How did you get your first paying customers?

@tdecs haha wonderful story! where in argentina were you, and where was your customer? love that place :)

@cederlund I was living in Buenos Aires province (city called "Pilar") and my customer was somewhere near "Mar del Plata" (in the coast). Eeither between "Chascomús" (200km away from my address back then) and "Mar del Plata" (400km away) is what I remember. The store was called "Pixel Computación" and he paid me through my dad's bank account, I charged 30$ ARS (or Argentine pesos) for the entire website, minus 4$ of the transfer cost which I didn't know that was gonna be paid by me, so I received a total of 26$ (ARS). which at the current conversion would be equivalent to 0.14 USD anyhow I was so happy about this transaction a part from the story, what I am trying currently to get a first paying customer, in very early stage is working closely with whom could be my potential customer, understand what I could solve for them in order for them to switch or to start using my product or service. however the "working closely" looks like, could be me being their customer if I am offering a competing tool they currently use, or me doing free work for them and learn if my product/service does fix some problem they would pay for solving.

@tdecs ahh what a wonderful memory. i love your country. i used to live in buenos aires and spent a lot of time around merlo (en el oeste). 2004... back then 26 pesos was good money!

@sven_radavics nice! would love to hear more about what you're doing with your brand partnerships. do you mind sharing an example? thanks a lot

@cederlund Sure. If very much depends on your product. Checked out MicroMove and you're a health & wellness app as I understand it. I could see you partnering with other wellness apps that aren't competitive like meditation apps, sleep apps etc. You could do a webinar together, guest post, straight up link exchange to/from existing content etc. You could also do social media give away competitions and not just with other apps but physical goods like protein bars/products, neutropics, vitamin companies, wellness retreats etc. The list is endless. Here's an example of a webinar I did last week that was a joint webinar with a partner where we talked about partnerships for giveaways/sweepstakes etc.

@sven_radavics thank you so much for writing all this. very insightful. have shared with the team and we will definitely explore this further. seems like you're interested in wellness?

@cederlund Absolutely interested in wellness. I'm no fanatic but I believe a lot of issues most people have are under our own control. In my early 30s I had 'back issues', high blood pressure and was borderline pre-diabetic. My excuse was that I was away from home 3 weeks out of 4 and often would work full days in five different countries in one week. Lots of hours 'sleeping' on planes instead of hotel rooms. All those issues I fixed for myself with reasonably simple lifestyle changes. I'm no saint and still have bad habits but at 51 I have zero back pain, long way from pre-diabetic and only slightly high blood pressure. So yeah, kinda into wellness and active lifestyles.

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@sreenatha i remember the days of odesk! golden times. what exactly did you do on odesk to get your first customer? thanks for sharing

@getflookup that's interesting. did they have to search for something specific for Flookup to pop up?

@cederlund Yes! When they searched for words that are related to data cleaning and fuzzy matching, Flookup would appear amongst the first results. All my SEO efforts built up from there.

@heyumarkhan interesting. heard many do Reddit to engage with communities that share similar interests, build trust, and then convert if their product resonates with people. do you mind sharing what exactly you did on both Reddit and Quora to get your first paying customers? thanks

@maxime_beaupre ouff 🔥 this is probably the hardest way to sell. But if you can do this you can do anything! Respect 🫡

@elifares congratulations! where did your first customer come from?

@cederlund I'm working on an online marketplace for people to rent and lend items (www.booomerang.io). My first customer came from Facebook Marketplace - they wanted to rent a power tool (not buy one).

@ralic thanks great stuff! nice to hear that you got your first paying customers from here. lifetime deal offers is something we're also exploring. and i'm sure that interviewing first paying customers really helped you further define your ICP and get many valuable insights. congrats!

@cederlund go with the LTD just make it short-lived (2-3 days) 😄 Their only purpose is to prove to you that you have super-early PMF. Be aware that if you are planning on raising money investors really dislike LTDs so keeping them only as a proof and not a business model is important 😄

@karthik_tatikonda what did you share that you think worked best?