If you had a B2B SaaS with 0 customers today, how would you get the first 10?
I'm at the very early stage of a B2B SaaS and I'm trying to be deliberate about distribution instead of just posting everywhere and hoping someone signs up.
The product is called Tweak.page It helps web agencies handle the client → QA → developer feedback loop directly on the staging website.
My target customer is small web agencies and freelancers who build websites for clients.
So far I've been testing:
- Cold outreach to agencies
- Finding agencies already using/ tools like BugHerd, Ruttl, MarkUp, etc.
- Reaching out to agencies with an obvious staging/client-review workflow
- Posting in communities
- Trying partnerships with companies that already work with agencies
- Product/community posts on places like Show IH
I've had some conversations and useful feedback, but 0 paying customers so far.
If you were in my position, with this ICP and product, what would you do differently to get the first 10 real customers?
I'm particularly interested in things that have actually worked for you — not generic advice like "do content marketing" or "post on LinkedIn."
For example:
- What type of prospect would you target first?
- Would you focus on cold email, DMs, communities, partnerships, or something else?
- Would you offer a free trial, free setup, or do the work of setting it up for them?
- How many prospects would you contact before changing the approach?
- Are there any communities or marketplaces that worked surprisingly well for you?
- What did your first 5–10 customers actually come from?
I'd especially appreciate answers from founders who have already gone from 0 → 10 customers with a B2B SaaS.
I'm happy to share what we're learning from the experiment as well.
Real numbers from doing this right now with a vertical SaaS (property management for self-managing landlords):
What actually produced signups:
Community posts in landlord forums (BiggerPockets, Reddit r/landlord) — 6 signups in the week I was active. I stopped posting for 2 weeks, SEO traffic tripled, but signups dropped to near zero. Readers ≠ tryers.
Programmatic SEO (84K pages covering every state's landlord-tenant laws) — drives 70K impressions/week but converts at ~0.8% CTR. These people want answers, not software. But occasionally one of them discovers the product organically and signs up.
Cold calling from a skiptraced landlord list — mixed results. Retirees need in-person demos. Younger landlords respond to the compliance angle ("are you keeping up with all the CA rule changes?").
What didn't work:
Content ad networks (Outbrain) — 80+ register page visits, 0 conversions. Burned budget.
Cold email to scraped lists — 0 ROI.
Waiting for SEO to "compound" — it compounds traffic, not signups.
What I'd tell you at 0 customers:
The concierge advice in this thread is right. I personally onboard every signup. I email them from my personal address and offer a 30-minute founder call. The ones who take it become real users. The ones who don't, churn.
Measure each funnel step separately. My biggest insight was discovering 65% of signups dropped off during onboarding — not because the product was bad, but because I was asking too many questions before showing value.
Go where your users already complain. For me, that's landlord forums. For you, it's probably agency Slack groups or Twitter threads about "client feedback hell."
The first 10 are hand-to-hand combat. There's no shortcut.
I'm working through a similar problem right now with an early-stage SaaS, so this is something I'm actively thinking about too.
One thing I'm trying is validating the problem before putting too much effort into distribution. I'm using a short survey to understand what people currently use, what frustrates them, and what they'd actually want from a solution. I'm also trying to get people to use an early MVP rather than just asking whether they "like the idea."
For the first 10 customers, I'd probably focus heavily on direct conversations and manually helping the first users get set up. At this stage, I'd rather have 10 people who genuinely need the product and can explain why than 1,000 people who clicked a launch post.
I'd also track where every interested user came from and look for patterns. If the first 10 all came from one community or one type of outreach, that's probably a signal to double down there.
I'm curious to see what ends up working for you with Tweak page — especially whether the agencies already using tools like BugHerd/Ruttl convert better than agencies that don't have a formal workflow yet.
I have the same problem. I have a B2B SaaS which called QuoteNexa. But until now, no real paid customer. I am very worried about the situation. I have just launched the Web APP this month. I will read all the comments here, hope useful.
I’d narrow the target before changing channels. For example, focus on small agencies managing several client websites at once and still collecting feedback through email, WhatsApp, or screenshots.
I’d offer a hands-on pilot: set Tweak.page up on one active staging project, onboard their team personally, and stay close throughout the review process. That lets you see exactly where adoption breaks down.
I’d contact around 30–50 highly relevant agencies with a message based on their current workflow, not a generic product pitch. If they reply but won’t try it, revisit the offer. If nobody replies, revisit the targeting or message. For the first 10 customers, I think direct founder-led onboarding will teach you more than trying to scale outreach too early.
Aryan's question is the one I'd answer before trying anything new — "conversations and useful feedback" with 0 paying customers is worth being honest with yourself about, since it's the exact shape of a proxy metric: feels like progress, doesn't move the number that actually matters. Ran into this myself this week from a different angle — engagement that felt like validation and wasn't. The test that caught it for me: can I get more of this number just by doing more of what I'm already doing? If "useful feedback" goes up the more you post and demo, but paying customers doesn't move with it, that's the tell.
On the concierge pilot advice above — I'd add one thing to it: charge something for the pilot, even a token amount, before doing the free-setup version. Free pilots select for agencies who'll say nice things with zero skin in the game, which produces more of the "useful feedback, 0 customers" pattern you're already stuck in. A prospect who won't pay $50 for a hands-on pilot was probably never going to convert to a real subscription either — better to find that out on prospect #3 than prospect #30.
This is a great discussion, especially for other SaaS founders reading the comments.
Getting the first 10 customers is usually about doing things manually before trying to scale. Direct outreach, founder-led demos, personal onboarding, and actually speaking with potential users can reveal far more than posting everywhere.
From my side, I work with SaaS startups and technology businesses on the documentation and compliance side—including privacy/GDPR documentation, SOC 2 readiness documentation, risk assessments, vendor due diligence, and AI governance documentation.
