The library
What founders tried, what it cost, and what happened. Every number shown was disclosed by the founder.
14 experiments match for “first customers”
Showing “First customers” experiments and any that match your words.
Hasan Cagli · ElvixAI
Hasan Cagli launched ElvixAI, his second SaaS, and built in public on X every day. Nine days in: 30 paying customers, $299 revenue and 2,384 visitors. He reported $1.5k MRR at day 25.
Muhammad Haris Zafar · ColdCraft
Muhammad Haris Zafar pushed ColdCraft across 22 AI directories, about 15 listing sites and daily posts on nine social channels. In 23 days: 8 signups, 0 paying. Directories and social posts produced no traceable signups; community posts and one-on-one conversations produced all of them.
Sofia
Sofia DM'd 200 potential users. Two replied: one wasn't interested; the other pitched her his own SaaS — a better pitch than hers — and she became a paying user of it.
Pratham Naik · BearConnect
Instead of building an X audience or launching on Product Hunt, Pratham Naik DMed 80 agency owners from LinkedIn groups in one week, offering free access for honest feedback. 12 replied, 8 used BearConnect, and 3 paid within two weeks: his first $201 MRR.
Koran Thorne · Helios
Koran Thorne set out to get 50 users in 25 days with Reddit as the main channel. He built karma for two weeks, then his first posts were removed by Reddit's spam filter, his comments became invisible to everyone but him for nearly a week, and the account was banned sitewide. Day 10: 0 paying users.
Sabba Keynejad · VEED
Sabba Keynejad grew VEED's first 1,000 paid users by recording 40+ YouTube tutorials himself and answering questions on Quora, Reddit and Facebook groups — until he was banned from Quora and most subreddits. YouTube stuck: VEED later hired someone to post a tutorial every day, and the channel passed 50K subscribers.
Manjiri · KathaDaily
To find her first readers, Manjiri collaborated with three Instagram creators for KathaDaily, a paid daily-stories site: one creator posted a story, two made dedicated reels. The story brought 5 paying users. The reels brought none.
Arthur Yuzbashev · MediaFast
Arthur Yuzbashev's first two products died on Reddit: six bans, one BuildFast sale. He tracked what had triggered each ban, turned that into MediaFast — a tool for marketing on Reddit without getting banned — and sold it by sharing the story on X. Month one: $360; by January 2026: $5,400.
David Ch · Shipper
David Ch tested every free channel for Shipper in its first 66 days. Reddit posts written as a fellow builder — honest numbers, no links — drove 798,124 views; a #7 Product of the Day added a spike. Directories, Hacker News and an Indie Hackers post did nothing.
Nevo David · Postiz
With no strong social following, Nevo David built Postiz as open source so he could post it in developer communities like r/selfhosted and DEV, shipping a new version for every small feature to keep having something to post.
Taiko_TOEDA · AI-automation safety audit membership
Launching a $9/month membership with no list and no following, Taiko_TOEDA published the day-15 numbers: $0 revenue, 3 Product Hunt upvotes, 0 stars across 17 GitHub repos. The only thing that worked was a careful argument in someone else's replies.
Jack · PressDrop
Jack launched PressDrop.io with no followers by listing it on small .lol launch sites — the one that mattered was a $2 slot on bigbubble.lol, which brought a $59 sale within minutes. After a silent week where Product Hunt and Reddit did nothing, publicly doing the job for people restarted sales: $1,093 in 27 days.