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5 years. 500+ interviews with top consumer startup founders.
In every conversation, my first question was always the same: “How did you get your first customer?”
The 0→1 journey is brutal. You second-guess yourself constantly. You wonder if anyone cares, or if you're just yelling into the void. For most, reaching the first 1,000 customers is the moment when it finally feels real.
As I started working on my new startup, Pikes, I found myself revisiting that question and digging back through my old notes and posts for inspiration.
What I found were clear, repeatable patterns hidden in plain sight. So I pulled them together into a simple framework backed by real case studies.
Note: These tactics aren’t mutually exclusive. 41% of the startups I studied used multiple channels at once. The best founders layer 2–3 strategies to build compounding momentum.
If you only have 1 min, here is the TL;DR >>
Personal outreach 🔥🔥🔥 - Make it personal, then systematize
Paid advertising 🔥🔥🔥 - Rapid demand testing
Community leverage 🔥🔥🔥 - Go where your customers already are
Influencer partnerships 🔥🔥🔥 - Ride the wave of other people's audiences
Social media content 🔥🔥🔥 - Master organic viral content
Press coverage 🔥🔥 - Get one big break, then double down
Referral programs 🔥🔥 - Turn customers into your sales team
Ambassador programs 🔥 - Create systematic word-of-mouth armies
Crowdfunding 🔥- Build momentum through crowdfunding platforms
Content & community 🔥 - Become the go-to educational resource
1/ Personal outreach: the high-touch foundation
Used by 25% of startups I interviewed - the most common method
Personal outreach is the most prevalent method in my database for a reason - it works. One in four successful consumer startups began with manual, high-touch approaches that provided them with deep customer insights, and then systematized what worked.
a/ Dub: the manual onboarding army
Product: copy-trading focused investing app
Current traction: 1M downloads in 10 months, $30M Series A
When Dub was launched, Steven and his team decided to go old-school with its user acquisition effort: manual, high-touch outreach and onboarding.
The first batch of customers was recruited manually. Everyone in the company wrote down a list of 10-20 friends and family members who could be interested in using Dub. They manually recruited and onboarded every one of them.
Not only did this approach get them their first batch of customers, but it also gave them incredible insights into user behavior, common objections, and what messaging resonated.
When Steven's CNBC interview later went viral, they were ready to convert that attention because they understood their customers deeply.
Learn more here.
b/ Pickle: find your ideal users
Product: hyper-local peer-to-peer rental marketplace
Current traction: Tens of thousands MAU, 200K+ products
No one wants to use a marketplace with no inventory, just like no one wants to party in an empty club.
Fortunately for Pickle, supply and demand can be the same person. That makes the chicken-and-egg problem easier to solve. You don’t need to build both sides from scratch independently.
Their first market was NYC.
To seed the first 1,000 items, Julia personally recruited her most stylish friends in the city. She visited their homes, helped photograph the items, and uploaded them herself.
She also DMed stylish strangers on IG to get them on the app.
To better understand their users, Brian and Julia personally delivered the first 2,000 orders.
To further supercharge initial growth, Pickle also tapped into NYC’s micro-influencer scene.
Instead of offering traditional sponsorships, they invited influencers to use the platform, turning them into both lenders and renters.
Micro-influencers are a perfect fit: they want extra income, need clothes for content, and love engaging with fans (who can now rent their outfits).
Read more here.
c/ Beacons: the screenshot outreach method
Product: link-in-bio tool for creators
Current traction: $10M+ in revenue, ~$30M raised from top VCs
When Beacons entered the market, Linktree was the big dog in the room.
One weakness they identified with Linktree was the lack of customization. The hypothesis was that content creators would be willing to try Beacons if they could offer more design customization options.
The approach they took was to identify creators who were using Linktree on Instagram and also had an email listed publicly. Before approaching those creators, the team would build a Beacons website that had the same links as their Linktree website but looked nicer in terms of design.
“We would reach out to those creators over email and include a screenshot of the Beacons website we built for them. We would then ask if they wanted to sign up. It turned out to be a very effective strategy, and we were able to acquire our first 100 creators this way.”
This strategy was incredibly effective because it showed rather than told the value proposition.
Read more here.
2/ Paid ads: rapid demand testing
Used by 22% of startups - the second most common method
Paid ads often get a bad rap in the startup world. Still, when executed correctly with clear value propositions and targeted audiences, they can be incredibly effective for early customer acquisition and demand validation.
Nearly one in five successful consumer startups utilized paid advertising as a core acquisition strategy in the early days.
a/ Fora: the travel enthusiast targeting
Product: modern travel agency platform that helps anyone become a travel advisor
Current traction: 10K+ advisors, $1B+ gross bookings, $40M Series C
Before building anything fancy, they needed to validate two critical hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Could they find a deep pool of people interested in becoming "travel agent 2.0"?
Hypothesis 2: Could they turn those people into successful travel advisors who build real businesses?
To validate hypothesis #1, they ran paid social ads targeting travel enthusiasts with a simple value proposition: become a modern travel agent with professional tools and training.
Within a few months, they built a 10,000-person waitlist from paid social. Beyond the number, they also felt the overwhelming interest from aspiring travel entrepreneurs. This demand pull helped them gain the conviction that they could bring new people into this profession at scale.
For the second hypothesis, they needed to prove they could turn travel enthusiasts into real business builders.
