Ask HN: How long did it take you to get your first customer?
I thought it'd be interesting to know what does your product do and how long did it take you to get your first customer? This can be for either side projects or startups.
Ideally you'd give the total amount of time you spent developing until you got your first payment from someone.
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2020 where @StratusBen 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 Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 4 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 1 comments
If you build for yourself, you'll have a first customer right away.
But, on a less trite note, it's highly variable. For my most recent project (sci.chat), it took me a total of three weeks from starting to get my first customer. They came through a reddit post. For other projects I've made, I've gotten zero customers after months of effort. In my experience, relying on organic growth instead of "going viral" attempts has worked out a lot better.