversations is new to you.
What should the first message say?
Keep it short and make one clear request. Kolysh's rules: under 75 words, a clear call to action and a test, which is to read it aloud to a friend and rewrite anything you would not say to a real person. He adds that some founders got better replies by giving something before asking, such as a short audit of the prospect's product, and that following up three or four times over a couple of weeks is reasonable. Read the guide to cold outreach based on a YC talk for the full list.
When do prospecting tools start to matter?
After you have 10 to 20 quality customers, according to Kolysh: that is when you have a refined pitch and a message worth scaling. Until then, the advantage of a founder doing the work personally is something no automation fakes. After each conversation, the post-call report keeps the objections and the agreed next step, and when you reach ten, continue with how to reach your first $10k of monthly revenue.
Sources: Max Kolysh, How to Get Your First 10 Customers (Y Combinator, video); Paul Graham, Do Things that Don't Scale; Jason Lemkin, Dear SaaStr: How Do I Get My First 10 Customers?
Do the first 10 customers come from cold email?
According to the YC founder stories in Kolysh's talk, the first two or three come from your network and the next ones from manual, personal work. Prospecting tools make sense later, once you have 10 to 20 customers.
Do I need to be a good salesperson to get them?
Kolysh says you do not have to be an amazing salesperson, only willing to do the unscalable things most founders avoid. The talk is aimed at founders doing this for the first time.