Getting to first 100 customers

Yash From Momentum (00:02)
Hello and welcome to Momentum Office Hours. My name is Yash, and I'm joined by my co -founders Jai and Kaushik to discuss topic of the week, acquiring first 100 customers for your SaaS. We will cover everything from ICP identification and funnel building to price discovery and building trust. Our goal is to provide you with actionable insights and practical strategies that you can apply to your own SaaS products. Throughout the session,

Jay From Momentum (00:05)
My name is Yash and I'm joined by my co -founders Jai and Kaushik to discuss topic of the week, acquiring first 100 customers for your SaaS. We will cover everything from ICP identification and funnel building, price discovery and building trust. Our goal is to provide you with actionable insights and practical strategies that you can apply to your own SaaS projects.

Throughout the session, we encourage you to engage with us by asking questions and sharing your thoughts. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from each other and improve your science. It will help drive your science initiatives forward. So let's get started. Jay, Kaushik, how are we doing today? Fantastic, absolutely. Great, great. Thanks. Awesome. How are things, Kaushik? A little hectic, but nice to be here.

Yash From Momentum (00:27)
We encourage you to engage with us by asking questions and sharing your thoughts. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from each other and give you insights that can help drive your SaaS initiatives for you. So let's get started. Jay, Kaushik, how are we doing today?

Koushikram (00:44)
Great, great, nice.

Yash From Momentum (00:46)
Awesome. How are things, Kashi?

Koushikram (00:48)
A little epic but nice to be happy.

Yash From Momentum (00:54)
Nice to be here. OK, awesome. So just by way of introduction, as you can see, Jay is our co -founder and head of growth, and Kaushik is our co -founder and head of design. We have another co -founder, who's Harsh, who's not available today. But he will be joining us from the next office hours onwards, for sure. So we're discussing acquiring first 100 customers. So Jay, I have a couple of questions lined up for you.

Jay From Momentum (00:55)
Nice to be here. Okay, awesome. So just by way of introduction, as you can see, Jay is the co -founder and head of the company, and Kaushik is our co -founder and head of design. We have another co -founder, who's not available today, but he'll be joining us from the next office hours on the next session. So we're discussing acquiring first 100 customers. So Jay have...

A couple of questions lined up for you. The first thing that one would understand is how do you, so in early stages when you have the first few customers, what is the process through which you reaching out to prospects over LinkedIn or you're doing coding areas or you're meeting them at LinkedIn events and things like that. How do you qualify the people that you're speaking to?

Yash From Momentum (01:24)
Like the first thing that we want to understand is how do you, so in early stages when you have like first few customers, what is the process through which you reaching out to prospects over LinkedIn or you're doing cold emails or you're meeting them at events and things like that, how do you qualify the people that you're speaking?

Jay From Momentum (01:46)
Yeah, so ideally starting from the scratch, first of all, there should be just one approach or one goal that I'm looking forward to solve through my product. So that's where I'll be looking forward to talking about just getting initial even even before starting and getting first 100 customers. Let's talk about getting first 10 customers, right? So even for that, my first goal should be that, okay, I am having this product and it's going to solve these challenges. These challenges I have faced somewhere around or maybe I have seen some

one facing around and that's where I've come up with a solution. So talking about getting the first initial customers first before that I would I think people should look out for first initial users who are going to give them the right feedback. So not just charging directly for the product, but first having more users and first understanding from them on you know, what are the main challenges because

Many times what happens and this is what I also observed talking to a lot of SaaS founders is that they at times are having some thought process but which may or may not be apparently the end users might be facing through. So what I'm trying to say is initially first get initial users, first try to understand what problem they are solving, identify the target group from that target group, we might want to define what are the ICPs but then before going to ICPs,

reach out to that target group, have my maximum speech out there that I'm solving this solution, I'm giving this solution. When I say having my maximum speech out there, I mean that I'll be going to networking events, I'll be posting constantly on social media. I'll be also launching to some email lists. So let's say my product is targeting set of agencies, then I would be looking out for some data where I can get those agencies, I'll be utilizing platforms like clay.

