Outreach & Feedback

Step 1 (optional): Review these videos on finding your first customers and closing your first B2B contract, and advice from Figma’s Dylan Field on feedback and DoorDash’s Tony Xu on doing things that DON’T scale (see credits below).

Step 2: Read the key points.

Step 3: When you’re ready, get feedback on your product through Launch HN.

Step 4: Reflect on this feedback, then let’s talk!

First, “do things that don’t scale”

• Forget the idea that a great product will sell itself - founders must manually recruit customers in the beginning.

• Founders should be the ones doing the initial sales to intimately understand their customers and the problems they are solving - don’t worry too much about building a sales team at this point.

• The key to early sales is to focus on the easiest customers first, such as your personal network and other startups.

Then, scale

• You should send a high volume of outreach messages to find the next early adopters.

• Including social proof and a clear call to action is crucial.

• Get as much feedback on the product at this stage as possible - consider channels like Hacker News.

^{_{Credits: Many thanks to Y Combinator for the video material used on this page! We wrote the summaries and added specific tid-bits for our readers and listeners. Y Combinator produced and owns this video. We are consumers of the wonderful founder resources and networking opportunities at Y Combinator but have no affiliation.}}

Questions to discuss as a team

1. What does the new user feedback tell you about your product, and its reception?

2. How is that feedback different than what you heard from friends and family? What does that tell you about the value your product brings to customers?

3. What kind of talent do you need to help you scale further? Will you focus on scaling the product, the user base or both?