OutreachSample: Statistical Sample Size Calculator & Tracker for Early-Stage B2B Outreach

I will not promote, anyways how do y'all find customers?

You buried the actual finding in your own post. Cold reddit messages got you one lead out of about twenty. That is five percent. Cold email got you zero. You are filing both under failed, but one of those is a working channel you are about to abandon. Twenty messages is not a test, it is a warmup. At that sample size nobody can tell a 5 percent channel from a 0 percent channel, including you. Send a hundred more the same way before you conclude anything about it. Second thing, and this one cost me a lot of time early on. "How do I find customers" is usually the wrong question once you already have one. The better question is what did that one person have in common that the other nineteen did not. You have a sample of one that said yes, so go study them properly. Where were they, what were they already doing about this problem before you turned up, what words did they use to describe it. That is your targeting spec. Most founders skip this because one data point feels too thin to learn from, then go spray a hundred more messages at people who look nothing like the only person who bit. Third, one lead plus a beta tester after a first startup that flopped is not a bad position, it is just an early one. The failure mode to watch is switching channels every two weeks because nothing produces fast enough. Every channel looks broken at low volume. Run the one that produced your only yes properly for a month, then judge it. On that beta tester, talk to them far more than feels comfortable, and not with a survey. Ask them to walk you through what they did the last time they hit this problem, step by step, including whatever workaround they cobbled together themselves. The workaround is your product spec and it is also your pitch, because then you can repeat their own words back to the next hundred people instead of guessing at what to say.

You buried the actual finding in your own post. Cold reddit messages got you one lead out of about twenty. That is five percent. Cold email got you zero. You are filing both under failed, but one of those is a working channel you are about to abandon. Twenty messages is not a test, it is a warmup. At that sample size nobody can tell a 5 percent channel from a 0 percent channel, including you. Send a hundred more the same way before you conclude anything about it. Second thing, and this one cost me a lot of time early on. "How do I find customers" is usually the wrong question once you already have one. The better question is what did that one person have in common that the other nineteen did not. You have a sample of one that said yes, so go study them properly. Where were they, what were they already doing about this problem before you turned up, what words did they use to describe it. That is your targeting spec. Most founders skip this because one data point feels too thin to learn from, then go spray a hundred more messages at people who look nothing like the only person who bit. Third, one lead plus a beta tester after a first startup that flopped is not a bad position, it is just an early one. The failure mode to watch is switching channels every two weeks because nothing produces fast enough. Every channel looks broken at low volume. Run the one that produced your only yes properly for a month, then judge it. On that beta tester, talk to them far more than feels comfortable, and not with a survey. Ask them to walk you through what they did the last time they hit this problem, step by step, including whatever workaround they cobbled together themselves. The workaround is your product spec and it is also your pitch, because then you can repeat their own words back to the next hundred people instead of guessing at what to say.