or even for the starters like Apollo and I'll be reaching out to those people. Just writing a very small email sequence right on that, hey, I'm looking out for, I'm building a product for this set of people that you are also falling into. And I'm trying to make something amazing for people like you and I'd be really happy to have you on board for a quick 15 minute conversation. What that could give us is, that could give us the basic idea with respect to what exactly.

they are looking forward to and will be able to find out the value that they are looking for, value that they are seeking. Once we have that, I mean initial, let's say we are talking about getting initial at least 500 users, which are you can say beta users from there. I'll be focusing on having maximum conversations with them, trying to understand what challenges they are facing and what actually, so the goal would be to reduce either their time, either their spend.

or their effort altogether, which eventually will increase their efficiency. So if I'm able to find out the common points about these calls with my existing users, which I got from my initial campaigns, I'll be planning on, you know, setting up my pricing accordingly. And from there in itself, I'll be asking them that, will you be ready to pay for if I'm building this solution for you? So initially it was just a discussion based on the beta version, but now I'm looking for a feature, which is a hardcore product, which would be launched and

we can get started from this. Also, I would like to add that while we are talking about initial 10 customers, even before the 100 customers, it is very important to incentivize them for early adoption because there are a lot of products in the market. If they have spent time giving you the feedback, they also have some hopes that, yeah, definitely there could be some output from there and they're looking for some benefit out of it for sure.

Based on the same, we can definitely give them some incentive incentives based on some credits for the wallet or maybe some goodies. Even what I've observed is that simply $50 Amazon voucher is something which appeals people to, you know, just get started and they'll go ahead for the product and sign up, which could have a lifetime value of more than $500. So yeah.

Yash From Momentum (05:56)
Awesome, Koshik do you have any question?

Jay From Momentum (05:58)
Do you have any questions?

Koushikram (05:59)
Yeah, so Jay, one thing is that like, how do you identify your ideal customers? And specifically, even within the ideal customers, we have certain dedicated set of people you know that you can make them or you can convince them to get this product, right? So how do you identify the set and how do you, where do you find the set? That's also important. So where do you, how do you know that this

Jay From Momentum (06:25)
How do you know that this dedicated audience is present in this particular space? There might be some reddit space or some group over there or some of them could be somewhere else. How do you identify? Right. So I mean, this is a very generic question on how to identify because when it comes to SaaS products, their end users could reach from any age, any category of work, and obviously any geography. So first what we need to do is we need to first have

Koushikram (06:27)
dedicated audience is present in this particular space. There might be some reddit space or some group over there or some of them could be somewhere else. How do you identify them?

Jay From Momentum (06:54)
our own one line, you know, when we say elevator pitch, one sentence elevator pitch ready for us. And based on that, I think we should have our target group identified. So when I say target group, let's say we are talking about a product which is dealing with, let's say a basic tool, which which helps you scraping on it, right? So lead scrapers can be used for any B2B company which is seeking their prospects. So now if I say that, okay, I'll be, you know, selling to

in agencies who are into early scraping or I'll be doing it for and companies. So I mean when we are talking about this first, we need to identify that what are the target groups that I can resemble to and whose problems I can understand better and faster. So it's all about going into niche. It's not about you know, finding the I mean juggling between lots of target groups and all that. So initially you might want to define three target groups from that you want to narrow it. So

when I say three target groups and you might want to reach out to people from all these three target groups, try to understand the challenges and see where your product is resembling the most. From there you narrow it down to from three target groups to your different group two and then from there also. Now that there could be a chance as you mentioned that people are ready to pay from different categories as well even when you have just your MVP launch rate. So that is fine. So if you are able to get various set of customers.

from different target groups, then you might want to have a detailed ICP identification done via some data points. So what we did in clienture before as well, right? So we were able to, so we had people who were into agencies, people from coaching consultant, and there were other separate freelancers as well, having totally different business and not even into IT or digital marketing. So what we did was that we categorize these things.

