Playcode School / First customers
Your first customers are people you can name.
Your first customers rarely arrive through a big launch. You reach them one at a time, starting with people you can name.
Write down who has the problem, then the people you can actually reach. Ask them about the last time it happened, not whether they like your idea.
Write down people, not a market.
Start with who has the problem: a role and a situation. Then list people who fit it and whom you can reach: colleagues, former clients, people in a group you belong to, people one introduction away.
Paul Graham's essay "Do Things that Don't Scale" (2013) puts it plainly: nearly every startup has to recruit its first users by hand, because they will not come on their own.
Example: not "recruiters", but Dana from the agency you used to work at, two recruiters you met at a local hiring meetup, and the founder of a one-person search firm a friend can introduce.
Ask to learn, not to sell.
You are not pitching yet. Ask each person about the last time the problem happened: what they did, what it cost them and what they have tried. The next lesson shows how to run that conversation.
If someone has the problem, ask who else has it. One conversation can lead to the next.
Make your invitation easy to answer.
Say who you are, why you are asking this person, what you want to learn and how long it will take. Keep it short enough to read on a phone.
Make it easy to say no. A short, honest request is easier to answer, and a yes you had to push for tells you little.
Write your list and your invitation.
Use your own idea, or edit the example below. Your answers stay in this browser. Copy or download your list, and send each invitation yourself.
This is an editable example, not a list of real people. Keep your list private: a first name and how you know someone are enough. Leave contact details and private notes out of anything you paste into an AI tool.
Let each conversation lead to the next.
Thank each person the same day and note what they said, including the people who said no. When several people describe the same problem, offer to solve it for them, by hand if you have to. Graham calls this doing things that don't scale.
The people who take you up on it are your first customers, and what they need first is your first version.