One thing worth keeping in mind as you start gaining customers is that larger clients often begin asking questions about security, privacy, vendors, and compliance much earlier than founders expect. Building those foundations early can make enterprise conversations and due diligence much easier later.
So while you're working toward your first 10 customers, it's also worth thinking about whether your business is building the operational and compliance foundation needed for the next stage of growth.
Always interesting to connect with other SaaS founders working through this stage. 🚀
Fair point on compliance coming up earlier than expected — seen that pattern mentioned elsewhere too, founders assuming it's a "later" problem and getting surprised by it at the first serious enterprise conversation. Worth building the paper trail early even before it's asked for, since reconstructing it retroactively is usually worse than doing it as you go.
Exactly. That’s the key issue—compliance is often treated as something to deal with after growth, when in reality growth is usually what exposes the gaps.
By the time a serious enterprise prospect asks for privacy documentation, security policies, vendor information, or evidence of risk management, trying to create everything retroactively can slow down the sales process significantly.
Building the right documentation and processes gradually creates a much stronger foundation and makes due diligence far easier when those opportunities arrive.
That’s also where I support SaaS and technology companies—helping them put the necessary privacy, risk, vendor due diligence, SOC 2 readiness, and AI governance documentation in place before compliance becomes a last-minute obstacle to closing a major client.
It’s much easier to prepare for the conversation than scramble when the opportunity is already on the table.
That's a really good callout. I think you're right that I've been treating conversations and useful feedback as stronger validation than they actually are.
The "can I increase this metric just by doing more of what I'm already doing?" test is something I'm going to use going forward. If conversations keep increasing but paid conversions don't, then clearly I'm optimizing the wrong thing.
I also like the point about charging for the concierge pilot. My initial thinking was to remove as much friction as possible for the first few agencies, but I can see how completely free pilots can attract people who are interested enough to talk but not interested enough to actually use the product.
I'm going to test a small paid pilot with the next batch rather than defaulting to free setup. The goal will be to find out much earlier whether the problem is painful enough for someone to actually pay to solve.
Thanks — this is probably the most useful pushback I've received on the post.
Glad it landed. The signal to watch for once you run the paid pilot: not just whether people say yes to paying, but how quickly. A fast yes to $50 tells you the pain was real and priced correctly. A slow, reluctant yes after negotiating down usually means you found the price ceiling for weak interest, not the floor for real demand — worth noting which one you get, since they point to different next moves.
Good luck with the next batch.
Ads, of course. For a new project right now, it's pretty much the only source of meaningful traffic volume. At the same time, build out SEO and SMM, but keep in mind that the return won't come in for at least 3 to 6 months.
Agencies don't buy tools that save them time, they buy tools that win them the next client or that they can bill for. Package Tweak.page as a white-labeled client review portal the agency puts their own logo on, and it stops being overhead and becomes part of their pitch. Running Henson Group for 20 years, the tools that actually spread through our partner channel spread because the partner could put their name on it and charge for it.
Email, direct mail, and communities are all good methods, but:
Do you have any relevant experience to share regarding these issues?
I am also exactly there. abt posting in communities, I get blocked because of careless posting, acc their rules. Now i am doing well, I started to buld a little community. I tried engagement. Not promotion but being the part of that community having crowd and after that acting
Relate to this a lot. I m solo and in B2B only building my own saas (DeepReachAI). Currently i have 250+ users and $150 in MRR so i would like to share what actually worked for me:
switching from broad posting to picking one channel and going deep. I write personalized outbound using DeepReachAI itself. it scrapes leads and researches them so the emails aren't generic but the bigger unlock was posting consistently on Twitter, not the emails. That one channel got me to 150 users and 5-6 paying customers. Not from a launch thread, from replying and posting in threads where people already had the pain.
For your ICP specifically, I'd narrow further than "agencies." Target agencies actively complaining about client feedback chaos. search Twitter/Reddit for people venting about revision rounds, not agencies in general. Cold DM those, reference the specific complaint, offer to set it up for their next project free. Free setup beats free trial at this stage because you get to watch someone use it and find the friction yourself.
On volume: I'd give any single approach 30-40 contacts before judging it. Less than that and you're reading noise as signal.
Communities: worth checking if BugHerd/Ruttl users hang out anywhere specific - Slack groups, subreddits for agency owners. Direct competitor's users complaining is a warmer lead than cold search.
Happy to compare notes as we both push past early traction - what's converting for me might be useless for your ICP, but the "pick one channel, go deep" part probably transfers.
Congrats on the launch! Tweak.page sounds like a solid utility. I've been in the 0 to 10 trench with B2B SaaS, and targeting "agencies" is usually where the friction starts.Here is what I’d change right now to get those first users:1. Downsize your ICP immediatelyAn agency with 10+ people has too much process. You need to target solo freelancers or tiny 2-person shops. Why? The owner is also the PM, developer, and QA. They feel the pain of "can you move this 5px left" emails personally. If your tool saves them 2 hours today, they can buy it instantly without 3 internal meetings.2. Stop offering trials. Offer "Done-For-You" setupsAt zero customers, a standard sign-up flow is a ghost town. Instead of pitching the product, pitch a service.Find a freelancer on X or LinkedIn who just launched a site. Tell them: "Hey, saw your new project. Client feedback is usually a mess at this stage. Give me your staging URL, I’ll personally set up Tweak for you on it, and you can use it for this entire client review for free. No credit card, no onboarding required on your end."Once their actual client starts dropping comments directly on the page and the freelancer sees how much time it saves, they won't want to go back to screenshots.3. The Loom video trickThis is how I got my first handful of customers. Don’t send cold emails with text. Pick 20 target prospects, open their own public website, use your tool to leave a fake comment/bug report on it, and record a 45-second Loom showing them how it works. It takes time, but the reply rate on personalized video pitches is insane compared to text blocks.4. When to pivot?Stick to one channel until you've done at least 100 highly personalized outreaches (not automated blasts). If 100 people don't even want a free, hand-held setup, then it's either a positioning problem or they just don't feel the pain enough.Focus on getting just 2-3 freelancers to use it live for free first. Fix their immediate complaints, and then ask for a credit card for the next project. Good luck!