We categorize based on their job, their profession, their team size. We only categorize these people who actually are customers and not the freemium users. So in those cases, we were knowing that they are ready to pay ultimately it's about increasing the customer. So what you would do is just list down all the people who have paid for your product, even if it is anywhere between 50 to 60.

categorize them based on their profiles, team size, geography. And also, since it's an initial call, it's really important as a founder to go into sales calls or just have a customer calls with them try to understand why they figured out how they figured out the product and how much it is helping and how much they're willing to pay more or upgrade for a larger plan if more features are added. So those set of we need to have such columns where the responses are also recorded.

Based on that, we might want to, you know, filter out and see that which is the most easiest option amongst these. Once you get that, that would help us to. So, so this would lead to what that you initially have three target groups. All of them are your customers, but you now get to know that, okay, from them, 65 % were only for this particular target group, just like how we identified for 90 as I mentioned, right? So initially we were seeing that it's a CRM for agencies and freelancers.

But then once we did ISFP identification, we got to know that there were like 65, more than 65 % were 11 to 50 team size agencies from North America. And those were also digital marketing agencies. So then that helped us in, you know, optimizing our marketing and growth in terms of that all the copies that we wrote for our SEO, all the copies that we wrote in our also social media and everywhere, wherever we went.

everything was targeted to that particular target group based on our understanding after our research on what is their lingo, how do they operate and how do they, you know, where are they present? So in this case, that's where it comes that, okay, they are present to this set of forums. So let's try to jump into that and do our outbound as well. So yeah, it's about narrowing down in short. Yeah, and we also have one resource. So sorry, Ash. So,

Yash From Momentum (11:01)
Yes, sir. Nice.

Jay From Momentum (11:05)
We also have a resource for that. If anyone is struggling with this, we have a resource where they can use our template and from there they can define their ICP as well. So yeah.

Yash From Momentum (11:15)
Yeah, we've actually, that's what I was going to share as well, that we'll be linking the link to the resource wherever you're watching it, whether it is LinkedIn or YouTube or Twitter. We'll be putting in the link to the resource that you can get to figure out what your ICP definition is. And one of the other things that I was also noticing was that I saw a video where somebody was asking very similar question to Sam Altman around organization building and firm building.

And one of the things that he said in that conversation was that most of the companies that he's invested in or he's been a part of or he's played a role in the journey of scaling, he's realized that acquiring large percentage of a very small market first is a good way for scaling up going forward. So typically because there are

Jay From Momentum (11:53)
you

is a good way for all scaling up.

Yash From Momentum (12:12)
There's an ecosystem of investors and mentors and white papers and reports and stuff like that which talk about the size of the market, which is a lot more outside in. It doesn't talk necessarily about your product and the use cases of your product. And so that's why if you start by just targeting a very small market, but then aim to acquire a large percentage of it.

Jay From Momentum (12:22)
Yeah.

Yash From Momentum (12:38)
In that journey, you'll be able to build playbooks to acquire very similar such smaller markets and then acquiring bigger percentage of those similar smaller markets. Call them cohorts, figure out what is the urgent, important, and frequent problem that they face, and then just go ahead and acquire those customers. The next question that I had is more of a chicken and egg problem, which is...

Jay From Momentum (12:38)
In that journey you will be able to build playbooks to acquire very similar such model markets and then acquire

similar smaller markets. Call them Kofart, figure out what is the urgent, important and

Yash From Momentum (13:07)
which is in the journey of acquiring your first 100 customers, like at what point of time do you come and arrive at pricing, which is like, do you acquire customers and then think about pricing? Do you think about pricing and then acquire customers? What are your thoughts on that?

Jay From Momentum (13:23)
So as you mentioned it's a chicken and egg problem so it's more of an iterative process right I heard from a very good fellow I don't remember the person but I heard a very good quote from someone that keep increase just start with the price that you have in mind

The next question that I had is sort of chicken and egg problem.

Yash From Momentum (13:37)
So if you don't remember the person, just say unknown Chinese proverb. So that always works, right? So as long as we remember the wisdom, it's OK to forget the source.

Jay From Momentum (13:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah, I mean, so according to a very famous thing, we are able to cut the issue. Yeah. So coming to the point how you can. So it's an iterative process for sure. From a lot of articles that I've read through and a lot of conversations that I've had.

