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Stripe Atlas: Getting your first 10 customers
- eugenekolo2 9y agoDisregarding the actual contents of the article: How is this article #1 on HN being up for 30min w/o any comments?
- madamelic 9y agoInternal promotion likely. "Hey all, just posted the article. Please go upvote and don't follow links to vote"
- pc 9y agoHN is good at detecting and penalizing this.
- mbesto 9y agoGenerally speaking yes. However it can be gamed for sure, just not consistently in the long run. Not saying Stripe did this in this particular case (in fact I'd think quite the opposite), but just like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter's situation, it can be done with the right motivation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nozzlegear 9y agoI don't work at or have any affiliation with Stripe. I saw Patrick Mckenzie (the author) tweeting about this article and thought it would be a good fit for HN.
- smeyer 9y agoPatrick McKenzie and Stripe are both pretty popular on HN and probably get immediate upvotes from a lot of people.
- minimaxir 9y agoThis is an unusual case where you have to click the article to see that it’s written by Patrick, though.
- 1123581321 9y agoI knew it would be him based on the title and the domain. Perhaps others thought similarly.
- Isamu 9y agoIndeed, it was the first thing I thought.
- dahdum 9y agoAtlas / Patrick are synonymous in my mind, and his stuff is always worth a read imho.
- gknoy 9y agoI'll admit that I do that sometimes -- Patrick's blog over the years has been full of gems that are well written, easy to read, and make me feel like I could put into action were I braver / had better ideas / insert-excuse-for-not-starting-something-here. They were some of the best things I read when I first learned about HN, so I tend to value them more highly. Because HN saves the list of things you've upvoted, I will at times upvote things that I know Patrick has written because I know it will be a good thing to read when I later get a chance.
- xfour 9y ago32 points as of now. Not that many upvotes really. Stripe has hundreds of employees most of which read hackernews, YC alums also you get people upvoting everything from the company to see their investment succeed and finally fans. Stripe is ridiculously dev friendly so upvotes from the general community.
- jasonsync 9y agow/o any comments? Because the article is heavy on word count but light on details. The author should provide details on the benefits of posting such an article in the first place (potential front page on HN, SEO, nurture customers), which could yield better results compared to what the author actually recommends in the article (spamming).
- tertius 9y ago> compared to what the author actually recommends in the article (spamming). Did you actually read the article? SEO won't get you customers. Selling will. He's saying, sell manually at first so that you can get to know your customer (and also see if your product is valuable). I.e. put in the time. This is universal sales 101. Spending time getting HN frontpage or months on SEO won't get you any customers. Sell.
- jasonsync 9y agoCold emails derived from addresses collected on Google does not constitute spam? I read the article up until that point. == Edit: I'm just saying ... Google "how to get your first 10 customers" https://www.google.ca/search?q=how+to+get+your+first+10+customers https://www.google.ca/search?q=how+to+get+your+first+10+cust... This article has hit the front page. I'm sure most businesses owners looking to get their first 10 customers research those keywords, and may be looking for a payment solution, to get incorporated etc. So the subtle SEO here helps Stripe / Stripe Atlas get more customers. Furthermore, as a startup, content like this allows you to post and promote your brand on Quora, HN, Reddit etc., which can start conversations that lead to sales. These types of posts particularly work great on popular entrepreneur forums. We got many of our first customers, and continue to get customers, by posting content. Combined with a free option. So far we haven't done any spamming via cold emails. Certainly cold emails can work, but they may also come across as being "spammy".
- no1youknowz 9y agoYes, but I know of marketers who have employed this tactic and it actually does work very well. Especially if you target those emails with laser focus.
- hayksaakian 9y agoComments actually hurt your ranking due to the 'controversy' detectors. The Subject of the article is interesting. The author is popular, and his audience is highly familiar with hacker news. If you want a post to get upvotes, this one is "doing everything right"
- sotojuan 9y agopatio11 = Instant front page. patio11 + Stripe = Instant #1.