Since you already have a tight ICP and a clear workflow, I’d run a concierge 10-account sprint rather than broaden channels. Pick agencies showing a public client-review/staging flow, send a short Loom using one of their sites, and offer to install/configure it for one client in exchange for a live review call. Track activation (first project created, first client invited, second project in 14 days), not just replies. After 10, you’ll know whether the bottleneck is targeting or onboarding—and the offer stays about removing review friction, not adding another feature.
This is a great discussion, especially for other SaaS founders reading the comments.
Getting the first 10 customers is usually about doing things manually before trying to scale. Direct outreach, founder-led demos, personal onboarding, and actually speaking with potential users can reveal far more than posting everywhere.
From my side, I work with SaaS startups and technology businesses on the documentation and compliance side—including privacy/GDPR documentation, SOC 2 readiness documentation, risk assessments, vendor due diligence, and AI governance documentation.
One thing worth keeping in mind as you start gaining customers is that larger clients often begin asking questions about security, privacy, vendors, and compliance much earlier than founders expect. Building those foundations early can make enterprise conversations and due diligence much easier later.
So while you're working toward your first 10 customers, it's also worth thinking about whether your business is building the operational and compliance foundation needed for the next stage of growth.
Always interesting to connect with other SaaS founders working through this stage. 🚀
With several channels already tested, the useful signal may be separating “right agencies who tried it” from “agencies who never cared enough to try.” What have the strongest prospects done after seeing the product?
That's a good distinction. So far, the strongest signal I've seen is when an agency moves beyond just saying the idea is interesting and actually takes a look at the product, discusses a specific client-review workflow, or is willing to consider trying it on a real project.
But I haven't had enough of those actions yet to confidently identify the pattern, which is probably part of the problem.
I'm going to start tracking the funnel more explicitly:
saw product → replied → visited → agreed to a call → agreed to a pilot → actually installed/used it → paid
That should help separate people who simply like the idea from agencies that have a strong enough pain to change their workflow.
I'll use the strongest behavioral signal — actually agreeing to and using a pilot — to define the next prospect segment rather than treating positive feedback as validation.
Thanks, this is a useful way to look at the problem.
This is a great discussion, especially for other SaaS founders reading the comments.
Getting the first 10 customers is usually about doing things manually before trying to scale. Direct outreach, founder-led demos, personal onboarding, and actually speaking with potential users can reveal far more than posting everywhere.
From my side, I work with SaaS startups and technology businesses on the documentation and compliance side—including privacy/GDPR documentation, SOC 2 readiness documentation, risk assessments, vendor due diligence, and AI governance documentation.
One thing worth keeping in mind as you start gaining customers is that larger clients often begin asking questions about security, privacy, vendors, and compliance much earlier than founders expect. Building those foundations early can make enterprise conversations and due diligence much easier later.
So while you're working toward your first 10 customers, it's also worth thinking about whether your business is building the operational and compliance foundation needed for the next stage of growth.
Always interesting to connect with other SaaS founders working through this stage. 🚀
Have any of the strongest prospects actually agreed to use it on a real project yet, or is that still the step you’re waiting to see?
I’m in a very similar position with a niche B2B product. One thing I’m learning is that broad community posts and generic outreach give very little useful signal.
I’d focus on agencies already publicly describing a painful client-feedback problem, then send a short, personal message about that specific problem rather than pitching the product.
For the first five users, I’d offer to set everything up for them and observe where they get stuck. That should reveal whether the real value is the tool itself or the hands-on onboarding.
I haven’t reached ten customers yet, so this is what I’m testing rather than presenting it as a success story.
Hi Misticmuse,
If I had a B2B SaaS with 0 customers, I’d keep it simple:
Pick one specific type of customer.
Contact 30–50 potential customers personally.
Ask about their biggest problem before trying to sell.
Get the first 2–3 customers manually, even if onboarding is hands-on.
Give them great support and get testimonials + referrals.
Repeat whatever worked until I reach 10 customers.
I wouldn’t start with ads or SEO. First, I’d prove that people are willing to pay.
You’re already testing the right channels, so I wonder if the issue is less about where you’re reaching people and more about how narrow the offer is.
What if you selected 10 small agencies that currently manage client feedback through email, WhatsApp, or spreadsheets and offered to personally set up Tweak.page for one live project? That would give you a chance to observe their workflow, learn where they get stuck, and turn the successful pilots into case studies.
From the conversations you’ve had so far, what seems to be the biggest reason agencies haven’t paid yet timing, price, or not feeling enough pain with their current process?
Different shape of business - I am B2C and also at zero revenue - so discount this if it does not transfer. But there is one item on your list I can give you measured evidence about rather than an opinion, and that is the community and directory posting.
I put my product on six of those over a month. Product Hunt, SaaSHub, three smaller launch directories. Today I actually went and checked what came of it: searching Google for my exact brand name, only one of the six even appears in the results. Search Console still reports no link data for the domain at all.
The one thing that did anything was not a directory. It was writing here, because the posts get indexed and occasionally a human replies. Seven posts, 28 pages indexed.
So I would stop counting directory submissions as distribution. They cost an afternoon each and produce a page nobody visits. Your first three lines - cold outreach to agencies already paying for BugHerd or Ruttl - are the only ones on that list where a specific human reads a specific sentence you wrote about their specific situation.
