First10: Guided Go-To-Market Playbook for Technical Founders

Apparently until you build something building is harder but once you build it getting the 1st 10 users is 10 times harder

10 first paid users outside of the FFF\[F\] is the hardest part by a landslide. Building has never been the hard part, it's even less now with AI but it's never been to begin with. Most devs can build a product to achieve a given purpose, you just sit on a chair and code like a brainless automated robot, no suprise that it was the entry point of AI into tech. What people fail again and again until they despair is acquiring customers. The average builder is so clueless about acquisition that they can't even put words into processes, it's just a void, they try everything just like a monkey trying to run a "hello world" by randomly typing on a keyboard, it doesn't work, it'll never work. The worst part, the average dev has so much ego that he consider the other skills subhuman and his skills godly, he considers that he can do *anything* because he can code. Unfortunately, the demise of dev builders is their belief that building something holds any form of value or competitive advantage. If you actually start to build a company, not a product, you'll realize the the statement: "I need someone to actually try it, give honest feedback, use it again, and tell me the gaps/improvements they need" explain the whole problem better than anything: *you are the boss* and the customer is the *asker*. The whole relationship you're trying to build is doomed, the customer is the boss and you are the asker, you build something so centered around them that they are cornered into using it. My last product is used by large companies today received exactly zero feedback, I listened, then produced something so centered around them that they *had* to give it a go, at least to try, they never gave me feedback or anything before, zero. Once they started using it, *I gave them feedback* about how to do their business better, the very idea that they would give me feedback or be on the receiving end of bugs would have turned them away, no one wants to deal with an amateur.

9/10 founders I’ve talked don’t struggle with building but distribution. Because being a founder and a domain expert, you will not struggle with how to build and what to build. However marketing is a whole different game in itself. That’s why building in public works so well for founders. You just need to share what you’re building, personal lessons and daily progress. This can get you so many views and early users as well. I know this works cuz I’ve helped a CTO grow her personal brand through the build in public method and get her first 5 users.