Initially, you just start with what your competitor is doing. So let's say you have certain features set and similar competitor targeting the same target group. Again, it's very important. So when we know that we'll be trying since we are early, we might want to have a little less surprising from that. But then from there itself, you keep on increasing the price, adding features, obviously after its validation and you keep on increasing and you stop at the point where people stop paying you. So till that time, you keep on increasing the price. So yeah.

Koushikram (14:12)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Jay From Momentum (14:40)
that that should be the approach on just start with one pricing based on your understanding of your competitors. Have your little advantage by having a list at that point of time and then keep iterating keep increasing the price till the point where people are not ready. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I actually this this works. Yeah.

Yash From Momentum (14:53)
conversion rate drops or people are like, this is just becoming unaffordable, something to that effect. Got it. So I have actually, this works for the first 100 customers for sure. But then, I mean, I sort of have an argument against this as well, which is,

Koushikram (14:55)
Thank you.

Yash From Momentum (15:13)
which is that SaaS is an extremely competitive space. And there's a good chance that if you're in the market for two years or three years or more, there will be some other incumbent for whom you are the competitor. And so they've started with a lesser price. And if they build a better product, which is not difficult to do in today's day and age, then you will have to sort of climb down of the high horse that you're riding on and then sort of reduce your price as well. But I think

Jay From Momentum (15:26)
Yeah.

Yash From Momentum (15:42)
I think these are great problems to have because they happen at scale and so if you are talking about acquiring first -hand customer then I think this is a great approach Kaushik.

Koushikram (15:52)
I was actually thinking this thing that like, you know, in the cohorts that we create, adding up to that point, also, and also I'm trying to tie up both the questions, is that in the cohorts that you identify, identifying a cohort that pays is also very important. So, yeah.

Jay From Momentum (16:07)
Yeah.

Yash From Momentum (16:15)
So if a cohort is not paying, it doesn't even live on the spreadsheet, right? It's not even a cohort. So it has to pay. There's nothing, there's no end. I think it's called trans -tuffle or something like that, right? So there ain't no such thing as free lunch. So if they don't pay, then they are not even on the spreadsheet. Forget about your strategies and funnels and stuff like that.

Jay From Momentum (16:18)
It's not a code.

Koushikram (16:18)
You know.

Yeah.

Thank you.

and

Yeah. Yeah. So I was just thinking around those lenses, like, that, that, that, that also makes sense to this other point, like how founders are so focused towards building and, compared to us, you know, at what point you should start selling becomes a question.

Jay From Momentum (16:54)
Yeah, I mean we keep on saying this repeatedly to our clients that don't fall into one more feature trap. I mean, and there is also something which we amongst ourselves have been speaking.

commonly what happens is that this is something which has been observing which we observed for the SaaS founders who are having a technical background basically engineering background. So at times it happens that they would have a thinking process that okay, let me build this and okay when they are building this they get to know by speaking to users users who are actually most of in most of the cases are free user at times or other premium users.

or it may not be of that cohort as well. But then what people do is that people have the habit of like, yeah, I want this as well and that as well. So what they do from the customer calls is that they take the feedback. They understand that, okay, this feature is needed from this customer. They add it in their feature request list. And then when they're going into the calls, they always talk about, you know, what more feature you need of sorts.

This keeps them into a loop where they think that, okay, my product needs this one more feature. And that's only when I should be able to sell it. Let me just build it once and then I'll focus on GTM based on that. But I mean, this has been a talk most commonly in lots of places and lots of SaaS communities and people are literally like, no, just don't do that. Leave that aside and just only focus on.

Selling is the only thing that you need to do it. I mean, once you have the customers, then obviously you can add more features, but that is what you say that you figure out one particular niche, you scale it on that, take more percentage of small niche. Now that you know that you have mastered this and then if you want to build more feature to get maybe another, another dedicated group, then it is fine. Or if you want to upsell it, then if you are adding more features, that is fine.

