Is the first user the hardest one to get?

Recently I hit $300 MRR for Flezr.com and this is not my first product. It's hard to get the first paying user.

In my case I was talking about my product on Twitter, IH and Reddit mostly. But I think for your product I think you should be more on Reddit.

I found your idea really cool! But regarding the post topic: Yes, when starting a new business getting the first client/user is the hardest part, because you're still figuring out who your client is.

Things that can help:

• Define your ideal client profile from day one (even before building your product)
• Sell your product before your product before coding it.
• Talk to your ideal costumer profile and get constant feedback about how your product should look like.

It's all about knowking where your costumer hangout =D

I wouldn't say the first sale is the hardest.

Rather, the first few sales are the hardest! The first one is just one of these.

After a few sales (30ish), things start to get clearer - best suited channels, key audience segments/personas, resonating value prop messages wrt these personas/segments, etc..

As these things get clearer and sharper, the sales become easier.

I just recently got my first clients on Submotion.co ,to find people that you hit enough “pain points” is hard in our time I believe for langclash its Finding facebook groups that are using doulingo also consider talking to one of those YouTube guys who can speak in like 7 languages, if you could collaborate with one of them its game over

I would say scaling is harder !

I would recommend you guys to check this video by kahtryn minshew the founder of The Muse about : Kathryn Minshew, Acquiring Your First Users Out of Thin Air, The Lean Startup Conference 2013

In that video she goes trough step by step on how to get first initial customer with less to none cost.

The main idea in that video is if you want to get your first initial customer you need to go and sell them, either sell your product to blogger, influencers or customer you need to do the work to force people to introduce your product.

She talked about how to approach bloggers, media etc and how to email them and how to approach customers and then request them to promote for you.

I also recommend you to read this article about : Acquiring Your First Users Out of Thin Air

As someone who is very interested in language learning, this looks like a very interesting idea. Personally I would love to see example game play or screenshots to explain what kind of game is being played before signing up.

Initial growth is a hard problem, but you can make progress with the right systems. If you haven't read the book Traction (How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth), I would recommend it. One of the key suggestions from that book is to really dedicate time to work on traction experiments. They recommend spending ~50% of your time on product, and the other 50% on traction.

Good luck!

All the best, it’s hard but once the ball starts rolling it will be fun !

Usually that is so but they also tend to be the most loyal and stick with you through iterations, discussions, feedback loops, ups and downs and just about everything - Its why the general belief is to always remember your first customers

I think the trick is to go super niche to the point where you're thinking "surely I should cast my net wider...?" - too often we drown instead of starve

So for LangClash it looks like you're targeting people who want to speak a new language, which is everyone - I wouldn't know where to start with that.

What about targeting people who want to learn German from English in particular? Or people who want to learn German from English because they're students? Or what about teachers in schools who are teaching German, or tutors with large groups?

Hey! Couple quick things I saw when looking at your landing page: there are a few spelling/grammar mistakes that I think people would be quick to notice especially for a language learning platform - "challange" instead of "challenge", "find out how to master a new language can be fun" instead of "find out how mastering a new language can be fun", and a couple others. Looks really cool though! Good luck.

I'd say not just the very first one, but the first 10-50 ish

in your case I will recommend to have some social proof like "10,000 users playing this week with us" and if possible to have a guest mode so I can see other playing.

Hi, you need to create a brand and a community. That way your users (even the first one) will become your ambassadors. In your case, you have all the elements in your product to make this real.

It’s a matter of time and effort put in. Eventually, that first user will come as long as you’re resilient and going about it the right way.

Besides, I checked out the website and realized you’ve got only 1 CTA button on the page. Best to probably add another at the bottom.

Getting the first user can be challenging, just like starting a home care agency. Trust and reputation take time to build, but once you establish credibility, more clients tend to follow. It's about proving your worth and delivering exceptional service, making the first user pivotal in this process.

I feel your pain Marcos,

It's the reason why my first business failed 10 years ago.

To your point - it's just the nature of creating anything new.

If you want to dig deeper into why you feel this way check out Don Kelley and Daryl Connor's emotional cycle of change framework.

I like referring back to their framework when work feels hard.

