Find Your First 1,000 Customers 🚀

Just like OpenPhone and others.

Monitor Reddit, X, YouTube, and more to find where your ideal customers are asking for solutions. Join the conversation and grow your startup.

Find conversations where people need your solution
Get alerted when your ideal customer posts online
Join discussions early before competitors see them
Turn conversations into paying customers
Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

The Problem: No Product-Market Fit, No Audience, No Customers

OpenPhone team at Y Combinator

In September 2017, OpenPhone's co-founder Daryna Kulya faced the same challenge you might be facing right now.

"Getting our first 1,000 customers was messy and not scalable. None of the steps we took came out of an online guide."

The reality: OpenPhone was just 2 months old. They had no product-market fit, no existing audience, and no customers.

Most advice they found was useless. It was tailored to companies that already had traction. They needed real, actionable tactics that worked from zero.

— Daryna Kulya, Co-Founder at OpenPhone (now Quo)

Here's exactly what they did, and how you can do it too.

The 3-Stage Journey: 0 to 1,000 Customers in 10 Months

OpenPhone followed a systematic approach to finding their first customers. Here's the exact playbook.

Stage 1
1,000
Free Beta Users
Stage 2
100
Paying Customers
Stage 3
1,000
Paying Customers
~2 months
Stage 4
Maintenance
Ongoing Monitoring
Today

Stage 1: 0 to 1,000 Free Beta Users

Building initial traction without a waitlist

Tactic #1 Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups marketing strategy

Daryna joined and posted in 62 Facebook groups for small business owners (construction, retail, real estate, trucking).

Best-performing post structure:

  1. Describe the problem (using personal phone number for business sucks)
  2. Ask if folks have run into this problem and how they're solving it
  3. Start a conversation rather than self-promoting
  4. Ask people to comment if they'd like to join beta (no links in post)

Result: Some posts brought 100+ beta users. Others got kicked out (learned to focus on conversations, not promotion).

Tactic #2 Word of Mouth Through Exceptional Experience

They gave beta users a memorable experience worth talking about:

  • Let users text them directly from the app for support (using their own product)
  • Sent frequent updates about progress
  • Launched features users requested

Stage 1 Outcome: 1,000 free beta users

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

Stage 2: 0 to 100 Paying Customers

Converting to paid and expanding channels

Tactic #1 Converting Beta Users

After giving beta users plenty of notice, they launched their $10/month plan.

Result: 60 beta users converted to paying customers (6% conversion rate from 1,000 users).

🎯 Key Tactic Reddit + Notifier.so 🚀

Daryna discovered active subreddits like r/smallbusiness and r/Entrepreneur.

How they used Notifier.so:

"I set up alerts for relevant industry and competitor terms using Notifier for Reddit. This way, it was more natural for me to talk about OpenPhone as a solution, since I was joining conversations that other folks had initiated on relevant topics."

Instead of self-promoting, they monitored keywords and joined existing conversations naturally.

Their Reddit strategy:

  • Told their story instead of pitching (founders wanted to hear the journey)
  • Created value by writing Medium posts answering common questions
  • Joined discussions on topics adjacent to business phones
  • Sparked discussions without self-promotion

The key insight: Use monitoring tools to find conversations already happening, then join them authentically instead of cold outreach.

Tactic #3 Evolved Facebook Strategy

Instead of just posting, they contacted group admins and offered to run Q&A sessions on topics like customer engagement and effective communication.

Result: Built relationships with admins who organically shared OpenPhone with their communities.

Stage 2 Outcome: Reached 100 paying customers

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

Stage 3: 100 to 1,000 Paying Customers (~2 months)

Scaling with cold outreach and media

Tactic #1 Personalized Cold Email Outreach

Started with YC batchmates, then expanded to other startups.

Example of Daryna's personalized cold email outreach

What didn't work:

Sending 1,000 generic emails per day. They ended up in spam.

What worked:

  • Segmented customers into specific groups
  • Targeted YC companies that already listed a phone number on their website
  • Personalized each email using PersistIQ

Result: Response rates went up significantly with personalization and segmentation.

Tactic #2 Understanding Their Customers

Created a Typeform survey asking one key question:

"How disappointed would you be if OpenPhone didn't exist?"

This helped them identify:

  • Customer personas who needed OpenPhone most
  • Industries they belonged to
  • Features they benefited from

Result: Refined messaging on website and email copy, guided which audiences to approach.

Tactic #3 Strategic Media Coverage

Got featured on TechCrunch (YC announcement) and Product Hunt (4th spot of the day).

Why it worked: Their ideal customers (startup founders) were already reading these sources daily.

Target media sources your audience already tunes into, not just national news.

Tactic #4 Continued Word of Mouth

Doubled down on what delighted customers:

  • Rapid product updates
  • Timely personal support
  • Small, fun ways to engage (like sending thank-you cupcakes)

Result: Glowing App Store reviews that attracted more customers organically.

