How 50 Indie Makers Got Their First 100 Customers

How we researched this

We started from the 50 makers' IndieMakerList profiles, then looked for the story of their first customers in their own words — blog posts, revenue reports, Indie Hackers posts, podcasts and interviews. A few rely on a write-up of the maker's talk or posts; the text says so. Makers whose first-customer channel we couldn't confirm were left out, and every story links to its source.

Two caveats. First, 7 of the stories are about free users (open-source projects or free-at-launch products), labelled as such. Second, each maker is filed under their main channel, but most used several.

First customers at a glance

Makers whose source gives a concrete early number:

Launch platforms: Product Hunt and Hacker News (15)

A good launch day on Product Hunt or Hacker News is still the most common first spike. It rarely produces 100 paying customers on its own — but it produces the first users, feedback and a list to follow up with.

• Pieter Levels — Nomad List (2014) · free users. Started as a public spreadsheet he tweeted; when the site went live it reached #1 on both Hacker News and Product Hunt (someone else submitted it to Product Hunt), bringing roughly 50,000 visitors from HN and 12,000 from PH. It was free at the time, so these were users, not customers. (source: levels.io)
• Tony Dinh — DevUtils (2020). After friends and co-workers liked the free version, he added a $9 one-time upgrade and posted it to Hacker News. It sat at the top of HN for a few hours and earned his first internet dollars. (source: indiehackers.com)
• Damon Chen — Testimonial.to (2020). Launched on Product Hunt at the end of an unpaid leave from his job, with a $199 lifetime deal, and shared it on Indie Hackers and Twitter. He sold 30 lifetime deals in the first two weeks. (source: creatoreconomy.so)
• Justin Duke — Buttondown (2016). Reached the front page of both Hacker News and Product Hunt: about 30,000 visits, 500 sign-ups and roughly 10 paying customers — he calls it far from meteoric. Later growth came mostly from the “powered by Buttondown” footer on customers' newsletters. (source: starterstory.com)
• Michele Hansen — Geocodio (2014). Spent 24 hours on the Hacker News front page in January 2014 — lots of traffic and feedback, but the first month made about $10. The founders hadn't even written the billing script because they didn't expect anyone to pay yet. (source: tighten.com)
• Brett Williams — Designjoy (2017). Asked in his Indie Hackers AMA where his first client came from, he answered: Product Hunt. (source: indiehackers.com)
• Ramy Khuffash — UI Movement → Page Flows (2017). His UI Movement newsletter had a strong Product Hunt launch, after which design newsletters and blogs picked it up. That audience then fed Page Flows, his paid product, alongside Google search and design-community links. (source: indiehackers.com)
• Thomas Sanlis — Uneed (2018). A Product Hunt launch gave Uneed its early traction; a paid “skip the waiting line” option brought his first online income, and programmatic SEO pages later became the main traffic source. (source: solos.ventures)
• Mike Cao — Umami (2020) · free users. Built for his own sites and open-sourced; a Hacker News post (submitted by someone else) took off in August 2020 and Reddit picked it up too. Mike says many people started using it without any marketing spend. These were free open-source users. (sources: decibel.vc, news.ycombinator.com)
• Gani Georgiev — PocketBase (2022) · free users. Posted a Show HN in July 2022 describing it as a small open-source project; it reached 563 points and 111 comments. PocketBase is free, so these were users, not customers. (source: news.ycombinator.com)
• Nevo David — Postiz (2024) · free users. Open-sourced Postiz on GitHub and launched on Product Hunt the same day in September 2024; it became #1 product of the day, week and month with 2,000+ votes, and the repo grew to almost 14K stars. (source: dev.to)
• Michael Lynch — TinyPilot (2020). Had sold two kits when he published a build guide on his blog in July 2020. The post hit #1 on Hacker News for most of a day and did well on several subreddits; July closed at 52 kits against a goal of 10. (source: mtlynch.io)
• Sahil Lavingia — Gumroad (2011) · free users. Built it in a weekend and posted “Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad” on a Monday morning in April 2011; more than 52,000 people checked it out on day one. (sources: sahillavingia.com, news.ycombinator.com)
• Nico Jeannen — Talknotes (2023). Soft-launched on Twitter, then spent about two hours listing it on every startup directory he could find; ten days later it had 1,000+ users and $700+ in sales. A later Product Hunt #1 took MRR from about $500 to $2,000 in under a month. (source: jeannen.com)
• Kevin Yun — GrowSurf (2017). The cautionary tale: the free first version went out on Product Hunt, BetaList and Hacker News, plus 50–100 cold emails — and Kevin says they then spent about a year with no real customers. The first ten paying customers came only after a rebuild. (source: kevinyun.substack.com)

Takeaway: Treat a launch as the start of distribution, not all of it. Most makers here converted only a small share of launch-day visitors into paying customers.

Building in public on X (Twitter) (8)

Posting progress, revenue and lessons in public turns followers into early adopters. It works best when the target customer is on the same platform — founders, developers, creators.

