Most SaaS products don't fail at launch. They fail in the quiet weeks afterwards, when the launch traffic stops and the founder waits for users to appear. This playbook is about those weeks: how to find, recruit and keep your first 10 users, then your first 100, without a marketing budget. It's written for founders selling into the US, UK or Canada, with US email rules noted where they apply.
Disclosure: Pulltip publishes this guide and runs one of the platforms mentioned. See our sponsored content policy.
Why the first users have to be recruited by hand
Paul Graham's essay "Do Things That Don't Scale" (Y Combinator, July 2013) puts it bluntly: "The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can't wait for users to come to you."
The essay gives two well-known examples. Stripe's founders, rather than sending a link to people who agreed to try their beta, would set them up on the spot, a technique YC calls the "Collison installation". Airbnb's founders went door to door in New York recruiting hosts and helping existing ones improve their listings.
The same essay explains why small numbers matter: at 10% weekly growth, 100 users becomes about 14,000 after a year. You don't need a big first number. You need a first number that grows.
Step 1: Pick one narrow group
"Small businesses" is not a group you can find. "Independent bookkeepers in the US who use spreadsheets for client invoices" is. A narrow group gives you three things: places to find them, shared language for your pitch, and feedback you can compare.
Write a one-line definition with:
- Who (role or type of company)
- Where (country, platform or community)
- Trigger (the moment they feel the problem)
If you built the product to solve your own problem, Graham notes, "you only have to find your peers". Start there.
Step 2: Build a list of 50 real people
Aim for names, not channels. Good sources:
- Your own network. Former colleagues, clients, classmates. Ask for introductions to people who match the definition, not for signups.
- Public complaints. People who have written in forums, reviews or social posts about the exact problem you solve.
- Communities the group already uses. Read each community's rules before posting. Many ban self-promotion or limit it to specific threads.
- Launch platforms and directories. Early adopters browse them to find new tools. A complete listing makes you findable; see our .