I've analyzed 482 founder interviews [1] (most of them from IndieHackers, which are all small and medium-sized businesses) and here's the key thing I found about acquiring your first 6 "reference" customers:
Aim for acquisition channels that "do not scale". Channels like:
- Reddit/FB Groups/any other online community. You can post once or twice in a a particular community to get feedback. If you want to "scale" your efforts (i.e. post every day), you're likely to be deemed as spammy and get banned. This is both good and both. Bad because you cannot "scale" this acquisition channel (compared to Facebook Ads, for example). Good because, for this very reason, these channels are open to new entrants. Compare this to something like:
- FB/Google Ads. Yes, you can "scale" these channels, but so can your potential competitors. These people are usually well-funded startups that are willing to invest $500 to get a customer (although the customer will pay $50/month), knowing that many of them will stay for 10+ months, when the company will eventually get a positive ROI. For competitive markets, this "waiting" factor spans to over a year, sometimes two. As an early-stage company, can you allow yourself to wait 15 months to get a positive ROI from your ad efforts? Probably not.
Of course, there are always exceptions (if you bid for a narrow/high-intent keyword with not much competition, like "screenshot API" - this comes from a real founder interview [2]), but in general aim for acquisition channels that "don't scale".
Aim for acquisition channels that "do not scale". Channels like:
- Reddit/FB Groups/any other online community. You can post once or twice in a a particular community to get feedback. If you want to "scale" your efforts (i.e. post every day), you're likely to be deemed as spammy and get banned. This is both good and both. Bad because you cannot "scale" this acquisition channel (compared to Facebook Ads, for example). Good because, for this very reason, these channels are open to new entrants. Compare this to something like:
- FB/Google Ads. Yes, you can "scale" these channels, but so can your potential competitors. These people are usually well-funded startups that are willing to invest $500 to get a customer (although the customer will pay $50/month), knowing that many of them will stay for 10+ months, when the company will eventually get a positive ROI. For competitive markets, this "waiting" factor spans to over a year, sometimes two. As an early-stage company, can you allow yourself to wait 15 months to get a positive ROI from your ad efforts? Probably not.
Of course, there are always exceptions (if you bid for a narrow/high-intent keyword with not much competition, like "screenshot API" - this comes from a real founder interview [2]), but in general aim for acquisition channels that "don't scale".
[1] https://firstpayingusers.com
[2] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/building-a-hobby-proj...