A question back, because I think it is the more useful half: of the conversations you have already had, did any agency tell you what they do instead today? Not what they thought of your product - what the current workaround is. The people who describe a painful workaround in detail are usually the ten you are looking for.
Agencies such as GeekyAnts, thoughtbot, and Dev Technosys could be useful research references, but the first prospects should match Tweak.page’s small-agency audience. Target teams with an active client-review bottleneck, offer setup for one paid pilot, and measure whether they bring a second project onto the tool. A repeat customer matters more than a well-known logo.
The concierge pilot idea works not because it's "faster," but because it's a measurement system that separates signal from noise.
When you cold email 100 agencies, you get 5 replies. But replies != actual friction. You need the pilot to answer: "does this agency actually change their workflow to use this?" That's the real signal.
I'd measure: (1) How many pilot conversations → (2) How many actually set it up → (3) How many come back a second time. Each drop reveals where your real problem is. Most solutions fail at (3), which means it's not a distribution problem—it's a product-market fit problem. The measurement tells you which bet to double down on next.
I’d run a concierge pilot with 3–5 agencies before trying to scale any channel.
For each one, I’d ask for the next real client project that needs review, set up Tweak.page with them live, and measure three things: time from first staging link to client approval, number of feedback cycles, and whether the agency invites a second client without being asked.
That gives you a sharper offer than “try our tool”: “we’ll remove one painful handoff from your next project.” I’d charge a small setup or pilot fee if they get value; even a modest payment is better signal than a free signup.
After 5 pilots, I’d only change the ICP or channel if the same workflow fails to produce a clear before/after. Otherwise, turn the repeated setup steps into onboarding and use the agencies with the strongest result as your first case studies.
I’d focus on a very specific group first, agencies that already have a clear client feedback problem. Instead of pushing a free trial, I’d offer to set up Tweak. page for their next project and personally guide them through it. That gives you real usage feedback while making the first conversion much easier. Once you find a repeatable pain point, scale the outreach.
Go where the mention is already invited, and stop posting into your own feed.
The thing that took us longest to accept is that an audience you own and an audience you borrow are not on the same scale, and no amount of craft closes the gap. Posting to a few dozen followers is a rounding error however good the post is. Meanwhile there are threads going up every hour whose entire purpose is people asking founders to describe what they built.
The search that finds them, more or less verbatim, on X:
("what are you building" OR "pitch me your" OR "drop your startup" OR "drop your SaaS") min_faves:5
Sort by live, not top. These are worth entering in the first hour and worthless the next day. Filter by the actual view count on the parent post, and enter the biggest first. Some of these carry several hundred views within three hours, which is more than a small account's own post will do in a week.
Three rules that stop it becoming spam, and they matter more than the search does:
Answer the specific question that was asked. If the thread asks who your product is for, answer who it is for, not what it does. The generic blurb pasted into five threads is what gets you flagged, and it is also just worse.
Never the same words twice. Write every one fresh. Rapid near-identical replies carrying links is the pattern platforms are looking for.
Earn at least one in three. Some deposits should carry no product at all and just answer the question well. The one with no pitch in it is usually the one that gets a reply.
The same shape exists in every community that has a "what are you working on" thread. The invitation is the whole thing. A mention where it was invited costs you nothing; the identical mention where it was not costs you the room.
What I still cannot tell is whether this converts or just feels productive. Has anyone here actually traced a paying customer back to one of those threads?
For a simple B2B tool, my first real users came from search, not outreach. I shipped a free invoice generator with no signup (https://plaininvoice.com) and leaned into the exact phrases freelancers type. Cold DMs moved slower than one solid SEO page.
Even i also want to know about this
Great discussion! For a B2B SaaS targeting agencies, the friction is usually client-facing risk rather than price.
If I were in your shoes, I’d test a hands-on concierge setup for the next 5 prospects:
Find agencies with an active client review happening this week.
Offer to handle the setup/installation on their staging URL for them.
Track where they drop off: agreed to pilot → installed → client used it → paid.
Once you remove the setup headache, you'll instantly see if the product solves a real pain point or if they just liked the idea on paper.
The measurement challenge here is that 0→10 asks a different question than 10→100. At 0-10, you're measuring "can I find someone who will pay for this at all" — which forces you to measure signal detection, not conversion mechanics. You'll know you've succeeded when a stranger independently tries to pay you, not when your funnel converts at 5%. That's the real proof that the problem exists outside your head.
Once you hit 10, your measurement shifts to "what part of my pitch/positioning/product blocks the next wave?" At that point, conversion metrics and buyer feedback make sense. But until then, it's not that your conversion rate is low — it's that you haven't validated the signal itself.
One extra cut I’d test is customer maturity, not just agency size: agencies with a repeatable staging/review process and 5–15 active client sites may feel the pain more sharply than solo freelancers. I’d run a concierge pilot on one live project and measure review-cycle time, unresolved comments, and handoff delays before/after. That gives you a concrete outcome to sell—and a clear signal for whether the problem is urgent enough to pay for.
Since you already have a defined ICP, I’d probably narrow it one step further before changing channels.
“Small web agencies” is still broad. I’d look for agencies where the feedback problem is already expensive — for example, teams juggling multiple client projects, using staging environments regularly, or already paying for tools like BugHerd/MarkUp but still handling part of the process manually.
Then I’d test the offer around one specific workflow rather than the whole product:
“Let me set this up on one active client project and see if it reduces the back-and-forth between client, QA and developer.”
For the first 10 customers, I’d probably value that kind of high-touch pilot more than a normal free trial. You’ll learn much faster where the real friction is and what outcome agencies actually care enough to pay for.
I also wouldn’t change the channel after an arbitrary number of prospects. I’d look at the sequence:
reply → demo/conversation → trial/pilot → usage → payment
The stage where people consistently drop tells you whether the problem is targeting, messaging, onboarding, or the product itself.