They set a clear benchmark: advisors needed to be on track to book $100K in gross travel volume annually. This would generate ~$8,000 in take-home income, enough to be a serious side hustle or stepping stone to full-time work.
To support their initial cohort of travel advisors, they built a simple MVP:
A Google Drive full of training materials and hotel partnerships
Professional @fora.travel email addresses for credibility
1-on-1 Zoom training run by Henley and another early team member
A Circle community app for peer-to-peer learning
Manual commission tracking
~100 advisors from their initial cohort hit the $100K booking trajectory. They had proven both hypotheses.
Paid ads are most effective when you have a clear value proposition that resonates with a specific, targetable audience. It’s also a good strategy to test out the demand in a market quickly.
Read more here.
b/ Curated: the two-sided ad strategy
Product: connects shoppers with experts for personalized gear recommendations.
Current traction: $140M+ raised, approaching 9-digit revenue
Curated ran ads on both sides of their marketplace to validate demand.
Expert recruitment: Posted ads on Craigslist to hire experts and received an overwhelming number of inquiries.
Consumer validation: Launched the Curated website with a simple 10-question questionnaire and marketed it online to see how many people would fill it out and give out their phone numbers. The demand was strong, and they also validated that as long as the questions were relevant, they could collect user intention data at a relatively low cost.
These two experiments provided the team with the confidence to invest more in this idea.
Read more here.
3/ Community leverage: existing audience infiltration
Used by 19% of startups - tied for third most common
Chances are, your ideal customers are already gathered somewhere—engaged and paying attention.
Nearly 1 in 5 successful startups found early traction by embedding themselves in existing communities and finding natural ways to plug their product.
a/ Fay: Facebook group infiltration
Product: connects individuals with registered dietitians for personalized nutrition counseling
Current traction: $50M revenue, $500M valuation
Fay built a $500M healthcare marketplace by cracking the code on recruiting dietitians. But they didn't start with job boards or LinkedIn ads.
Instead, they went straight to Facebook groups where dietitians were already hanging out, sharing advice, and building relationships.
The most genius part of their approach is the fact that they didn’t just recruit - they built a referral loop into the onboarding process. New dietitians had to invite three peers to be activated on the platform.
This created a viral coefficient right from the start. Every new dietitian became a recruiter for three more. The Facebook groups provided the initial seed, but the referral mechanism made it exponential.
Read more here.
b/ E-pal: from Fiverr to Discord domination
Current traction: 400K+ users, 60K+ game companions
Brian and his team spotted an opportunity in the gaming companion space. But instead of trying to recruit gamers from scratch, they went where gaming freelancers already were: Fiverr.
They convinced 50 game companions to join their Discord group, learned about the industry, and built their initial website around these insights.
Then came the distribution hack: they went to other gaming Discord groups and told them about this new platform they'd built specifically for the gaming community.
Over 1000 new users the day after launch, all from organic Discord group sharing.
Start with supply-side validation in existing marketplaces, then build your own platform optimized for that specific use case.
Read more here.
c/ Fractional: tapping into anonymous social networks
Product: enables people to co-invest in properties together
Current traction: raised $15M series A in 2024
Stella and Carlos from Fractional had a hypothesis: professionals wanted to co-invest in real estate but lacked the platform to do it.
Instead of building a landing page first, they went straight to Blind - the anonymous professional social platform where their target customers were already discussing career and financial topics.
They posted their questionnaire and value proposition directly to the community.
The result: 2K+ people filled out the questionnaire and indicated interest, giving them validation before they'd even built the full product.
Anonymous professional platforms can be goldmines for demand validation. People are more honest about their pain points when they can speak freely.
Read more here
4/ Influencer partnerships: audience borrowing strategy
Used by 19% of startups - tied for third most common
Building an audience from scratch takes years. Partnering with individuals who already have your target audience's attention can help you reach your goal in weeks.
But here's the key: the best partnerships aren't just paid promotions. They're value-aligned collaborations that benefit everyone involved.
a/ Hallow: the Catholic influencer strategy
Product: Christian prayer and meditation app
Current traction: 23M+ downloads, $100M+ raised
Hallow could have paid Catholic influencers for generic shoutouts. Instead, they created a content collaboration model.
The strategy:
Partnered with Catholic influencers with 10K-100K followers
Invited them to record their own prayer series on Hallow
Influencers told their audiences to listen to their specific content on the platform
This created authentic endorsements because influencers were promoting their own content, not just the app.
The big breakthrough came during a partnership with Matt Fradd from Pints with Aquinas, leading to massive user growth.
Don't just buy access to audiences - create content collaborations that give influencers a reason to promote your platform authentically.
Read more here.
b/ Praktika: leverage local influencers
Product: AI language learning app
Current traction: $20M ARR, 2M+ MAU
They launched in Brazil, a market of over 210 million people with high digital literacy but low English proficiency (only 5% of the population speaks English).
Influencer marketing was their primary growth lever. They targeted Brazilian IG and TikTok English language learning influencers who could consistently generate hundreds of thousands of views.
This strategy succeeded immediately, helping them reach $1K MRR with their first influencer partnership and scale to $100K MRR within three months of launch.
Match your market strategy to local social media behaviors. What works in the US might not work in Brazil, but local influencers know what resonates with their audience.
Read more here.
—
Dropping the part 2 next week!
Stay tuned 😉,
Leo
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