Ask HN Successful Startups: How did you find your first customer?

Through my network. I already knew my first customer (and more!). If you don't, then how do you know that your startup really has a valid business model?

We contacted leaders in our industry that we knew personally from networking, and asked them to beta it. We had a new product that hadn't been seen before in our industry, directed specifically and precisely for their needs, and we proved that they would save money immediately. So, we piqued their interest and got them to invest their time in the beta.

Other people we contacted were active people in the active industry forums. This helped get the word out by way of trust.

My first customer came from my own personal network as well.

The first customer that did _not_ come from my personal network was a result of posting to app directories such as feedmyapp.com and the like.

The best advice I can give on signing and keeping your first customer is to _make them happy_. Be nice. Crack jokes. When they call or email you, respond immediately. Your first customers are really important because they're vetting your business model in addition to trying your product.

Accept/understand that, as you observe your first customers interacting with your product, you're going to have to make changes. Make them quickly and reasonably.

Every company is unique, but that's how I found and retained my first customers.

I would actually be interested in not how did you get your first customer, but how did you get the ones after that.

We launched just like the usual via TechCrunch and Wired, so we made our first dollar and got our first customer quite quickly.

Now we are dealing with the struggle everyone else has which is how do you get your next customer after the PR blast.

We got our first customers from my existing blog / email list - before launching the startup I had been blogging for 2+ years.

Second wave came after the first mentions on relevant blogs/new media outlets (http://blog.traindom.com/places-where-to-submit-your-startup...)

Third wave I'd say came from participating in discussions in relevant forums.

Pure hustle..lots of cold calls and meetings. We also took advantage of our personal network since we had worked with in our niche for years. Once we made them into cheerleaders for our product we convinced them to invite people from their network.

We got our first customer through our personal network. Our 2nd customer came through HN incidentally. I replied to a post about NLP and a company contacted me through our website.

Not sure how successful we are but my startup was talking to customers for 6 months while we were building our MVP. Wasn't hard to find people wanting to buy.

Any of you get paying customers before you had a product? How did that work?

Also, how do you handle all the feedback from early customers on product changes? Obviously some are great requests, but many customers make requests are outside of the scope, and could tempt you to change course (if you're on the right course :-)