Every startup with work with has this question for us: “what are your tips about finding our first customers?”. It’s a really good question and one that every founder should ask even before she starts thinking about how the software will work. At the end of the - no customers is equal to a failed software venture, and it really doesn’t matter how great your software was and how it solve the is world’s problems. However, it’s never an easy question, as the answers vary widely dependent on what the software is about. But over the years, we have seen some strategies that work well and some don’t. And some of those strategies are generic enough to work for pretty much any product. Here are some of our best ones.

Start your PR right from the beginning

Even before a single line of code is written for your software, even before the designers had a chance to imagine the look and feel of your software and even before you seriously thought about making the software (!) you should start you PR campaign! And your PR campaign doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just talking about your plans about launching this new and awesome software in various public spaces (and private ones) is a good start. Here are somethings that you should start right away as a minimum:

Website, duh…
Social media assets, stuff like Facebook page, Instagram profile, twitter handle and LinkedIn page. Maybe a youtube channel if you are good with videos and even a Tiktok one!)
Blog, blog and blog ideally on your own domain as it will build up your site’s status with Google - the earlier you start the better for your SEO later on.
Posts in public forums such as Quora, Reddit and LinkedIn conversations.
email all your friends and family telling them about how your software will change the world.

Create a list of potential “first“ customers

Of course! But I’m talking about creating this list while the software is being built. The idea is that you can then start reaching out to them for connection and networking and eventually for early adoption. Remember that most of your initial customers will only be trying your product out because they will feel obliged to - maybe because you are their friend, colleague or have connected with them professionally and formed a good relationship. From this list most importantly you’ll get your pilot testers and early feedback sources. As your product matures this customer list will expand to proper marketing lists ending up into CRMs and marketing tools like Hubspot or Mailchimp.

Website with a subscribe for news option

You’ll obviously have a website right from the start! But at the start you may not have a lot of meat on your website. But at the least you should have enough of a story in there to get people interested and then what you want is an easy way for them to subscribe for alerts when the product comes out. This going to be one your sources of emails and contacts for the first possible customers. Two things that people get wrong about this type of “watch this space” sites:

Too generic information and graphics in fear that your competitors might steal your idea. Ideas are dime a dozen and it’s hard to steal and implement a software idea, so go with all the juicy bits about how your software will cure cancer and make everyone rich! Remember, people need to be interested enough to leave their email with you.
Too much information. This is the opposite of the number 1 point above, with the founders writing up page full our text (usually copied and pasted from the specification document or an investor’s pitch). Again, the goal is to make people interested enough to leave you their contact details. If you bore them with too much details, they probably won’t read the whole thing and just leave!

There are some great writeups about how to do these pages right, here’s a great one about effective yet simple coming soon pages. The sample image is from that site’s example,

Arrange events and meetups

Meetups and events are great for getting people together and talk about your product. It’s a great source of feedback and ideas and obviously it’s a great way of getting some publicity about your product. You should aim to invite potential customers and also users of your system. Get your development team to come over too if you can. It could be a great event where your potential users feel that they can ask for features they need and get them in the upcoming version of your product. Another important group to invite in these events are “influencers” - people who might talk about your product on their blogs, videos or amongst the their circle of friends. If you can get some press coverage that would be icing on the cake. The most important thing to remember about these meetups is the food! Make sure there are some good food around with loads of drinks and coffee. Food will get people to connect and linger. And good food will always leave a good feeling that carries over to people’s association with your product and brand. Here’s a great writeup about arranging launch events, which isn’t exactly your goal, but many of the ideas work equally well for product intro events too.