Chapter 3: Acquisition

The first 100 customers

Acquisition before PMF is not about scale. It's about learning. You need 100 customers to know if your product works, not 10,000.

The channels that work at 0-$5K MRR are almost always different from the ones that work at $50K MRR.

The acquisition channel stack (ranked by effort for solo founders)

Tier 1: Do things that don't scale These are your highest-ROI channels from $0 to $5K MRR.

1. Direct outreach (cold DM/email) - Find 50 people in your ICP on LinkedIn/Twitter - Send a personal message, not a template - Offer value first: "I built X, would love your feedback" > "Buy my product" - Conversion: 5-10% reply rate, 1-3% trial rate

2. Community participation - Be in the communities where your ICP hangs out (Indie Hackers, specific Slack groups, Discord servers, subreddits) - Don't promote. Help people. Answer questions. Share your learnings. - After 2-4 weeks of consistent value, mention your product organically

3. Building in public - Share what you're building, learning, and struggling with - Platforms: Twitter/X, LinkedIn, mysaas.blog - This compounds. Month 1 is invisible. Month 6 is leads on autopilot.

Tier 2: Content & SEO These take 3-6 months to pay off but compound over time.

4. SEO-driven blog - Target long-tail keywords your ICP actually searches for - "Best [category] tool for [specific use case]" articles - Every article should have a CTA to your product

5. Product-led content - Build free tools that solve a micro-problem adjacent to your product - Example: A SaaS that sells email analytics builds a free subject line tester - These attract your ICP and funnel them to the paid product

Tier 3: Paid channels Don't touch paid until you have PMF and know your LTV.

6. Google Ads (search) - Only bid on high-intent keywords: "[competitor] alternative", "best [category] for [use case]" - Target CAC < 1/3 of LTV

7. Social ads - Facebook/Instagram for B2C SaaS - LinkedIn for B2B SaaS (expensive but targeted) - Retargeting visitors who didn't convert is the lowest-risk paid strategy

The acquisition funnel

` Awareness → Interest → Trial → Activation → Paid `

Most founders focus on awareness (top of funnel). The real leverage is often in activation (getting people to experience value in the first session).

Metrics that matter

| Metric | Good | Great | |--------|------|-------| | Landing page → signup | 3-5% | 8-12% | | Signup → activation | 20-30% | 40-60% | | Trial → paid | 5-10% | 15-25% | | CAC payback | < 6 months | < 3 months |

Common acquisition mistakes

1. Spreading too thin Pick 1-2 channels. Master them. Then add a third. Doing 5 channels poorly beats doing 0 well — but barely.

2. Optimizing the wrong part of the funnel If nobody converts from trial to paid, getting more signups won't help. Fix the bottom first.

3. No tracking If you don't know where your customers come from, you can't double down on what works. Use Plausible, Posthog, or at minimum UTM parameters.

4. Giving up too early Content marketing, SEO, and community building take 3-6 months. If you quit after 3 weeks, you wasted those 3 weeks.

Acquisition by MRR stage

$0 MRR Manual outreach. DM 10 people per day in your ICP. This is the fastest path to your first 10 customers.

$1-5K MRR Double down on the channel that brought your first customers. Start building content in parallel. Set up basic analytics.

$5-15K MRR Introduce a second channel. Consider paid if LTV justifies it. Build referral loops (happy customers bring more customers).

Action items

• [ ] List the 3 communities where your ICP spends time
• [ ] Send 10 DMs this week to people in your ICP (not pitches — conversations)
• [ ] Set up conversion tracking from landing page to signup to paid
• [ ] Pick ONE acquisition channel to focus on for the next 30 days