Hey Marcos,

I remember when I got my first user and it was a very good sensation for me. You already have a lot of experience dealing with tech. I guess you'll figure out this challenge very easy 🏆

Btw, I'm from Brazil too.

Good luck!

Acquiring your first customers can be challenging. However, a strong network can make landing the initial three customers relatively straightforward. The real complexity lies in scaling from 3 to 10, 10 to 100, and 100 to 1,000 customers.

I am currently at the "4 customers" mark. Trying to get to that next phase of 10 and 100 customers.

To me, it isn't the first user that's challenging. It's the first 100. Talk to your friends and family about your business. Ask them for recommendations. My product Receipt-AI.com has 30 users. It can take a while, keep improving the product.

I feel this, I recently launched landingUIdotPro and I work on the side of my main job, which leaves me with mostly weekends tough to think I'm building something consistently.

No customers yet, but I'm using every weekend to consistently move forward, without looking much into it.

Maybe some day or this becomes a lesson for my next project :)

Sometimes it even feels like whatever the progress you make, it never gets easier. But we have to be persevering right !!!

Hey it's just my feeling but I got a little bit cold vibe from the font. It feels way too systemic to me, makes sense that an indie >hacker< would use it, but maybe it's not that fit for the target group. Or it feels to default, as if the site is not completely done, hard to say.

I'd experiment with a few different fonts if some would be a bit more playful or light.

Content wise, if the landing page is a "story" and we tend to understand a lot of things as stories, it seems it starts and ends too abruptly. I'd consider some teasing, gradation and then final words with the CTA.

hope this helps!

@eich_marcos - I am in the pre product market fit phase right now, and what makes it feel "hard" is ambiguity. I am working to craft a process for myself that has a very tight feedback loop, so that I can Observe, Orient, Decide and Act quickly in the Business domain. As Rob Fitzgerald indicates in "The Mom Test" (awesome, by the way) your primary focus when in pre product market fit is learning. You need information in order to learn. It feels like guessing when we have no information. The first customer provides an enormous avalanche of information - "One human values what I have crafted so much that they are paying me for it." which is absent before that information arrives.

Amazing man

I'm currently in the same phase. I'm surprised at how difficult it is to convince even friends and family to take 1 hour of their time to test my platform. My hypothesis: time is becoming increasingly valuable and limited. Additionally, the people in my inner circle also want to provide appropriate and thorough feedback, which requires much more effort than one might initially think. As a result, things get postponed more and more, and I wonder why no feedback is coming in. My learning so far: Keep the entry barrier as low as possible, be explicit in the request, and at the very least, ensure it's mobile-friendly.

Additionally, check if you are active in the right communities and forums. You might find the target audience there, which has already overcome the problems you're observing and, as a result, may see little to no benefit. This is especially true when it comes to changing habits and tackling tasks that involve effort, such as language learning.

You are building a platform which is harder since it requires you to overcome the cold start /chicken and egg problem. You also need some network effects working in your favor since your product requires at least two people to work unlike other SaaS tools that need just one person to be functional. Check out Andrew Chen's book called the Cold Start Problem. It goes in depth about this. Happy coding!

I can only say as a B2C owner and not B2B but..

I don't think so. I co-own 2 apps: Chap, a chore tracking app and Orbt, an AI trip planner that generates itineraries for you, and both got their first paid users within a couple of days of launching paid options.

I think if you do proper research into your customer, targeting the right audience, and your product brings value, your 1st paid user shouldn't be hard to get. If it is, one of those 3 things I mentioned is off imo. Still trying to get it right myself.

Congrats on selling your startup btw! That's what a lot of us dream of :)

Congrats on creating a new project! LangClash seems fun and the design looks slick.

It's definitely not you, it's more the nature of every business. For businesses like LangClash that need a critical mass for new users to continue joining, it's definitely a unique challenge.

Have you found who are people most willing to learn new languages by playing with others? Sometimes insight is in places where we least expect it. A long while ago a friend working on a similar project found senior citizens were their best users, because they wanted to socialize, and keep their minds from atrophying.

Best of luck! Try new things and you'll definitely get your first users.