How to Get Your First Customers

Alströmer uses Paul Graham’s “Do Things That Don’t Scale” essay and Airbnb’s early days to explain why a good product rarely grows on its own. Founders need to recruit customers directly, improve the product with their feedback, and keep moving through setbacks such as the “trough of sorrow.”

Alströmer argues that founders should learn sales before hiring a sales team because customer conversations reveal what to build and how to explain its value. He points to Brex, whose founders signed up their first 10 customers from the YC batch and personally onboarded them. He recommends short, plain-text sales emails that name the customer’s problem, establish credibility, and include a clear next step.

The basic funnel is to make a prospect list, reach out, run a demo, discuss pricing, close, and onboard each customer. Alströmer recommends starting with the easiest prospects, including people in a founder’s network and startups, which often have shorter decision-making paths. Since many prospects are not early adopters, founders should contact enough people to find those who are.

Alströmer says payment is evidence that a product provides value, and advises B2B founders to consider a money-back guarantee or a one-month option instead of a free trial. He illustrates funnel tracking with 500 outreach messages leading to 250 opens, about 12 responses, six demos, and two customers. Sending only 100 messages may produce no customers, but that is too little data to conclude sales is not working.

Alströmer recommends Lenny Rachitsky’s research on how startups began selling, and notes that companies such as Amplitude, Stripe, and Front used outbound email early on. Scalable channels like SEO and search ads may take time or cost money, while early customer conversations help founders learn directly. Even Airbnb began with work that did not scale before using broader growth channels.