If cold outreach is getting conversations but no payments, I’d investigate what happens after the conversation before abandoning cold outreach.
I am the target audience, been trying to find a proper client for the past 4 days. No luck! 😭😭😭
AHHH!! IT'S IRRITATING!!!
Choose a target group and approach them with the linkedin sales navigator. This had success with my SaaS.
I recommend making use of all meta apps they are all related and making a network behind the scene. That is how I actually got my first 10 users for Ortwort.
Agencies are allergic to changing client workflows because if the tool confuses their client, the agency looks unprofessional. That fear kills signups way more than price.
What got real traction for early B2B pilots:
Stop asking them to sign up and evaluate software. Ask for one active project: Do you have a client review happening this week? Offer to set up the staging script on their URL yourself. When you remove setup friction, they have nothing to lose.
Target solo Webflow and Shopify freelancers over multi person agencies. Multi person agencies have existing Jira or ClickUp setups that require team consensus. A solo freelancer drowning in forty vague WhatsApp voice notes and PDF markups will adopt a visual pin tool in ten minutes if it saves their weekend.
The moment of truth is the client experience. If the client leaves three clear visual comments and says that was easy, the freelancer will gladly pay. If the client has to create an account or gets stuck, the freelancer will abandon it forever. Focus every ounce of energy on making the client side zero friction.
The gap you're circling is measurement precision: "says yes" looks like adoption until you measure "actually used it on a real problem."
Track the full funnel explicitly:
Each step filters to a smaller, more committed audience. The jumps between them reveal the real blocking constraint. "Demo → project" is usually different from "agrees → pays." Measure which gap closes slowest, and that's where the actual blocking failure lives.
That's your real first-customer story — finding the measurement that separates who says they want it from who can't live without it.
I’d start manually with a small group of agencies, focus on getting feedback, and figure out which type converts best before scaling outreach.
You’ve already done the hard part by talking to agencies. I’d turn those conversations into one repeatable, paid concierge pilot before adding more channels:
For the first 10, I’d personally recruit from the agencies you’ve already spoken with and ask for a short teardown of their last messy client review, not a generic product demo. If the same workaround appears in 510 interviews, make that the onboarding path. Happy to share a lightweight landing-page experiment checklist if useful.
You already have conversations and useful feedback, so I’d stop treating this as a channel question for one cycle. Where does the current path actually break: agreeing to a demo, connecting a staging site, inviting a client, completing one review, returning for the next project, or paying? Those are very different problems. Which is the last step that even two prospects have completed without you pushing them?
One angle I’d test is positioning around the handoff, not “QA” in the abstract. Ask each prospect to walk you through their last messy client review, then demo only the moment where feedback becomes a clear developer task. If 5–10 interviews surface the same workaround, make that the onboarding path before changing channels.
We're in a similar spot — two n8n automation templates, zero paid sales so far. One thing that changed how we think about channels: places with buyer search intent (Etsy, even the official n8n.io template gallery) beat builder-audience social feeds (IH, X) for actual first sales, because the audience there is looking for a solution, not for other founders' journeys. Worth testing a marketplace adjacent to your ICP's existing habits before doubling down on partnerships/DMs.
You listed setup as one of the options. Take that one, and go further than you think is reasonable: for the first ten, do the whole thing for them.
Not a free trial, not a discount. You install it on their staging site, you configure it around the way that agency already works, and you sit in on the first client review with them. Ten is a number one person can serve by hand. You will never have this few customers again, so spend the time now while it is still possible.
Two things come back. You learn what the agencies actually do between the client's comment and the developer's fix, which is where your product either fits or does not, and no interview will tell you as honestly as watching. And you create the one thing cold outreach cannot buy: a person who feels you gave them something before asking. Agencies talk to other agencies constantly. That is how ten becomes thirty.
I have run my own marketplace since 2004, around 300,000 members, and in 22 years I have never once made a sales call. Everything came from giving something away first and letting the people who received it explain me to the next person. It is slower than outreach for the first month and much faster after that.
On your last question, how many prospects before changing tactics: I would not count prospects. I would count how many agencies let you watch one real client review. If you cannot get five of those, the problem is not your channel.
I'd narrow the first experiment to one agency type and one painful handoff rather than testing more channels. Treat it as a concierge service: sit in on two live client reviews and measure time-to-feedback and revision churn before asking for payment. If the same objection appears repeatedly, turn that wording into your outreach; otherwise keep interviewing rather than adding channels.
For agencies the first 10 usually come from borrowing an existing workflow, not from more channels. Concretely: pull 30 agencies from Clutch or the Webflow/WordPress partner directories whose process pages mention "staging" or "client review", then send each a 90-second Loom where you run your feedback loop on THEIR live client site instead of a demo - and offer to set it up yourself, free, on one active project, with the ask being a 15-minute kickoff, not a signup. Do that in batches of 30 and don't change the pitch until all 30 are contacted, otherwise you can't tell which variable failed. Price only after 3 of them keep using it past the project, and anchor on the round-trip email hours it kills rather than on BugHerd/Ruttl's list price. Two cheap habits that compound: ask every "no" what they use instead and in what exact moment it fails them, and log every reply in one sheet with the raw objection wording - about 30 rows in, your positioning line is usually sitting there in their own words.
For the first 10, the channel matters less than the conversation. Your "agencies already using BugHerd/Ruttl" instinct is the strongest one - those are people already paying to solve this problem. Sharpest version: search for public complaints about those tools (pricing, missing features, clunky client UX) and reply with genuine help, not a pitch. Then for the ones who engage: offer to run the feedback loop on one of their live client projects yourself, free, for a week. You become the service before they buy the software. The first 10 are recruited, not acquired.
