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- Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel advises founders to find their first customers within their personal network, targeting people who personally and acutely experience the problem the startup is trying to solve. He suggests preparing 4-5 qualifying questions to understand how intensely a potential customer feels the problem before pursuing them. - When starting from zero, founders should focus on "doing things that don't scale," a core YC principle. This involves manual, hands-on efforts like direct outreach and personally onboarding every new user, as it's not enough to simply launch the product and expect users to come. - Identify your target users' "watering holes"—the specific online communities where they are already aggregated and discussing their problems. This could be niche subreddits, LinkedIn groups, or forums where you can provide value and build trust by solving problems, not just selling a product. - For cold outreach, personalization is key to breaking through the noise, as the average person receives around 147 emails daily. Instead of a hard sales pitch, focus the initial message on asking about their problems or sharing relevant industry insights to position yourself as a helpful partner. - YC General Partner Ankit Gupta recommends charging early adopters from the start, even if the goal isn't revenue. Paying customers provide sharper, more honest feedback than free users, which is critical for evolving the product. - To build a pipeline of discovery conversations, the primary goal is to determine if a potential user is a good fit by understanding their pain points and goals. Open-ended questions like, "Can you walk me through your current process?" or "What's the biggest challenge you're facing right now?" are effective for starting these conversations. - Successful founders often acquire their first users through manual outreach (54%) and social media engagement (18%). For example, the founders of Stripe famously used the "Collison install" method, personally installing their software on their first users' computers. - Before you have a product, you can validate demand by creating a simple landing page or even using a Google Drive folder for file uploads, as Swell AI did to get their first customers before the product was fully developed. The goal is to get feedback and confirm that people are willing to engage with your proposed solution.