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoI upvoted it before I even read it because I'm interested in both the subject and Stripe Atlas, and I think enough of Stripe that I hit the button and then the link. And getting the first 10 customers happens to be exactly where I'm spinning my wheels on a lower volume, "lifestyle" travel project - ideally something where I want to have a steady 10 in the pipeline, but no more, at any given point. Then I read the article, and now I'm back! I thought it was a well-written article at least. For me I'm more interested in prospecting from various travel-related forums, but much of the remainder sounds like things that I can try. I'm terrible at sales, so even the basics are interesting to me.
- eterm 9y agoIt can be an effect of "Karma Racing". Duplicate submissions count as an upvote to the original post. If you have a source which is known is being popular by the community (i.e. stripe), then there is a race to submit that article to reap the karma of submitting that article. That race causes duplicates which in turn increases the karma for posting that article first and pushes it to the front-page where it will get even more karma. That causes a positive feedback loop which keeps that source popular as a source with which to "karma race", regardless of the post quality being sustained. In this case I haven't read the post itself, so it may be of good quality, but it is a manner in which posts from certain sources quickly reach the front page seemingly without much community interaction.
- wolco 9y agoA mod has pushed it to the top
- 121312312 9y agoBecause HN is totally uncurated and dang, patio11, tptacek and friends all all angels!
- dang 9y agoModerators didn't touch that post. HN is definitely curated, though; where did you hear otherwise?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yeeeeeeeeee 9y agoI am a single founder Atlas company with an app that I've been working on for a while now. I'm sitting in Starbucks waiting for Apple to open so I can charge my phone and go to a nearby college campus to get my first users. I don't know anyone here so this is a tall task. I'm going to collect AT LEAST 100 "no's" today. Wish me luck
- ramses0 9y agoWhere are you located? What's your app? It's not shameless self promotion unless you're shameless about it! :-D
- yeeeeeeeeee 9y agoI'm in Seattle. HN isn't the best place to launch so I'm gonna keep quiet about what it does. :) Today was a wild ride though. I was out in the main part of campus with my sign and talking to users. There weren't many people out so I decided to check out some of the booths that were there. Guess what? One was a startup that is doing something VERY similar to what I'm doing. And they have over 500 users. I'm late to market. Reed Hastings once said when attacked, double down on what you do well. Time to double down. And f*ing hustle! Suffice it to say, I'm no longer on campus.
- Uhhrrr 9y agoGood luck!
- brianwawok 9y agoWear those nos with pride ")
- stevoski 9y agoHow I got my first 10 customers for my SaaS in 2017: 1. I answered Quora questions for which my product was a potential answer. 2. To each person who followed links from the Quora answers to my site and signed up, I wrote a short email asking if I could personally help. I tried to make it obvious these were not auto-generated emails. 3. I did all I could to help the people who responded. What I didn’t do: Email cold prospects. I know Patrick (author of the article), and I hold his advice in high regard. I just want to show that there is another way to get the first 10 customers.
- ben_jones 9y agoI've noticed a lot of questions on Quora are saturated by those kind of answers. It seems to be an accepted tradeoff, shameless and often bias self-promotion in exchange for a medium-effort answer. Furthermore it seems to me that a lot of these self-promotional posts are done by paid shills of the company which in my view further discredits them... As a dev I'm constantly evaluating trade-offs between products and its gotten to the point that for many subjects I won't even check quora links.
- salqadri 9y agoCertainly a cunning / savvy way to take advantage of such platforms, but when overused, sites like Quora become notorious and their effectiveness would decrease over time.
- donmatito 9y agoI had the opportunity to attend a fireside chat with d'Agostino at The Family in Paris. Someone asked that very question. The answer was they view pitching one's product as a perfectly valid answer to questions such as "what's the best product to achieve X". As a dev I don't mind these pitches when looking for tools. The comments/votes often provide a rather complete picture, at least for the most active questions
- weavie 9y agoI wonder how many of these questions have the question and answer both created by the same person under two separate accounts..
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shubhamjain 9y agoI thought Patrick was a strong advocate of inbound marketing (writing articles and other forms of content). I am sure he still is but I can recall in one comment he had mentioned something that went like: "it's better to put effort in writing one piece of content rather than 10 cold emails." I am sure both cold emailing and inbound marketing have their own place, but this guide seems slightly uncharacteristic of what Patrick has recommended—and found success with—over the years.
