First 10 customers

Recently, an early stage SaaS founder asked me this question:

"Is there a process, method or strategy that you have found successful in speeding up the process of acquiring first 10 customers and finding what works?"

If I were him, here's how I'd tackle it:

1. Brainstorm all the marketing channels through which you can reach your target ICPs

2. Rank & prioritise the channels based in the order you want to try. There are a bunch of prioritisation frameworks out there, but I like using ICE framework.

3. Test the prioritised channels and define a time period to identify what channels work for you. I like to call it "marketing R&D" period. For example - "By the end of Q4, we want to try these 10-50 marketing ideas/tactics and get some clarity on what will work and what won't in our GTM."

4. By the end of this cycle (or two cycles), you'll find the channel/tactic that brings results repeatably for you. Once you find it, double down on it and then scale from there.

I've followed this process at most of the early stage SaaS companies I've worked with.

In fact, a lot of books have also outlined a similar process, the closest one being the Bull's Eye framework in Traction book.