Go-to-Market Hacks from SaaS Founders: How They Won Their First Customers

Figuring out how to sell your product is one of the loneliest parts of building a SaaS company. There is no playbook that works for everyone, and the loudest voices online are usually selling a framework, not sharing what actually happened. On the saas.unbound podcast, founders share the real tactics they used to find customers, earn trust, and build repeatable growth. From closing the first 100 deals yourself to using community education as a top-of-funnel engine, here is what worked for them.

“We interviewed a lot of potential customers even before we started the company. We wanted to validate that this problem existed outside of our heads. When we had the product, we went back and asked these people: remember we talked about this? We have a product now. Want to check it out? More often than not that was still a problem for them.

We focused on one segment: other SaaS companies. Anywhere they would hang out, in communities, Slack groups, WhatsApp groups. We did partnerships with VC firms where we told them: if your portfolio companies need something like this, we will give them a discount. It was a large number of such small things. For a long time nothing happens, and then it starts picking up.”

Girish Redekar @Sprinto – episode #44

“I started talking to companies and saying: if we are able to do this, would you buy it? When more and more of them said that would be amazing, we knew what to build.

What I could see is that in-house legals appreciated the pain we were taking away to a higher degree than the founders. Because legal teams were actually sitting with the work, they really understood how many hours we were removing from their desks. Nobody would ever challenge the CFO who says I need a tool to manage invoices. So when legal says I need a tool to manage our privacy, why is that any different?

We do not do any outbound of any kind. We are community-led. We have a privacy newsletter where we explain what is going on in the legal landscape in a way that is not super nerdy. People get interested, check out the platform, and from there we build sales conversations.”

Stine Mangor Tornmark @Openli – episode #11

“The first year it was a team of three. The first 100 customers were all closed by myself. I got a lot of feedback, a lot of nos, and a lot of yeses. We could already start to see a pattern of what type of companies worked well with us.

One thing that is important: do not do it for free. The first pilots we offered for free, and the problem was that if it is free it does not have real value to the customer. It does not have urgency or priority. Start charging as soon as possible, even if you feel the product is not there yet, because that is part of the validation. The feedback from people who are actually paying is worth more than anything.”

Sebastian Wengryn @ContractHero – episode #19

“A lot of mature companies think about the cost of inaction. If you can show them that not getting your product will hit them in the wallet, they are more likely to buy. The buying persona is typically a business person who wants dashboards, efficiency gains, KPIs. The user is typically legal or technical, and they want to see what everyday problems the product solves. You basically need two pitches and you need to know who you are pitching to.

Try to sell painkillers and not vitamins, because this will make your life a lot easier. If you found painkillers, you found a good market. Keep a straight face, because your reputation is everything.”

Niklas Hanitsch @SECJUR – episode #8

“For content, what we can see on the network level is what domains people connect to through our proxies. We have a whole log of tens of thousands of domains, and from there we generate ideas. Why did they connect to walmart.com? Now you start finding all kinds of content ideas. If those customers are already paying you, it implies that other people out there are looking for that same use case.

I still believe there is going to be value for companies to provide that human touch. AI is going to drive us more and more to a world of transactions, and I think people can differentiate themselves if they bring a personal touch to their interactions with customers.”

Neil Emeigh @Sprious – episode #20

Every founder here found their way to growth through a different door. Some leaned on communities and education. Some made the founder the first and best salesperson. Some refused to do outbound entirely. But the thread that connects them is the same: they stayed so close to their customers that the next move became obvious. Not easy, but obvious.

Check out these and other episodes of the saas.unbound podcast to hear the full stories behind these founders and how they built their businesses from scratch.