- patio11 9y agoI think I'm still an advocate of inbound marketing, but feel like I've also been learning a bit over the last 10 years. One thing I've learned is that the lead time on it, particularly if you're starting from the position of no platform and (potentially) no experience producing public artifacts, is quite long. The lead time on writing emails is pretty short; you can execute on it today, have a call lined up for Thursday, and get agreement in principle by Friday (depending on the complexity of the sale, but assume something which could be adopted in a low-touch fashion). Having a customer on Friday is a lot more effective in terms of learning what still sucks about your product than getting your first customer in February 2018. Your mileage may vary; there are lots of ways to play mix-and-match among approaches here. (I'd note that most of my previous success with high-value deals was indeed mix-and-match; something inbound like "Hey I liked this blog post" from a software company occasioned "Really glad to hear that. I have some thoughts about how it is relevant to your situation, too: $THOUGHT, THOUGHT, THOUGHT. Would you like to discuss in more depth?" occasioned Actual Sales Work (TM) quite a bit of the time.)
- mrskitch 9y agoI'd like to add that if you're product is fairly technical, or solves a pain that's engineer-focused, you're likely better off finding folks on place like GitHub or StackOverflow. Quora and the like is great, but they tend to be high-level or broader questions. As an aside: if you're trying to find something to build, just look through GitHub issues and look at the products waiting to be built ;)
- egfx 9y ago"just look through GitHub issues and look at the products waiting to be built" Interesting idea. Thanks for that. On the topic of quora, I converted alot of followers by putting the product and describing it in depth on my profile. It happens to be a promotional tool. So Quora is so far the most effective strategy for me because a good number of people view my posts and most power users have something to promote.
- j45 9y agoGreat actionable advice. Finding your first customers can't be automated, finding pockets of them and stitching those pockets into a funny MVP looking suit happens one conversation at a time.
- edoceo 9y ago1. Use Stripe 2. Get booted at 11th customer cause their underwriting doesn't like your name. 3. Use different provider.
- acangiano 9y agoI'm surprised to hear this. They happily serve RankScanner, a European company who continued to charge my credit card after I canceled with them. Stripe wouldn't do anything about it. Countless stories of people having to have their bank involved to cancel RankScanner. Stripe still happily processes their transactions.
- edoceo 9y agoRight, my point is their underwriting department is a joke. It's inconsistent, bad actors linger and good actors are booted for a "bad name" while other actors in the same space continue. All while Stripe tries to play some saviour role, you're just a CC processor, same core issues as the rest. Just have a shiny UI+API
- newlyretired 9y agoAccording to your own site[0], it sounds like Stripe declined to continue to serve you because of an association with a cannabis business. (That's a sub-optimal reality, but I think it's disingenuous to state that it was because they didn't like the name.) [0] http://edoceo.com/blog/2017/04/stripe-rubbing-salt-in-the-wound http://edoceo.com/blog/2017/04/stripe-rubbing-salt-in-the-wo...
- tomcam 9y agoIt is regulatory compliance software. It’s not like they’re selling weed.
- newlyretired 9y agoEven if they were selling, I would think it's a net loss for society that they cannot fully participate in banking. My point was more about OP's presentation of why they could not participate. It's pretty clear they're an edge case in an edge case industry -- I cannot judge a large company being risk averse when there is no incentive for them to take on the risk. (That said, if anyone solves cannabis banking, they are going to be a unicorn.)
- huhtenberg 9y ago> Patrick has built four software companies that did business internationally. Is this in reference to Bingo Card Creator and Appointment Reminder? Or was there something equally notable in Patrick's international business track record?
- sogen 9y agoGreat guy, transparent with his finances, always giving free advice here and on his blog. He got a great following on HN, so great that Stripe hired him. :)
- SamReidHughes 9y agoTranslating and consulting are the other two, presumably.
- SyneRyder 9y agoI think Starfighters was another, a recruiting firm that found talent via coding challenges, for which Patrick built a mock stock exchange with an API for people to write trading bot clients to defeat specific 'levels' of the game. It was a lot of fun. https://www.starfighters.io/ https://www.starfighters.io/ [Note, as the site is defunct, it appears the TLS certificate hasn't been renewed and so you'll probably get a security warning from Chrome.]
