How did you land your first customers?

We launched ProdPad more than 10 years ago, before Product Hunt even existed (though watch this space, we're launching new AI tools for ProdPad next Monday 😎 https://www.producthunt.com/prod...), so we had to find other routes to find our first customers. It was just me and @simoncast back then, and we were both product managers by day, so we didn't really know what we were doing with marketing, but we figured it out... And our first ever paying customer from a decade ago is still with us today 🌟 I'd give the same advice today though: Build a 'good enough' homepage that's easy to change so ou can test different taglines and value propositions (ours was literally something simple like 'Better product management with ProdPad's roadmap software' or some variation on that), and TAKE HOLD of your first customers. DON'T have automated onboarding emails. Instead, literally look up each customer who comes through on LinkedIn, look at the logs to see what they did when they encountered your webpage or trial sign up, and send a custom message for each. We were getting something like 5-10 trials a day back in the super early days, and so this flow was perfectly manageable, if I was willing to keep a constant check on the logs and my inbox. And then every time someone replies, REPLY BACK IMMEDIATELY. Give proactive help. Ask questions. Clue them in about the new stuff you're testing or about to release, and ask them if they want to be beta testers. Make them feel really special. You'll also invariably help them with bugs, as the first version of your product will suck. That's okay! As long as you show them that you acknowledge and can fix bugs, and take on board their suggestions for ways to improve your app (there will be lots—you don't have to build all of these suggestions, but your first trialists will point out some pretty obvious wins), you'll get on their good side. Then ask them to buy. Even if you don't have a payment system fully sorted yet. Talk to them about pricing and how they'd pay for this thing. If they give you positive signs, get a payment system in place (even if rough and ready and a bit manual at first), and start taking in some money! Voila, your first customers. It took us a month or so to get our first customer, from the time we launched ProdPad in it's customer-ready state (we had an internal only version previously), and most of my time that month was spent talking to our very first trialists through the door, learning and adapting our product and processes so we could continue gaining speed.