How to get your first 10 customers from X (a playbook for indie founders)
By Naod Tadele · · 6 min read
Your first customers are not a marketing problem. They are a conversation problem. You don't need a big following or a viral thread to find them. You need to find a small group of people with the problem you solve, talk to them like a person, and make it easy to say yes.
X is good for this because the people you want are often already there, posting about the exact pain your product fixes. This guide is a playbook for getting from zero paying users to your first handful.
Step 1: Write down who you're looking for
Before you post anything, get specific. "Developers" is not a customer. "Solo founders who run their own servers and get woken up by alerts" is.
Write one sentence that answers:
- Who has the problem?
- When do they feel it?
- What do they say when they complain about it?
The last question matters most. The words people use when they complain are the words you'll search for, and the words you'll use in your posts.
Step 2: Find people who already say the problem out loud
X search is underrated. Search for the phrases from Step 1, not for your product category. Search "woken up by alerts" instead of "incident management".
Look for:
- People complaining about the problem right now
- People asking for tool recommendations in your space
- Replies under posts from bigger accounts in your niche
- People who quote posts about a competitor with a frustration
Save the good ones in a list. You're not going to pitch them yet. You're going to learn from them first.
Step 3: Reply before you sell
Reply to those posts with something useful that has nothing to do with your product. Share how you handled the same problem. Ask a real question. Point to a free fix.
Had the same thing with our staging alerts. What helped most was muting anything that fires during a deploy window. Do you get paged for every service or just prod?
This does two things. It puts your name in front of exactly the right people, and the answers teach you how they think about the problem. Some of them will click your profile. Make sure your bio says what you're building in plain words.
Step 4: Build in public so the profile is worth visiting
When someone lands on your profile, they should see a person actively building the thing they need. That's what build in public is for at this stage. Post what you shipped, what you learned from users, and what you're working on next.
Shipped today: Nightshift now groups every alert from one deploy into a single incident. Built it because three people told me the same thing last week: "I don't need more alerts, I need fewer."
Posts that quote real user feedback do double duty. They show you listen, and they tell readers with the same problem that this is for them.
Step 5: Move the right conversations to DMs
When someone replies more than once, or says "I need this", it's fine to ask if you can show them. Keep it short and give them an easy out.
Building something for exactly this. Mind if I DM you a two minute demo? Totally fine if not.
In the DM, don't send a wall of features. Ask about their setup, then show the one part that solves the problem they described. If it fits, offer to set it up with them.
Step 6: Make the first sale easy
Early customers are buying you as much as the product. Lower every barrier you can:
- Offer to onboard them yourself on a call
- Give them a direct line to you for bugs
- Ask for payment early, even a small amount. Free users tell you less than paying ones
- Tell them their feedback will shape what you build next, and mean it
If someone says no, ask why. A clear no is one of the most useful things you can get this early.
Step 7: Post about each customer you win (with permission)
Every new customer is a post, as long as you keep it about the problem and not about you. Ask before naming anyone.
Nightshift got its 4th paying customer today. A two person team running a payments API. Their on-call rotation is just the two founders, so every fake page costs them sleep. That's the exact person I'm building this for.
A post like this helps the next customer recognize themselves. It also shows momentum without bragging.
What not to do
- Don't cold DM strangers with a pitch. It burns your account's reputation and rarely works.
- Don't wait for a big launch. Ten customers come from ten conversations, not one announcement.
- Don't post only when you have news. A quiet profile makes people wonder if the product is still alive.
- Don't chase follower count. A small audience of the right people beats a large audience of the wrong ones.
How Loudcode helps
The part founders drop first is step 4, because writing posts competes with building. Loudcode reads your GitHub commits, pull requests and releases, plus revenue from Stripe, Polar or RevenueCat if you connect it, and drafts build in public posts in your voice. A weekly 30-second check-in plans the week, so your profile stays active while you spend your time in conversations. Every post waits for your approval before it goes to X. For more on what to post while you're early, read how to grow on X from zero as a developer.