The $0 Customer Problem
Core Argument: Your first 10 customers cannot be "found." They must be engineered through systematic pain extraction. The Manual Sales Laboratory is not optional - it is the foundation of everything that scales.
The Myth of "Finding" Customers
The language founders use reveals their mental model. "How do I find customers?"
The verb is wrong. "Find" implies that customers exist somewhere, waiting to be discovered. This is not how early-stage B2B works.
Your first 10 customers do not exist as customers until you create them. They are people tolerating their problems and allocating budgets elsewhere. They are not searching for you. They are not "in the market."
Your job is not to find them. Your job is to manufacture urgency where none currently exists.
The answer is not marketing, content, SEO, or viral loops. The answer is the Manual Sales Laboratory.
Why Early Customers Are Different
No Brand, No Trust
At customer zero, you have no reputation. No G2 reviews. No logos. No case studies. The founder - not the product - is the primary trust signal. Buyers are buying the founder's credibility.
No Playbook, No Repeatability
You do not yet know which messaging resonates, which objections matter, or which buyer profile converts. Every conversation is an experiment. The goal is learning, not efficiency.
No Budget, No Urgency
Your prospects have survived without your solution. You must manufacture urgency through the sales conversation itself.
The Manual Sales Laboratory
The term "laboratory" is intentional. This is experimentation. Every conversation generates data. Every rejection refines the hypothesis.
The 4 Principles
Principle 1: The Founder Must Sell
Non-negotiable. Founder-led sales outperforms delegated sales at early stage by 3-5x in conversion rate. Founders who "don't do sales" will not survive to Series A.
Principle 2: Volume Before Optimization
Target: 100 outreach attempts in the first 30 days. The first 20 will be bad. That's the point. By conversation 50, patterns emerge.
Principle 3: Document Everything
Every conversation must produce structured data: Who, Trigger, Pain, Objections, Outcome, and one verbatim quote about their pain.
Principle 4: Iterate Weekly
One-week experiment cycles: Monday define hypothesis, Tuesday-Thursday execute, Friday analyze and update.
The Cold Outreach Framework
Cold outreach has a reputation problem because most cold outreach is terrible. Effective cold outreach earns attention by demonstrating relevance.
Subject Line: Reference a specific trigger or pain. No cleverness. "Re: [Company]'s Q3 hiring push in RevOps"
Opening Line: Demonstrate specific knowledge. "I noticed [Company] posted 4 RevOps roles last month - usually a signal that pipeline forecasting has become painful."
The Ask: One clear, low-commitment next step. "Worth a 15-minute conversation to see if this matches your situation?"
Realistic Benchmarks
The Math: 100 emails → 10 responses → 3 meetings → 1 customer
Acquiring 10 customers requires approximately 1,000 outreach attempts. This is normal. This is the work.
The Design Partner Trap
Design partners are not customers. They are users who have been told they do not need to pay. Their feedback is polluted by the absence of financial commitment.
Design partners are acceptable only under strict conditions:
- Time-limited: Maximum 90 days before conversion decision
- Conversion criteria defined: Specific outcomes that trigger the payment conversation
- Payment expectation stated upfront
Conclusion: Manufacturing Customers
Your first customers are not waiting to be found. They are living their lives, tolerating their problems, spending their budgets elsewhere.
Your job is to interrupt that pattern. To surface a pain they've learned to ignore. To quantify a cost they've accepted as normal.
This is the work of the Manual Sales Laboratory. It is not glamorous. It is not scalable. It is the only thing that works at $0.