Thread by @lennysan

💥 New deep-dive 💥

How today's fastest growing B2B businesses found their first 10 customers

tl;dr
1. 👋 Tap personal network
2. 🧗‍♀️ Seek out your customers where they are
3. 🗞 Get press

Stories from 20+ companies. Takeaways in thread below 👇
lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-todays-f…

1/ 👋 Tap your personal network

• Friends and former colleagues: @figmadesign @SlackHQ @asana @salesforce @GustoHQ @stripe @Workday @LookerData @coda_hq @okta @intercom
• Investors and incubator peers: @cartainc @stripe @Amplitude_HQ

2/ 🧗‍♀️ Seek out your customers where they are

• Ruby on Rails community: @Shopify @newrelic
• Developer communities: @Plaid @Atlassian
• Hacker News: @segment @airtable @Dropbox
• Twitter: @figmadesign
• Door to door: @SqSupport

3/ 🗞 Get press: @canva @twilio @SlackHQ

4/ 🤔 Biggest takeaways:

a. Only three sourcing strategies account for every B2B company’s very early growth (unlike the 7 strategies for consumer apps). Thus, your choices are easy, yet limited:

4b/ In practice, it’s even easier: almost every B2B business BOTH hits up their personal network AND heads to the places their potential customers are spending time. The question isn’t which of these two routes to pursue, but how far your network will take you before you move on.

4c/ It’s a huge advantage to have a strong personal network in B2B, which you can quickly build by bringing on a connector investor or joining an incubator such as YC.

4d/ Tapping your personal network is even more important if you need to “sell” your product (i.e. not going bottom-up), likely because early customers need to have a reason to trust you.

4e/ Getting press is rarely the way to get started.

5/ Stories from each of these companies, and much more, in the full post
lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-todays-f…