How to get your first startup customers

Getting your first customer as a startup isn’t just hard—it’s brutal. It’s the single most important thing you’ll ever do for your company.

Because without customers, you don’t have a business. You’ve got a dream, a nice idea… but that won’t put food on the table. It won’t get you anywhere.

And while building something people want is at the core of every successful startup, the journey from idea to product to paying customer is not easy.

In fact, it can feel like a catch-22. You need customers to prove your idea works, but you can’t get customers until you’ve proven it works.

At Stone & Chalk we’ve supported hundreds of startups, and they’ve all had to smash through the first customer barrier. Let’s break down the method we believe works best.

How to find your first customers for your startup

1. Build something people want

The first step to getting customers is to make sure you're solving a real problem for a specific group of people.

It sounds simple, but a surprising number of startups fail because they build something no one really needs.

They might think they've spotted a gap in the market or come up with a clever solution, but until real users validate the problem and the solution, it’s just a hypothesis.

This is why we always emphasise the cold hard truth to build something people actually want. Something that solves a real problem that people are willing to part with their cash to solve. If you get this wrong, no amount of hustle will help you get or keep customers.

At the early stage, you don’t need to appeal to everyone. You only need to appeal to a small group—ideally, one that’s underserved or overlooked by existing solutions.

Maybe the problem you're solving is only a nuisance to most people, but it's a massive pain for a few.

Maybe it’s a niche problem within a niche industry. That’s fine—it’s easier to get your first customer if you focus on a narrow, well-defined target audience.

2. Talk to potential customers

The next step is getting out of your own head and talking to real potential users.

This is something many first-time founders struggle with, especially if they’re introverted or come from a technical background. But if you want customers, you have to know them intimately—you have to know what they think, what they feel, what they need, and how they behave.

The best way to do this is to talk to them directly. At the beginning, this doesn’t scale, but that’s okay. Doing things manually is critical for early-stage startups. You can’t afford to sit back and wait for customers to come to you. You need to get out there and find them.

Start by reaching out to people who fit your target audience. Email them, call them, meet them in person if you can. You’re not selling yet—you’re just trying to understand their needs and problems.

To do this, ask open-ended questions about their pain points.

• What are they currently doing to solve the problem your startup addresses?
• What frustrates them about it?
• How much would it matter if someone solved this for them?

Don’t try to steer the conversation toward your solution just yet. The goal here is to learn.

These conversations will give you invaluable insights, not only about your product but also about your potential customers.

They’ll also help you start building relationships and trust with the people who could eventually become your first users.

3. Hunt down your first customers

Once you've talked to enough people, you’ll start to notice patterns.

You’ll find a subset of potential users who seem most interested in what you're building.

Maybe they’re desperate for a better solution, or maybe they’re the most enthusiastic about the problem you're solving. These are the people you should focus on.

At this stage, your goal isn’t to get a thousand users. You only need a handful, and ideally, they should be early adopters.

Early adopters are those people who are willing to try something new before it's fully polished. They’re not scared off by bugs or a lack of features—they just care about whether the product can help them solve a meaningful problem.

In some cases, you can find your first users by going to places where your target audience already hangs out.

This could be online forums, Reddit communities, niche social media groups, or industry-specific events and conferences.

You don’t need a marketing budget to do this. You just need to be willing to invest time in building relationships in these communities.

When you find potential early adopters, be direct: ask them to try your product.

At this point, you're not trying to get money from them (though that would be great)—you just want them to try it out, give feedback, and hopefully stick with it long enough for you to refine your offering.

If your product delivers value, some of these early users will turn into your first paying customers.

4. Do manual things that build connection

One of the most important pieces of advice in startup land for getting your first customers is to do things that don’t scale.

This might seem counterintuitive. After all, startups are supposed to be about scaling, right? But in the very beginning, growth comes from deeply knowing your customers.

This might mean personally onboarding each new user. It might mean spending hours troubleshooting issues or responding to feedback in real-time. It could even mean hand-holding your first few customers through their entire experience with your product.

These are not scalable activities, but they’re essential at this stage because they help you build a great product and create strong relationships with your first customers.

Doing things that don’t scale also lets you learn directly from your users. Every interaction is a chance to improve your product.

When you onboard a customer, you might notice a feature they find confusing or a workflow that doesn’t make sense. You can fix these things before you try to scale to a broader audience.

This feedback loop is critical. It ensures that by the time you're ready to grow, you have a product people actually want.

5. Make your product better for great word of mouth

Speaking of feedback, once you have a handful of users, your focus should shift to making your product better.

At the beginning, it’s better to have a product that a small number of users love than a product that many users merely like.

Listen carefully to your early customers. What do they love? What frustrates them? What features are they missing?

You don’t need to implement every piece of feedback, but you should pay close attention to recurring issues or requests. If several customers point out the same flaw, fix it. If they’re asking for a feature that you hadn’t considered, consider building it.

Your early users are your best source of feedback because they’re using your product in the real world. They’re also your best chance of getting more customers. If they love your product, they’ll tell others.

This is the start of what every startup dreams of: organic growth. Word of mouth is powerful, but it only happens when you deliver an exceptional experience.

Persistence will pay off

Getting your first customer requires persistence. Don’t be discouraged if you struggle to get traction at first.

Almost every successful startup went through a phase where it seemed like no one cared about what they were building. The key is not to give up. Keep talking to users. Keep refining your product. Keep reaching out.

Remember, you don’t need thousands of customers right away. All you need is one. Once you have one, you can get two, then three, then five.

Growth compounds, but only if you stick with it long enough for that to happen.