If I was in your position, I’d narrow it down even more before trying more channels.
Instead of “small web agencies and freelancers,” I’d pick one type first, for example agencies with 3–10 people that clearly use staging sites and regularly send work to clients for review.
Then I’d probably offer the first few customers something much more hands-on than a free trial. Something like: “I’ll set this up for your current project and you can use it with a real client. If it saves you time, keep using it.”
I think that gives you a much better test than asking someone to sign up, learn another tool and figure out where it fits in their workflow.
I’d also target agencies where you can actually see the problem. If they have staging/client-review pages, or are already using BugHerd/MarkUp/Ruttl, you already know they have the workflow you’re trying to improve.
For outreach, I’d make it very specific to their current process rather than “here’s my SaaS.” Even a short message showing that you looked at how they work would probably stand out more than another cold SaaS pitch.
I wouldn’t change the whole approach after 20 emails either. I’d probably speak to 20–30 very well-targeted agencies first, look for patterns in the objections, then change the offer/message before changing the product.
I’m actually dealing with the same first-customer problem with my own B2B product, so I’m learning this part too. But the more I work on it, the more I think the first 10 customers probably need a much more manual approach than the next 100.
we skipped cold email entirely and went all in on community presence instead, picked 2-3 places our target users actually spend time, showed up consistently for a few weeks doing nothing but being helpful, then let product mentions happen naturally when someone asked what we used. first handful of real users came from that, not from any post asking people to try it
Let me begin by congratulating you on coming this far. As a solo founder, I also was looking for more than just "generic advice" for getting my first users/customers and wished there was a way to get custom guidance, or even a step-by-step strategy that was tailored to my creation and its target. So I built a web app that could analyze my product, then generate a go-to-market plan for it. Maybe it could help you too: https://faastsaas.com
After creating an account, you simply visit the "Strategist" page, enter your product's URL to get a unique token (to verify that you own the product) that you'll place in your website's HTML <head> to enable the AI-agent securely analyze what it's about, then get a report.
It's currently available for use while in beta, and you can try its minimal functionality for free.
It would be nice to know if it helps meet your need.
I would avoid selling a general "feedback loop" at first. Pick ten agencies with active staging sites, then offer to run one real client-feedback cycle with them and watch where the handoff breaks.
The useful discovery is whether the pain is missed feedback, vague comments, prioritization, or developers translating what the client actually meant. One agency using it on a live project will teach you more than another round of broad discovery calls. If it works, that before-and-after story is the sales asset.
Stop selling the tool and go do the job. Pick 20 agencies with a visible client-facing staging URL, offer to set Tweak.page up on one live project yourself for free, run their next round of client feedback through it, and only ask for money after the client stops emailing screenshots. That is how I got the first customers at my last company, free migrations first and invoices later, and it converts far better than cold email because you have already changed how their week goes.
Running 5 small AI SaaS products solo right now, all pre-10-customers, so this thread hits close to home. Real data point from the last two weeks: launched all 5 on Product Hunt, ran paid search ads on one of them - real clicks (20+ so far, decent CTR), zero conversions. Organic PH traction was flat at 0 points until I actually pushed the link to real people instead of just posting and waiting.
The pattern I keep seeing: every "post and hope" channel (cold PH submission, cold Reddit post, cold IndieHackers comment) gets you visibility, not customers. The conversions we've actually seen anywhere in this campaign came from direct 1:1 conversations, not broadcast posts - which matches your instinct to be deliberate rather than spray-and-pray.
One thing I'd add to your list: check whether your funnel itself is actually converting before assuming it's a traffic problem. We audited ours after a run of clicks-with-zero-signups and the checkout flow was clean - so it really was a cold-traffic-trust problem, not a broken page. Worth ruling that out first since it's a 10-minute check.
I am in exactly this spot right now. Building ComplyEasy — a self-serve compliance platform for early-stage startups. SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, made simple.
What is working so far: finding founders who are about to get hit with a security questionnaire or a SOC 2 ask from an enterprise deal, and offering free Pro access in exchange for honest feedback. No sales pitch, just real product feedback from people about to feel this pain.
If that is you — especially fintech, insurtech, healthtech, or anyone selling into regulated or enterprise customers — comment or DM me.
Thank you.
We sell a dev tool and hit the same wall - traction only came once we ran the workflow for two customers manually, tool as the delivery mechanism. Agencies don't buy QA tools; they buy fewer back-and-forth emails. Offer to run the staging review for one real project free, let them watch the tool do it.
I have read and seen different videos and from the information I have gathered past founders have said Reddit, LinkedIn and X were good platforms to reach their first users.
When I was getting initial traction for my niche workflow tools in logistics and compliance, cold emailing agencies felt like shouting into the void. In my case, offering a manual white-glove setup for just two or three teams worked much faster. You might want to watch where founders complain about client review chaos, offer to onboard them personally, and fix their exact bottleneck. The first ten usually come from unscalable hand-holding rather than generic outbound.
Getting the first 10 B2B SaaS customers is often more about focused outreach than trying to scale marketing immediately. I’d be interested in hearing which approach works best at this stage—direct outreach, niche communities, referrals, or offering a hands-on pilot to early users.
This is a great discussion, especially for other SaaS founders reading the comments.
Getting the first 10 customers is usually about doing things manually before trying to scale. Direct outreach, founder-led demos, personal onboarding, and actually speaking with potential users can reveal far more than posting everywhere.
From my side, I work with SaaS startups and technology businesses on the documentation and compliance side—including privacy/GDPR documentation, SOC 2 readiness documentation, risk assessments, vendor due diligence, and AI governance documentation.
One thing worth keeping in mind as you start gaining customers is that larger clients often begin asking questions about security, privacy, vendors, and compliance much earlier than founders expect. Building those foundations early can make enterprise conversations and due diligence much easier later.