Stage 3 Outcome: 1,000 paying customers 🎉

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

Stage 4: Maintenance - Keeping Track at Scale

How OpenPhone uses Notifier today (and how you can too)

OpenPhone has scaled to the point where leveraging tools like Notifier are no longer their primary customer acquisition method. They've built out sales teams, marketing automation, and enterprise processes that drive most of their growth.

However, Daryna still monitors and uses Notifier today to keep on top of brand mentions, track conversations about their product, and stay connected to what customers are saying across Reddit and other platforms.

Daryna Kulya LinkedIn comment confirming she still uses Notifier

Daryna still uses Notifier to this day, although since they've rebranded to Quo, they have had to change their settings 😊

The Likely Reality at Scale:

While we haven't confirmed this directly with Daryna, what typically happens at this stage (based on what we see with other scaled companies using Notifier) is this:

Founders pass Notifier off to marketing and sales team members. The marketing team uses it to monitor brand mentions and track industry conversations. Potential leads get filtered to the sales team through webhooks that integrate directly with CRMs. The tool shifts from a founder-led acquisition channel to a team-wide monitoring and lead generation system.

Common Use Cases at the Maintenance Stage:

  • Brand Monitoring: Marketing teams track every mention of the company name, products, and key executives across social platforms
  • Lead Generation: Sales teams receive qualified leads via webhook integrations that automatically route Reddit/X conversations into Salesforce, HubSpot, or other CRMs
  • Competitive Intelligence: Track competitor mentions, feature requests about competitors, and market sentiment to inform product roadmap decisions
  • Crisis Management: Quickly catch negative sentiment or PR issues before they escalate, allowing rapid response from customer success teams

The Key Insight:

Social listening isn't just for early-stage customer acquisition. While it's harder to scale as your primary acquisition method without a dedicated team behind it, tools like Notifier become invaluable for maintenance, monitoring, and lead generation once you have the infrastructure to support it. The tactics that got you to 1,000 customers don't disappear. Instead, they evolve into systematic processes run by your team.

Stage 4: From founder-led acquisition to team-wide monitoring system

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

How Notifier.so Helped OpenPhone Find Customers

Social listening was a key part of OpenPhone's customer acquisition strategy

"I set up alerts for relevant industry and competitor terms using Notifier for Reddit. This way, it was more natural for me to talk about OpenPhone as a solution, since I was joining conversations that other folks had initiated on relevant topics."

— Daryna Kulya, Co-Founder at OpenPhone

🎯

Found Conversations

Monitored keywords to discover existing discussions instead of cold outreach

💬

Joined Naturally

Engaged in conversations others started, making mentions feel authentic

🤝

Built Trust

Provided value first by being helpful, not salesy

Set Up Your Reddit Alerts Like OpenPhone

What OpenPhone Would Do Differently Today

Hindsight lessons from scaling to 1,000 customers

1️⃣

Share Your Mission From Day One

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. A simple Medium post sharing why they started would have attracted the right early customers.

2️⃣

Start Cold Outreach Earlier

It's easier to invite people to try a free beta and ask for feedback than to sell to them. Let others join your journey earlier.

3️⃣

Create Content for Your Ideal Customer ASAP

Your personal brand is more valuable in the early days. Start building an audience before you have a product by hanging out where your ideal customer is.

4️⃣

Dive Into Customer Data Sooner

Survey users who don't convert. Get to know paying customers deeply from day one. Use signup questions and tools like Clearbit to understand your ideal customer profile.

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

The 4 Questions OpenPhone Used (And You Should Too)

Answer these questions before you start customer acquisition

1

Who needs what you're building the most?

Identify all possible users who could potentially benefit from your product. Be specific about personas and pain points.

2

Where do these people hang out?

Facebook groups, Reddit, Quora, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, LinkedIn groups, X, Slack communities, meetups, incubators, accelerators, or coworking spaces?

3

How can you reach them?

How can you engage your audience in a way that builds a deeper relationship without spamming? Personalized outreach, content, influencer partnerships, or product partnerships?

4

How can you build trust with them?

Answer questions, establish personal connections, listen to feedback, and continually improve your product to suit their needs.

Once you answer these questions, you'll easily come up with a list of channels to test and see your customer base grow.

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

The Results Speak for Themselves

From zero to 1,000 paying customers in 10 months

1,000
Free Beta Users
6%
Conversion Rate
beta to paid
1,000
Paying Customers
in ~10 months
$105M
Series B Raised
now Quo

"Getting our first 1,000 customers was messy and not scalable, and that's okay. It's all about iterating, testing, and getting to know your customers back to front."

— Daryna Kulya, Co-Founder at OpenPhone (now Quo)

Start finding your first 1,000 customers!

What Our Customers Say

Founders using Notifier to find their customers

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