Where the first hundred customers actually came from
Not the channel everyone assumed. The founder walks through what they tried first, and what quietly worked.
At a glance
Company
Northstar
Category
B2B SaaS
Stage
Seed
Team
Remote
By the numbers
The story they tell later
The story companies tell about their first customers is almost never the real one.
By the time growth is repeatable, the origin has been tidied into a clean narrative that leaves out the luck.
The channel that didn't scale
The channel that eventually scaled was invisible at the start. The first hundred came from somewhere much less repeatable.
Understanding that gap — between what worked once and what works forever — is the whole point of asking.
“Our best early channel was one I'm slightly embarrassed to admit still worked.”
Key takeaways
- The origin story is almost never the repeatable one.
- The first hundred came from something that didn't scale.
- Knowing the difference is the whole point of asking.
Covers growth and distribution — how companies actually find their first customers.
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