So while you're working toward your first 10 customers, it's also worth thinking about whether your business is building the operational and compliance foundation needed for the next stage of growth.
Always interesting to connect with other SaaS founders working through this stage. 🚀
the agency pays but their client is the one who has to use it. if the client keeps emailing screenshots instead, the agency quietly drops u.
I'd focus the first 10 on one narrow agency workflow and make the offer easy to trial: a fixed-scope migration of one client site, with a clear success metric like review-cycle time saved. A short teardown of their current feedback process can open the conversation better than a broad pitch. After a few pilots, turn the repeated objections into your positioning and onboarding checklist.
Your list is already a good channel map. I’d turn it into a 2-week learning funnel with a hard stop:
Track contacted → replies → live project → paid renewal, not conversations. That should show whether the bottleneck is channel, activation, or willingness to pay before you expand the approach.
You've done the obvious things well, so let me give you three specific things your list doesn't have, since you asked for non-generic.
First, you're missing that your product is multiplayer, and that's a distribution channel outreach isn't. Tweak.page lives on the client → QA → dev loop, which means every project run through it exposes the client (a business that isn't an agency) and the dev to the tool, for free, in context. Your first 10 shouldn't come from cold-emailing agencies at all. They should come from getting inserted into one real feedback loop, where three different people touch the product per project and each is a seed. Solo tools have to be marketed; multiplayer tools travel through the workflow they sit in. You're marketing a tool that's built to spread on its own.
Second, your "free trial vs free setup vs do the work" question has a hard answer: do the work, fully. A workflow tool has zero value until it's in a live workflow, and no agency inserts a new QA tool mid-project, they're too busy. So don't offer a trial they won't start. Offer to run the entire client-feedback round on their next launch yourself, in your tool, while they do nothing. That gets it used in anger on a real project, which is the only way this kind of tool gets evaluated at all, and the client-and-dev exposure comes free with it.
Third, retarget. BugHerd/Ruttl/MarkUp users already solved this problem, they have a tool, so you're asking them to switch, the hardest sale. The agency that adopts fastest is the one still doing client feedback in email and Slack and hating it, because they have the pain and no incumbent to rip out. And they're findable at a moment, not as a type: the freelancer posting "how do you handle client revisions without losing your mind" is your buyer at peak pain, describing your product for you.
So concretely, this week: find one agency mid-launch doing feedback in Slack, offer to run their next client-review round for free in Tweak.page start to finish, and watch what the client and the dev do with it. What happens on that one loop tells you more than 50 cold emails, and it seeds three users instead of pitching one.
This is a great discussion, especially for other SaaS founders reading the comments.
Getting the first 10 customers is usually about doing things manually before trying to scale. Direct outreach, founder-led demos, personal onboarding, and actually speaking with potential users can reveal far more than posting everywhere.
From my side, I work with SaaS startups and technology businesses on the documentation and compliance side—including privacy/GDPR documentation, SOC 2 readiness documentation, risk assessments, vendor due diligence, and AI governance documentation.
One thing worth keeping in mind as you start gaining customers is that larger clients often begin asking questions about security, privacy, vendors, and compliance much earlier than founders expect. Building those foundations early can make enterprise conversations and due diligence much easier later.
So while you're working toward your first 10 customers, it's also worth thinking about whether your business is building the operational and compliance foundation needed for the next stage of growth.
Always interesting to connect with other SaaS founders working through this stage. 🚀
Very relatable — I'm in almost the same spot with a B2B SaaS (AI Control Center, multi-provider AI cost/key management for dev teams). Zero-to-first-10 is brutal because none of the "content marketing" playbooks work yet — you don't have an audience to post content to. What's worked best for me so far is going where the exact pain point already gets talked about (dev communities, HN, niche Discords) instead of general "SaaS founder" spaces, since the people there are actually the ones with the problem, not just other founders cheering you on. Curious if you've tried directly DMing agencies already using BugHerd/Ruttl — cold but targeted outreach like that usually beats posting and waiting.
This is a great discussion, especially for other SaaS founders reading the comments.
Getting the first 10 customers is usually about doing things manually before trying to scale. Direct outreach, founder-led demos, personal onboarding, and actually speaking with potential users can reveal far more than posting everywhere.
From my side, I work with SaaS startups and technology businesses on the documentation and compliance side—including privacy/GDPR documentation, SOC 2 readiness documentation, risk assessments, vendor due diligence, and AI governance documentation.
One thing worth keeping in mind as you start gaining customers is that larger clients often begin asking questions about security, privacy, vendors, and compliance much earlier than founders expect. Building those foundations early can make enterprise conversations and due diligence much easier later.
So while you're working toward your first 10 customers, it's also worth thinking about whether your business is building the operational and compliance foundation needed for the next stage of growth.
Always interesting to connect with other SaaS founders working through this stage. 🚀
You’ve already done the hard part of narrowing the ICP and naming the trigger signals. I’d make the next experiment deliberately small: pick 20 agencies showing one clear trigger, send a genuinely specific observation, and offer to set up 3 concierge pilots yourself. Track each step separately (reply → call → setup → first real review), and don’t change the channel until you have comparable numbers. Once a pilot produces a measurable improvement, charge a modest amount—even a small paid pilot is a useful filter between polite interest and real pain. Good luck; the client-review handoff is a concrete wedge.
Who do you recommend reaching out to, specifically? Particularly if it is a medium-large company?
One concrete experiment: turn the BugHerd/Ruttl/MarkUp list into a trigger-based sample, not just a prospect list. Pick one narrow segment (for example, 2–10-person Webflow agencies), find 10 that publicly mention client revisions or QA, and tag where feedback currently gets lost (email, screenshots, Slack, tickets). Send a short note naming the observed workflow and ask for a 15-minute screen-share—not a generic demo. Define success as 3 agencies agreeing to run one live project, not replies. During each concierge pilot, measure client comment → approved fix time, clarification/reopened issues, and repeat usage. Then your first 20 prospects produce both a positioning signal and an acquisition signal; you’ll know whether to change the wedge or the channel.
