YC Launches New AI-Heavy Batch

Y Combinator's advice for finding your first users is to do things that don't scale. This means manually recruiting initial customers yourself, even if it feels uncomfortable. Founders should be the ones doing sales in the beginning, not relying on advertising or automated outreach. Start by looking for early adopters within your personal and professional network. YC Partner Michael Seibel suggests your first ten customers should ideally be people you know who are personally experiencing the problem your product aims to solve. These individuals are more likely to offer valuable feedback on an early, imperfect product. Cold outreach can be highly effective if done correctly. YC Partner Aaron Epstein advises that founders should send these emails themselves to establish credibility. The key is to keep the message short, personalized, and focused on starting a conversation rather than immediately asking for a meeting or a sale. Before you have a product, you can validate your idea by finding potential users in online communities where they already hang out, such as specific subreddits, LinkedIn groups, or industry forums. The goal is to conduct customer discovery calls to understand their pain points deeply, not to pitch your solution. To build a consistent pipeline of conversations, focus on qualifying potential customers who feel the problem most acutely. YC Partner Gustaf Alströmer recommends prioritizing leads who are most likely to close based on their answers to qualifying questions during initial calls. Charging for your product from the start is a critical validation signal. According to YC advice, customers paying you money is a strong indicator that you are providing them with real value and helps separate serious users from those who are just curious. The Mom Test framework is a highly recommended resource for structuring user conversations to get unbiased feedback. It teaches you to ask questions about your customers' lives and their problems, rather than asking about your idea, which can lead to biased or misleading answers. Don't wait for a perfect product to start talking to users. YC Partner Paul Buchheit advises finding the "90/10 solution"—a version of your product that delivers 90% of the value with only 10% of the effort. Launching this minimal version quickly is the best way to start the feedback loop.