Ask HN: DevOps founders, how did you get your first customer?
DevOps founders, how did you make your first sale? DevOps is mostly focussed on inbound sales, which implies you already have a product you can put into users hands. Curious, when / if you were pre-product, how did you find and close your first clients?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2024 where @_positive convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →
HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 22 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 4 comments