Your First 10 Users Won't Come From Your Website
Stop building!
Your product is ready. It was ready two weeks ago. The reason you’re still tweaking that settings page or redesigning that onboarding flow is because talking to strangers is scarier than writing code. I know because I did the same thing with Shezaar. I spent weeks perfecting features while my sign-up page collected dust. Nobody was coming. And no amount of polish was going to change that.
I was scrolling Reddit the other day and saw a post from a founder who built a digital invitations platform. The tech was ready, the site looked clean, but she couldn’t get anyone through the door. She described the transition from builder to marketer as brutal.
The replies were surprisingly good. Real, tactical advice from people who had clearly been through it. And the pattern across every answer was the same: nobody’s first users came from their website.
So instead of just listing what works, I want to walk you through it. Let’s take this founder’s product and actually do the work. Five steps to finding your first 10 users.
1. Niche down until it feels uncomfortably small
“Digital invitations” is not a niche. It’s a category. It competes with Paperless Post, Greenvelope, Canva, and a hundred other tools. If you try to win that market without a hyperspecific niche, you will lose.
So let’s pick a corner.
Wedding invitations. Specifically, budget-conscious couples planning weddings without a coordinator. The ones doing it all themselves, probably managing guest lists in a Google Sheet, stressed about RSVPs, and looking for something that looks premium without costing like it.
That’s not a market segment. That’s a person. And now we can find her.
Here’s the test: can you go on Instagram or Facebook right now and find 20 real people who fit this description? If yes, your niche is right. If you can’t find them, it’s still too broad.
If the niche feels too small to build a company on, that’s the point. You’re not building a company on it. You’re finding your first 10 users with it.
2. Find the complaint, not the audience
Now that we know who we’re looking for, we need to find where she’s already frustrated.
Don’t search for “people interested in digital invitations.” Search for the complaint.
A bride posting in a wedding planning Facebook group: “Is there anything like Paperless Post that doesn’t charge per card?” A Reddit thread in r/weddingplanning where someone is venting about RSVP tracking being a nightmare. A TikTok comment section where someone says “I spent $200 on digital invites and they still looked basic.”
These are the entry points. Because when you show up in a thread where someone is actively frustrated with the exact problem you solve, your message doesn’t feel like a cold pitch. It feels like help.
You’re not marketing. You’re solving a problem someone just publicly admitted they have. That changes everything about how the conversation starts.
3. Lead with a free, hands-on offer (not a demo)
You found a bride in a Facebook group who’s stressed about invitations. Now what?
Most founders would send something like this:
The DM that gets ignored: “Hey! I built a digital invitation platform, would love for you to check it out. It’s free to try!”
That puts the work on her. She has to sign up, figure out the product, upload her guest list, pick a template, and hope it works. She won’t do that. She’s busy planning a wedding.
Now try this:
The DM that gets a reply: “Hey, I saw your post about looking for an alternative to Paperless Post. I built a platform that does exactly this. Can I set up your wedding invites for you for free? I’ll handle the design, the RSVP tracking, all of it. I just want to watch how you use it and get your honest feedback.”
Completely different offer. You’re not asking for her time. You’re saving it. And in return, you get something more valuable than a sign-up: you get to sit next to her (virtually) while she uses your product. You see where she hesitates. Where she gets confused. Where she says “oh, can it do this?”
And when her invitations go out and guests start RSVPing and she realizes it actually worked? You ask for a testimonial. She says yes. Because you earned it.
4. Show, don’t describe
While you’re doing all of this outreach, you need something to show. Not a landing page with a value proposition. A real example.
Take the best-looking template on the platform and build out a full mock invitation. Show the invite from the guest’s perspective: the design, the RSVP flow, the confirmation. Then show it from the host’s side: the dashboard, the guest list tracking, the real-time updates.
A 30-second screen recording of this is worth more than every word on your landing page.
When you’re DMing that bride in the Facebook group, attach the video. Don’t write three paragraphs about features. Show her what her invitations could look like tomorrow. That’s what gets the reply.
If you’re finding this useful, Table For One publishes tactical posts like this every Tuesday and Friday for solo and early-stage founders. Subscribe and I’ll send you the next one!
5. It’s a numbers game, but a targeted one
Let’s be honest. You will send 50 DMs and get 5 replies and maybe 2 calls. That’s the math of cold outreach and it doesn’t change.
But here’s what does change: the quality of those DMs.
A generic message to a generic audience gets ignored. A specific message to a specific person about a specific problem she posted about three hours ago? That gets a response.
“Hey, I saw your post about struggling with RSVP tracking for your October wedding. I built a tool that handles all of that and the invites look way better than Paperless Post. Can I set yours up for free? Would love your feedback.”
That works because it references something real. It offers value before asking for anything. And it only exists because you did the work in steps 1 and 2.
Not a Product Hunt launch. Not a viral tweet. A Facebook group for brides in Phoenix. That’s where your first 10 users live.
Now it’s your turn
The founder who wrote that Reddit post described the shift from builder to marketer as brutal. I get it. But I’d reframe it. You’re not becoming a marketer. You’re becoming a listener.
So here’s what I want you to do this week:
Step 1: Pick your niche. Write it down. One sentence. As specific as “budget-conscious couples planning weddings without a coordinator.”
Step 2: Find one community where that person hangs out. Join it. Read for 15 minutes. Find the complaints.
Step 3: Send five DMs using the format above. Not the “check out my platform” version. The “can I do this for you for free” version.
Then reply to this post and tell me what happened. Seriously. I want to hear about the DM that got ignored, the one that got a “thanks but no thanks,” and the one that turned into a 20-minute call that changed how you think about your product.
Your first 10 users are in a community you haven’t joined yet, talking about a problem you already solve.
This week, go find them.