- PatientTrades 9y agoQuora needs to crack down on self-promoters. Every other answer includes a link to site for a product or a service. Its taking away from the genuine nature of real questions and answers. Now its just a place business people go to get the word out about their service, product, research, etc.
- orliesaurus 9y agoYou are right but it's because answering a complicated question rewards you nothing. Now if the answer is just self promotion then I totally agree that it should get moderated and down voted
- 650REDHAIR 9y agoOr rebrand to Anecdotes.com
- tchock23 9y agoThere is a way to tastefully do it though. I often upvote answers that try to provide some kind of value before mentioning their product, as long as they do it in such a way that it isn't irritating or salesy...
- sixhobbits 9y agoYes, the execution when it comes to self promotion is very important. No association, but I really like this answer[0] from CloudSponge, saying why their product is best on a thread asking for alternatives. What could have been very slimy comes across as genuine and helpful. It nearly converted me to a CloudSponge user when I came across the question while looking for alternatives. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-alternatives-to-CloudSponge-com https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-alternatives-to-CloudSpon...
- markdown 9y agoSince he was invited to answer the question, I immediately assume the question itself was planted.
- orliesaurus 9y agoUsing stackoverflow/quora to answer questions and then link people to my blog for long reads as a fallback seems to work really well for me. So basically the answer is given but I also add my relevant link for rewarding myself, having answered that question for free and hoping it helped the person asking in exchange for a click to my brand seems fair.
- wj 9y agoI've been working on a series of content with this exact same title but it looks like it will have a different slant. I always get something of value out of all of Patrick's content over the years and this is no exception. Getting the first customers is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, thing for many entrepreneurs.
- KeepTalking 9y agoFor any founder getting started, I highly recommend the book traction: How any startup can achieve explosive growth. While most of the advice is better suited to well-funded startups a lot of the tactics can be improvised for smaller startups as well. Another tactic I highly recommend in your emails to prospects is to use personalization. Make sure that your opening has a direct and personal appeal to the customer. In order to look for avenues for personalization look at news about the target company, events and product launches or news aligned in the business segment. I have even seen one industrious sales rep use college football news as part of their personalization tactic.
- tixocloud 9y agoI second the recommendation on the book Traction. After reading that book, it really opened my eyes to all the possible distribution channels and every single one, when executed well, can be success including ones thought to be so low-tech. Which really leads to the mantra of go where your customers are regardless of whether they are online or not. Offline channels can be very effective.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoIt seems to me that building the product is relatively easy when compared to acquiring (and retaining) customers, growth, etc. Often it seems the focus is on technology and product with marketing being a no-brainer, given. Typically, reality is the other way around.
- amelius 9y agoConfusing name; I thought this was about Atlassian.
- KeepTalking 9y agoFor your first 10 customers, I recommend that the early startup team not wait till the product is ready. Ideally, someone at the startup (Founder ideally) takes the lead and spends 20% of their weekly time talking with prospective customers. In fact, attempt to start engaging with prospects through the product development process. This tactic is very useful both for product validation and messaging validation.
- taytus 9y agoWe are pre-launch startup. We got our ten first customers presenting at 1 million cups events and some pitch events here in Dallas. We haven't go live yet, but we already do have paying customers :)
- adamqureshi 9y agoI run a niche marketplace site. I use ambush sales tactics to find customer on forums. Once i convinced them to email me THEN 2nd task is to convert them with a free listing THEN ask them to pay, if i sell their listing / ev car. I started testing $100 got paid, raised it to $150 got paid now im at $250 and getting paid. I am considering to push it to $500 ( maybe not). I think $250 is fine for me im good with selling 4 listings / month and making 1k/month. I use FB messenger to chat with customers and Email or SMS works just fine! i'll keep at it. I have a small email list now of buyers 100-200. I know its not much but an extra $1k-$2k/month for me is fine at the moment. I don't have dreams to be a millionaire or scale or [add your fancy start up lingo here] just keepin it real. Wealth is discretionary time.