A few things that actually moved the needle for us in early B2B, specific to your situation:
The agencies already using BugHerd or Ruttl are your best starting point — not because they're easy to convert, but because they've already budgeted for this category of problem. The conversation isn't "do you need this," it's "here's why ours handles the client feedback loop differently." That's a much shorter sale.
On outreach format: skip the trial offer at first. Instead, offer to set it up on one of their live client projects for free and be present during the first client review session. The moment a freelancer watches their client leave feedback directly on the staging page without a single back-and-forth email, you have a conversion. The product sells itself if you can engineer that first moment. A trial they set up alone rarely gets to that moment.
The question I'd ask before changing approach: not "how many prospects have I contacted" but "how many have seen the product working on their actual client workflow." If that number is under 20, the outreach isn't the variable to change yet.
Our first real customers almost always came from a warm introduction from someone who had seen the product work in context — not from cold outreach that converted directly. The cold outreach was worth doing because it got us conversations, and conversations occasionally got us introductions. But the direct cold-to-paid rate was low enough that we'd have quit too early if we'd been measuring that.
I'm a Sales VP and have spent years in B2B sales. One thing has always bothered me:
A B2B salesperson can easily spend 80% of their time finding, researching, and deciding which companies are actually worth pursuing right now, another 15% figuring out who to reach and how to connect, and maybe 5% actually having meaningful conversations with customers.
I think that 80% is the part AI should kill.
That's why I'm building WindowIsOpen.
Instead of giving salespeople another giant list of leads, WindowIsOpen takes an OSINT-style approach: it watches public company signals for real-world changes that may indicate a sales window is opening.
The idea is to answer two very simple questions:
Which companies are worth contacting right now?
And why now?
If AI can take most of that 80% off a salesperson's plate, they can spend a lot more time doing the part humans are actually good at — talking to customers and selling.
Now I get to test the idea on myself.
I'm going to use WindowIsOpen to find the first users of WindowIsOpen.
For this first version, I'm keeping it intentionally narrow: it's only for founders and companies selling B2B software, SaaS, or AI services.
I'm opening the first batch for free. No payment — I want real B2B sellers using it and telling me where it works and where it doesn't.
If that's you and you want to try it, reply here or DM me. I'll send you an invite.
Pick one narrow agency pain (e.g. “client revision chaos on one deliverable type”) and do 20 manual outreaches this week — warm intros first, then cold with a free teardown of their current QA/feedback mess. Don’t sell the SaaS yet; sell a 30‑min fix call. First 5–10 usually come from that loop, not from a broader channel bet.
This is really helpful — especially the distinction between selling the SaaS and selling the fix.
The client revision/feedback loop is actually the pain I'm focusing on: feedback scattered across screenshots, email/Slack, QA and developer tasks, with the client often needing multiple rounds of clarification.
I like the idea of doing 20 manual outreaches around that specific problem and offering to look at their current workflow rather than immediately pitching Tweak.
For the free teardown, would you keep it very lightweight (e.g. 15–20 minutes reviewing their current feedback process), or would you actually prepare something beforehand for each agency?
And when you say "30-min fix call", would you position that as a consulting/workflow-improvement call rather than mentioning the product at all initially?
Your wedge is the handoff loop, so Id stop selling a general QA tool and recruit 3–5 agencies already doing this manually. For each, offer a concierge pilot on one live client site: instrument where feedback gets lost, set up the workflow, and promise a before/after measure such as review turnaround time, reopened issues, or hours per launch. Ask for payment only after the first successful handoff, then turn the winning setup into a fixed package; that gives you a concrete case study and referral ask instead of more channel experiments. I’d contact agency owners with a screenshot of the current loop and one sentence about the measurable outcome, not a feature list.
This is a great way to frame it. I think I've been too broad with "website feedback" when the stronger wedge is actually the handoff from client feedback → QA → developer → resolution.
I like the idea of running 3–5 concierge pilots on real client sites and measuring something concrete instead of just asking whether they "like" the product.
For the first pilots, I'm thinking of measuring review turnaround time, number of clarification/reopened issues, and how much back-and-forth the agency has with the client/developer.
The screenshot + one measurable outcome approach also makes much more sense than sending a feature list.
One question: would you ask the agency for their current baseline before setting up the pilot, or simply measure the first project with Tweak and compare it against their previous projects?
Thanks — this gives me a much more concrete experiment to run.
Because your product sits inside an existing client-review workflow, I’d pick one narrow agency segment and a trigger you can observe (for example, agencies actively asking for QA or client-feedback help) rather than broad cold outreach. Offer a short, concierge pilot across 3–5 active projects, measure time from client feedback to approved fix and repeat usage, and only then turn the steps into a repeatable setup. I’d keep the first learning loop small—maybe 20–30 well-matched agencies—before changing the positioning.
This makes sense. I think the trigger-based approach is especially useful because it gives us a reason to contact an agency at the moment the problem is already active, rather than trying to convince a completely cold prospect that they have a problem.
I'll narrow the first batch to 20–30 well-matched agencies and look specifically for agencies actively discussing client feedback, QA, revisions, or problems with tools they're currently using.
For the 3–5 pilots, I'll keep the setup concierge and measure the time from client feedback → approved fix, along with repeat usage across projects.
I also like the point about not changing the positioning too early. I'll use the first 20–30 agencies as one learning loop before deciding whether the positioning needs to change.
Thanks — this is helping me turn what was becoming a lot of channel experimentation into a much more focused test.