Yash From Momentum (18:56)
So one of the challenges that happens at an early stage when we just build an MVP or a very early stage like a POC or something like that of a SaaS product. And then now we are speaking to, let's say, first 10, 15, 20 prospects. And the challenge often happens that if we are a SaaS product, more often than not,

we will either have to host some amount of customer data onto our platform, or we will have to integrate using APIs or something like that into their existing workflows. And typically, early customers are always worried because they don't know what company you're running, where are you coming from, who are you. There's no context. The product is good. It solves a problem.

Jay From Momentum (19:46)
The facing is okay.

Yash From Momentum (19:46)
The pricing is OK. It's affordable. It gives good value, good ROI. However, in first few conversations or first few sales -related engagements, I would say, trust is a really big challenge. So when you're trying to acquire your first few customers, what would you say? How should a SaaS company go about building trust in the market?

Jay From Momentum (20:04)
So when you're trying to acquire your first few customers, what would you say? How should a SaaS company go about it?

I mean, see, initially it's all about founder, right? People just like how from investor point of view as well, they don't invest in products, they invest in founders, especially in pre -series state as well. So same way I believe when it comes to getting initial customers and when they are having the challenges or when they are having trouble with respect to trust building, that whether my data is secure or not. Obviously you can have some.

compliance set up at the early stage so that you have that thing to back off. But then more than that, it's more about what value we are trying to solve and always about, you know, about the founder being transparent, more transparency, the founder has more visibility, the person has definitely people would obviously trust on that part. I believe. Yeah. But it's a challenge for sure at times, but then it's all about again.

the profile that you show the profile that you show

Yash From Momentum (21:16)
Kaushik, any questions you have? I have one more question. I can take it after this one.

Koushikram (21:17)
Yeah. So I was, I was, ⁓ I was thinking, that, you know, most often, when ever, a founder is, anyone is trying to build a MVP product. I think the common thought process that people have in founders have is that you build a product. You think that you have created a really good, most trap for your, you know, ideal customers. And you think that people are gonna march towards you, right? But that's not the case. It's not like you build it, you sit there and people are going to come towards you.

Jay From Momentum (21:46)
I have one more question. I can dig it up for this one.

Koushikram (21:47)
And so most of the times, I think most successful companies have, they have reached out to their potential customers and manually they have onboarded their potential users into their product.

Jay From Momentum (21:49)
Yeah.

Koushikram (22:03)
With respect to this in my next, from your perspective, how do you think companies should approach this in the first place? Getting first 100 customers, 100 users is one point, but getting those first 10 itself is the start of that push. That's what I'm saying.

Jay From Momentum (22:15)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so when you have a competitor in mind and if you want to just, you know, just take away their customers from there, there are a lot of great tools available in the market, right? Where you can just, I mean,

Just you can use those tools and based on that you will be able to understand that yeah, I mean just you get a people who are using that product and based on that you can just reach out to them writing the sequence saying that hey, I understand and you know that even using that product is a frustration, right? So you directly have your subject land written in a way where you know

they are opening your email that yeah, this person understands that I'm using this product and having this challenge. So they open it right. I start story about it. Hey, I was also using this product and this challenge based on that. I started building this solution. Would you be open to chat and help me improve it? Probably we are going to be, you know, same people in same boat struggling to get to the same destination. So something like that. So yeah, I mean, it's all about getting the right data. If you

have your competitor defined and if you want to reach out to especially those people, then you need to know that what challenges people are facing in using that product because every product have their own challenges for sure. And just reach out to maximum people. There will be people who are going to answer you that, yeah, I am facing that challenge. Those could be your initial customers. Also, Yash, answering your previous question, one thing came to my mind with respect to not just compliance, but then when there is a challenge with trust building.

For example, someone is saying that, hey, how do I keep my data on you? We can say always that your data is hosted on, let's say for example, in my case, if I have a SaaS product and I am having the whole hosting on AWS, and I can say that it is hosted on AWS, so it's completely secure. It's not that I'm putting it in any of my local hosting or any random hosting or service like that. So having the name,

First of all, we need to figure out the right partners, what we are going to keep when it comes to product. And based on that, we need to utilize their names and their compliances and their trusts over our product. And that's how we might be able to get initial trust from our potential customers.

I guess you are on mute.

