Ask HN: How long after launch did you get your first customer?

For our first product, we used eBay, starting an auction at $0.01/free shipping and letting it go for a week to see where it ended up. We got lots of bidders and a better price than we expected, and most importantly lots of interest.

After that, we did several more eBay runs to test different copy / pricing, and then with that information, launched our own web store (normal fixed-price checkout, non-eBay) about 8 weeks after that first auction.

Now with 2nd product, we've already got an established reputation and traffic in our niche, and developed the 2nd product specifically around the feedback we were getting from customers.

This is for a consumer product, hybrid of physical parts + content. Not sure that you can apply the eBay concept to a SaaS, but depending on what you're doing, it may actually be possible (i.e. if people would be naturally searching on eBay for software to fill that need, then put up a 12-month subscription as an auction!).

Before I launched each app, I had my first customers lined up. I think it's a mistake to spend time developing something first and then hope there are customers somewhere.

To be more specific, while developing a big product I spent time each week contacting people in my network until I found customers that were ready to pay as soon as I went live. It worked well.

In one case, I found a company that allowed me to offer 4, 2-hour classes with 15 people per class for 1 day after launch just to introduce them to the app, answer questions, and get everyone signed up.

I got about 40 paying customers that day, and it was the best launch ever for my small business as all those people told more people and we were growing from day 1.

For most of my products, I've had customers before launch. Then again, I guess that depends on what you mean by "launch". I've never been big on showy launches. I usually put something up right away, and then get to work refining and finding more customers. Based on my last couple endeavers, I no longer even begin work on any new products until I already have a customer for it. (and by "work" I mean actual coding/design/development, because of course the process of finding a customer for a new idea is still technically work of the non-technical variety)

The last startup I was involved in had two customers lined up before launch. We (well the two founders, I was technically the first employee) started by pitching their product to their contacts in the relevant industry and didn't actually launch until they had a couple of at least potential customers lined up.

The product was quite niche and quite expensive so we didn't really need many customers. So the plan was to grow largely by word of mouth and by using our network of contacts to get future leads.

I had my first customer two weeks after launching. (He actually got a refund -- but I learned two things to incorporate into version 1.02.)

My main plan when starting the business was acquiring customers through SEO, with the possibility of eventually "cracking the AdWords code" and figuring out how to acquire them profitably through there. That is pretty much still the plan.