- mikeleeorg 9y agoI remember seeing a post from you about your marketplace, along with a thoughtful explanation behind your tactics. It sounds like you have a great approach that's working really well, and I really appreciate you sharing all of that info. Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you push it to $500? Your market, in my naive outsider view, seems to have the discretionary income to handle that. I ask because I'm wondering at what point do you determine you've set too high of a price? Was there considerable drop-off in conversions near that number? Or a gut feel?
- adamqureshi 9y agoI am at $250/now. I am now seeing some interesting data patterns on selling price and am considering maybe asking for $500. Right now i am gonna stay with $250 and slowly begin testing $500. But i just started testing a tesla on demand model im not sure how that is gonna work: https://onlyusedtesla.com/ondemand/ https://onlyusedtesla.com/ondemand/ Problem: a tesla owner takes his tesla in for servicing. Servicing center has no loaner for him. Service center rents a tesla from my platform for the customer. Problem is inventory. Also tesla can use my platform to get customers in for a short term rental then try to convert them into a sale ( sell them a tesla) So new business models are unfolding. there are other ways to make sales. I will of course test my threshold. ;-)
- ElbertF 9y agoThis is off-topic but is anyone else dealing with an insurmountable number of charge-backs selling digital goods using Stripe? I'm using Radar, Sift Science, email verification, CAPTCHA, post code checks, country and domain restrictions, rate limiting and every other trick in the book and yet reportedly a third of my payments is fraudulent. The way credit card payments work seems backwards and hopelessly broken. I reached out to Stripe several times but keep getting the same templated response. What gives?
- SandersAK 9y agoWe might be able to help at Chargehound. We're the only automated system that fights chargebacks for you. We're also the only one on Stripe's platform that's endorsed by them: https://stripe.com/works-with/chargehound https://stripe.com/works-with/chargehound
- ElbertF 9y agoThanks for the suggestion. I do this manually and never won a dispute. I suspect the fraud is being committed by a single person or group of people for the purpose of testing stolen credit cards. In some cases victims contact me after seeing my business name on their statement. I also report suspicious transactions myself.
- pkrumins 9y agoI got my first 10 customers by going to all the Hackers/Founders and 106 Miles meetups and just demoing Browserling to every single person that I met on my tiny 11" macbook air.
- artur_makly 9y agoWarm personalised emails via ReplyApp. huge conversions. requires crafting the perfect email and testing delivery. Email list must be culled prior for product market fit.
- nhorob67 9y agoI have a side project that's turning into a full-time gig. Farm financial analysis software. I did a year of blog posts and email marketing before launching last December. Launch generated 30 customers and $45,000 in ARR. Edit: I don't have the numbers in front of me but I spent $5-10k on FB ads prelaunch
- swampthinker 9y agoGot a link to your blog?
- nhorob67 9y agohttps://www.harvestprofit.com/blog https://www.harvestprofit.com/blog
- adventured 9y agoVery interesting product. I enjoyed reading through the site. Congrats on launch + sales and good luck with it.
- shostack 9y agoWhat sort of FB targeting did you run prelaunch? Curious for your setup on that.
- nhorob67 9y agoI targeted a broad set of farming interests. My research told me that Facebook will optimize your interests based on which are performing better. I would simply see which blog posts are getting the best organic reach and boost those. Grew my email list to 2,500 in six months.
- matrix 9y agoThat blog is the perfect example of how to create content that provides compelling value for your target market, and establishes credibility for your product. Great stuff! Have you tried publishing a column in newspapers and the like that farmers typically read? I bet it would be popular and a powerful source of leads.
- goatherders 9y agoResearch > personalized email > set the call for discussion or demo > close the deal is a GREAT active way to get customers. That said, I find many people in Tech opt for passive, less intrusive sales methods. Both can be successful, especially over time. But if you can get good (and even comfortable) with the Active way to sell, he potential for you to build scalable businesses in most any arena is near limitless.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mottomotto 9y ago> $500 a month supports low-touch sales and software which costs more than $5,000 or so annually requires high-touch sales Am I parsing this wrong? $500/month x 12 = $6,000. $6,000 > $5,000. So wouldn't both of these examples require high-touch? Maybe that was a typo and it's supposed to be $50 not $500? Or is the focus supposed to be on monthly vs annual billing?