Koushikram (24:44)
Yes, you're right.

Yash From Momentum (24:47)
Oops. Sorry for that. So I have a last question, and then I think we'll close the office hours for today. So how do you, what are the other things that I've always wondered is that we've got to appear bigger, right? So these are all the answers that you've given up until now. The founder, like you are basically selling a SaaS product where the founder has the opportunity to speak to the customer. But then there could be SaaS products.

Jay From Momentum (24:48)
Sorry about that. So I have a last question and then I think we can do it to the officers.

So.

One of the other things that I've always wondered is that we've got to appear bigger, right? So, these are all the answers that you've got.

Yash From Momentum (25:16)
which are B2C SaaS products or even B2B SaaS products, but the ticket size is so small that like it's $5 per user or something like that or $15 per user where from an economical viability standpoint, doesn't make sense for the founder to do any outbound sales activity or any sort of sales motion. They want to build an inbound motion. And in that case, you're going to do some marketing activities. You've created your funnels and people have landed onto your website and then they're going to sign up and see.

Jay From Momentum (25:19)
Yeah.

sort of sales motion. You want to create an inbound motion. And in that case, if you do some marketing activities, you've created your partners and you've landed onto their website and then they're going to sign up. See, you're going to have conversion rates across that. In those cases, how do you get a fact company to appear bigger than what you actually are? What are some, like a couple of tips and tricks that you could use to show that, hey, we are without.

Yash From Momentum (25:46)
and you're going to have conversion rates across that funnel. In those cases, how do you, as a SaaS company, appear bigger than what you actually are? What are some, like a couple of tips and tricks that you could use to show that, hey, we are without misleading the prospect, misleading the user, showcasing that here's how big we are.

Jay From Momentum (26:08)
Yeah, so coming to that obviously very interesting point this is pretty much applicable for low ticket and bounce as right where the ticket size are fairly up to 20 to 30 dollars max or it could be around in hundreds as well.

Now in this case, it's not feasible for everyone to go into the demo calls and having customer calls back to back to get the trust building for this. First of all, the assets should be like one thing is for sure that the messaging should be seen throughout all the

copies on all the digital assets because digital assets are the salespeople in this point of time. They are marketing tool, but also they are obviously going to be the salespeople as well. So your website should have the same messaging, same message should go in your social media and same for all the other places where it is presented. That is first and statistics is where more trust you should know how to play. I don't know if there's a better way to say it, but you should know how to play with statistics. You can

Yash From Momentum (26:54)
Yeah.

Okay.

Jay From Momentum (27:14)
mentioned that you have people from these many places were already there to show yourself as a bigger one. I guess you it's all about what impact you have created what impact you have created on lives of your customers. So let's say for example if I am having a con let's say for example if I am having an invoicing tool only an invoicing tool then what I will do is

how much payment is being happening from my tool on a monthly basis is what I'm going to showcase and that would be the main messaging throughout my website and every selling point of time even in my ad copies and everywhere so people are only going to believe on that yeah that okay I mean people are only going to be sold on that particular point that okay this product is the one where you know this many million of payment happens every month so this is somewhere this adds more trust to me and then maybe I would want to

Yash From Momentum (27:48)
Got it.

To a large extent, yes, but very interesting here and with that we come to the end of the first Momentum Office Hours. I hope all the people who were a part of this, who were watching this, you enjoyed this. Over the next few weeks and months, we will be making this a little bigger and better. This was the first Office Hours that we did and I hope this was helpful.

Jay From Momentum (28:35)
This was the first office hours that we did and I hope this was helpful. If you still have any questions, you can put those in the comments.

Does it answer the question?

Yash From Momentum (28:41)
If you still have any questions, you can put those in comments and we will respond to those questions after our office hours as well. But thank you, everyone, for joining in. Thank you, Jay. Thank you. Thank you, Kaushik. Until next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye -bye.

Jay From Momentum (28:50)
Thank you, everyone, for joining in. Thank you, Jay. Thank you. Thank you, Kaushik. Until next time. Thank you, Yash and Kaushik. Bye.

Koushikram (28:56)
Thanks, thanks a lot. Bye.

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