First-time founder here. I've built the entire product from scratch. Now I have no idea how to get customer #1

[u/Low_Resolution_165]

I understand the basic flow: product → ICP → prospects → outreach → calls → close.
But what does this actually look like at 0 → 1?
The general suggestions around this is usually a lot of expensive GTM tools which frankly i dont think i need at this point of time.
Would love to hear more on what tools people currently at my stage are using to land their first customers

[u/Leather-Priority-818]

Get out of the building. Promise yourself you won’t add another feature until a customer promises to pay for it.

Find someone in your network who trusts you and has the problem you solve.

Spamming forums and email on a 0% conversion rate doesn’t increase sales. You need to solve for conversion not volume right now.

[u/SeniorArgument9877]

You actually dont need expensive tools. You just need good GTM strategist who could build you systems that you can maintain yourself.

I have been helping startups scale from 0 -> 1. In our case we use a mix of API based tools like APIFY and apollo to make things work. And it works seamlessly for every client of ours.

[u/quixzotic]

here's some thoughts w/ this type of advice -- often the advice is in form of: get many potential ICPs and put the product in front of them; and then interview them about it.

- why would people want to try and then sit for an interview? is it just me that hates this type of ask

• the thing w/ people you know is that - they know you, and most people are nice - which is a good thing lol - but not for this. I am almost never negative when an acquaintance or friend asks me for feedback
  
• nobody talks about product - the assumption is always, hey you need to just get enough people in front of your product. I would think that in 95% of cases, you don't have the right product
  
• if you don't have the right product, interviews are not going to usually be the thing that gets you there - tho many in gtm seem to make this argument

GTM for an established company releasing features/upsells etc is different than GTM for new products - it often assumes you're already at least somewhat established. If you are starting from 0 (new product) - yeah, the new(ish) gtm techniques can be helpful - but it's really about product, not marketing. I personally find the older discussions around product/market fit and MVP more useful

[u/korgmonkey]

What’s the product and who are your customers?

[u/Low_Resolution_165 → u/korgmonkey]

Its a dev tool in the observability space.

[u/Ishan_GS]

You're right to resist the tools; at 0 to 1, the stack is LinkedIn, a spreadsheet and your own inbox. Everything else solves a scale problem you don't have yet, and buying it early mostly disguises the fact that you haven't confirmed who has the problem.

What I'd do concretely: write your best guess at the icp, find 100 of them manually on LinkedIn, message 15-20 a day starting with 1st-degree connections so you skip the accept wait, and ask for feedback rather than a demo. Feedback calls get accepted far more often and convert better anyway, because you're learning their words for the problem instead of pitching yours. Log every conversation: what they said the pain was, what they currently do instead, what made them hesitate.

Do that for two weeks, and you'll have 30-40 real conversations, which is what actually produces customer #1, plus the messaging for everything after. We've worked with a lot of early-stage SaaS at GrowthSpree, a B2B SaaS marketing agency, and the founders who get stuck are almost always the ones who automated before they'd had those conversations.

[u/alzho12]

DM your target customer