I Launched My SaaS to Zero Customers
Last year, I did something incredibly stupid.
I spent six months coding, designing, and perfecting a SaaS tool. I pushed it live, sent out a launch email to my three friends and my mom, and then sat back to watch the signups roll in.
The result? For 43 agonizing days, our user count was exactly one: me.
I'm not alone in this particular brand of self-torture. I see it every day on Indie Hackers, on Reddit, in founder Slack groups. Smart people building beautiful products that nobody uses. They're all refreshing their analytics, hoping for a miracle, and getting a flat line that mocks their life's work.
We’re all falling for the same lie.
The Dirty Secret About "Growth Hacking"
Here’s what the gurus in their slick YouTube ads won’t tell you: building the product is the easy part. The real work—the gritty, unglamorous, hand-to-hand combat of getting your first paying customers—is what actually matters.
And most of us are doing it completely wrong. We chase vanity metrics, we add "one more feature," and we listen to advice that sounds good in a tweet but falls apart in the real world.
We think we need a complex marketing funnel. We think we need a huge social media following. We think we need to "build it and they will come."
That’s not a strategy. It's a prayer.
I had to unlearn everything and start from scratch. No more chasing ghosts. No more building in a vacuum. Here’s what actually works.
What Actually Works (Based on Painful Experience, Not a Conference Talk)
I decided to treat customer acquisition like a product. I would test, iterate, and kill what didn't work.
Here’s what I learned.
1. Stop Chasing Free Users. They Will Kill You.
Let's get the most important, most controversial rule out of the way immediately.
Charge money from day one.
I know, I know. Every "startup expert" tells you to launch with a generous free tier to get feedback and traction. This is, for 99% of new SaaS founders, a catastrophic mistake.
Free users are not customers. They are tourists. They will drain your support time, demand a dozen features you shouldn’t build, and then disappear the second something shinier comes along. Their feedback is worthless because they have no skin in the game. They’re playing with a free toy, not solving a real business problem.
A smart founder on Reddit said it perfectly: "Charging $19/mo forces real feedback and filters tourists."
That’s a truth serum. A price tag, even a small one, is the ultimate validator. It proves someone feels the pain you’re solving acutely enough to open their wallet. That’s the only validation that matters.
Your goal isn’t 1,000 free signups. It's 10 people who believe in you enough to pay. Ditch the "open alpha." Create a "Founding Member" plan for $29/mo and make it clear it's a special deal.
2. Find Your "Micro-Tribe"
If I ask you who your customer is and you say "small businesses" or "content creators," you've already lost. That's not a target market; it's a phone book.
You're using a shotgun when you need a sniper rifle.
Your messaging becomes bland. Your features become generic. You're shouting into a hurricane. You need to get painfully, uncomfortably specific.
Bad: A project management tool for agencies.
Good: A project management tool for marketing agencies.
Great: An asynchronous client approval tool for boutique branding agencies that are drowning in messy email feedback chains.
You can practically picture the person. You know their exact headache. And you know exactly where they go online to complain about it.
The test? If you can't describe your ideal customer in a single, hyper-specific sentence, you don't have one.
3. Go Where the Pain Is (And Be Genuinely Helpful)
Your micro-tribe is already gathered in digital corners of the internet, talking about the very problem your tool solves. Your job is not to be the Kool-Aid Man, smashing through the wall yelling "Check out my SaaS!"
Your job is to become the most helpful person in the room.
I saw a founder nail this. He wanted his first 30 users for a sales ops tool. His strategy? "I picked one micro-niche, hung out in the subreddits where they complain, and just helped people. I only sent a DM about my tool after I solved their problem in a public comment."
That’s the playbook.
Find the Watering Holes: Make a list of 5-10 subreddits, niche Slack groups, or ancient-looking forums where your people live.
Become the Expert (for free): For two weeks, your only goal is to answer questions. Offer advice. Share workflows. Do not mention your product. Build a reputation for being generous with your knowledge.
The Soft Pitch: After you've built trust, and only then, you can gently pivot. When someone posts a problem your tool perfectly solves, you help them first, then add, "I actually built a small tool to automate this because it was driving me nuts. No pressure, but it might save you some time."
This isn't fast. But the leads you get are pure gold.
4. The Unscalable Outreach Engine
Community work is passive. To get your first 10, then 20, then 50 customers, you need an active, outbound engine. Forget mass-emailing 10,000 people. We're talking about surgical strikes.
Here's the plan:
Build an "Outcome" Landing Page: Don't list features. Promise a result. "Stop Wasting 10 Hours a Week on Client Revisions." The only button should be "Book a 15-Min Demo."
Find 20 Prospects a Day: Use LinkedIn to find 20 perfect-fit people. Twenty. This forces you to focus on quality over quantity.
The 2-Sentence Email + Personalized Video: This is your secret weapon.
Subject: Quick question re: [Their Company]Body: Hi [Name], saw you manage client projects at [Company]. My guess is that getting approvals organized is a huge time-sink. I made a 60-second video showing how you could solve that: [Link to personalized Loom video]. Worth a chat?
The 60-Second Video: Record a quick Loom with their website open. Say their name. Show them exactly how your tool solves their problem. It's so personalized, it's impossible to ignore.
Track & Follow Up: Use a spreadsheet. Follow up twice. Be relentless.
This is tedious work. But five of these conversations are worth more than 500 freebie-seekers.
My First 10 Customer Stack (And What It Actually Cost)
For my last SaaS project, here’s the unsexy "stack" I used to get my first paying customers:
Reddit & Slack for community listening (free)
A Google Sheet for tracking outreach ($0)
Loom for personalized videos ($8/month)
A cheap "Founding Member" plan on my site ($29/month, paid by customers!)
Total monthly cost: $8
Result: 10 paying customers in the first month, a pipeline of qualified leads, and feedback that actually helped me build a better product.
The 2-Week Test That Will Get You Customers
Here's your homework. Stop tweaking your code.
Pick ONE price for an "Early Adopter" plan and put it on your site. Now.
Define your micro-tribe in one, painfully specific sentence.
Find ONE online community where they complain about their problems.
Spend 30 minutes every day for a week just helping people in that community. Don't pitch.
Send ONE personalized Loom video to your absolute dream customer.
The Truth About Finding Your First Customers
The best customer acquisition strategy isn't the one that looks good on a slide deck. It's the one you actually do, that connects you with real people who have a real problem.
Your early days shouldn't be about scaling. They should be about listening, helping, and doing things that feel completely unscalable.
The real question isn't "How do I get to 1,000 users?"
It's "Who are the 10 people I can help so much that they'll happily pay me for it?"
Start there. Your bank account will thank you.