• Jon Yongfook — Bannerbear (2019). In his post on the first 25 customers he says there was no single repeatable channel: three Product Hunt launches, constant tweeting with all revenue shared publicly, startup communities, a newsletter, how-to content and personal outreach. MRR sat around $400–490 for months before it moved. (sources: bannerbear.com, bannerbear.com)
• Olly Meakings — Senja (2022). Olly and Wilson Wilson built Senja in public on X. Olly already had a small build-in-public audience from an earlier project and reported that about 1 in 3 sign-ups and 1 in 4 paying customers came from Twitter. Their open report for September 2022 showed 14 new customers that month. (sources: buildinpublichub.substack.com, senja.io)
• Derrick Reimer — SavvyCal (2020). Built in public on Twitter, where his target users were, and grew a pre-launch list of about 1,000. Around 200 paying customers were already using it from early access before the Product Hunt launch, which then added roughly 3,000 sign-ups (from his MicroConf talk). (source: viewrankai.com)
• Louis Pereira — AudioPen (2023). Built at a one-day hackathon with a payment link from day one; he invited 10–15 beta testers via a tweet and a few paid the $19 lifetime price before the official launch, which later won Product Hunt's product of the day, week and month. (source: thebootstrappedfounder.com)
• Marc Lou — ShipFast (2023). Launched to an X audience of roughly 40K that he had built over about two and a half years of posting in public, plus a Product Hunt launch. Write-ups of the launch report about $6K in the first 48 hours. (sources: starterstory.com, marketingcrafted.com)
• Max Rozen — OnlineOrNot (2021). Says no single tactic won his first ten customers: he launched on Twitter and kept tweeting features and lessons, posted on Reddit and Hacker News, listed it on Product Hunt, kept the price at $9 a month and answered customers fast. An earlier version's content marketing produced 54 sign-ups and one paid user, whom he sold personally. (source: onlineornot.com)
• Dmytro Krasun — ScreenshotOne (2022). In his first marketing month he tried Google Ads ($515, no customers), Reddit, an SEO article, directories and #buildinpublic posts. The first paying customer, about six months after he started, was a friend from Twitter; the second came from Google Ads. (sources: indiehackers.com, starterstory.com)
• Easlo — Notion templates (2021). Gave away basic Notion templates on Gumroad with an optional tip and promoted them to his growing Twitter following. When he started charging in November 2021 he emailed everyone who had downloaded the free ones; the first paid template made over $3,000 in its first month. (source: businessinsider.com)

Takeaway: Start posting before you launch; the audience you build is your first customer list.

Direct outreach and doing things by hand (6)

Emails to a handful of likely customers, personal onboarding and manual migrations don't scale — which is exactly why they work for the first customers.

• Tyler Tringas — Storemapper (2012). Emailed his existing freelance clients and had five paying customers within 24 hours. Then he listed it in the Shopify App Store, helped people in the Shopify forums and pitched it on store-locator job posts as a cheaper alternative to custom work. (source: saasclub.io)
• Nathan Barry — ConvertKit (2014). After stalling and sliding to about $1,200 MRR, he sent roughly 100 personal emails to top authors on LeanPub and Udemy (5–7 became customers), ran a sales pipeline in Trello and did free migrations by hand. By March 2015 MRR was about $5K. (source: nathanbarry.com)
• Rob Walling — Drip (2012). Validated it by emailing 17 people and asking whether they would pay $99 a month — 11 said yes — then onboarded hand-picked early customers one by one before charging (from notes of his MicroConf 2014 talk). (source: phraseexpander.com)
• Léo Baecker — Hyperping (2017). Personally emailed every new sign-up about their business and fixed reported bugs within minutes; about a dozen early users converted through those one-to-one conversations. (source: hyperping.com)
• Courtland Allen — Indie Hackers (2016). Sent hundreds of emails to get nine founders to agree to interviews for launch day, then launched on Hacker News, where it trended repeatedly. The first revenue came from advertisers he won by cold-emailing heads of marketing. (source: medium.com)
• Jesse Hanley — Bento (2018). Focuses each business on one channel; for Bento it was manual sales and outreach, plus being present in communities such as Slack groups. (source: enlight.nyc)

Takeaway: Ten personal emails to the right people beat a thousand impressions.

Communities: Reddit, forums and niche groups (5)

Showing up where your customers already talk to each other — and being helpful rather than promotional — brought several makers their first wave.

• Arvid Kahl — FeedbackPanda (2017). His co-founder Danielle Simpson, herself an online English teacher, marketed almost entirely inside the teacher communities where their customers swapped tips — answering people who described the problem rather than pushing the product. The company was profitable within weeks. (source: thebootstrappedfounder.com)
• Uku Täht — Plausible Analytics (2019). Built in public and launched to the Indie Hackers community, where his Show IH post said 60+ people had joined a three-month public beta — the base of the first customers. Content marketing by Marko Saric later took it from about $400 to $22K MRR in a year. (sources: indiehackers.com, plausible.io)
• Pat Walls — Starter Story (2017). At first nobody visited. Then a founder case study posted to r/Entrepreneur hit the top of the subreddit and brought readers, newsletter subscribers, early advertisers and interview leads. When Reddit stopped scaling, SEO took over. (source: patwalls.com)
• Guillaume Moubeche — lemlist (2018). Found early adopters in a Facebook group about sales prospecting: the group's creator let him share the tool, and that one post brought almost 300 beta sign-ups. He kept answering cold-email questions in Facebook, Reddit and Slack communities (per a guest post on Growth Unhinged). (source: growthunhinged.com)
• Rossveth Lopez — FontVisual (2021). Soft-launched the MVP on Twitter and got a first customer on the yearly plan seven days later. Asked about marketing, she listed cold emails, forums, Facebook groups and Reddit — and said no channel had been consistent. (source: indiehackers.com)

Takeaway: Answer the problem in the community's own words, then link to the product.

Marketplaces, app stores and lifetime-deal sites (5)

AppSumo-style lifetime deals and app stores come with built-in buyers. They can deliver hundreds of customers in weeks — at a steep discount.

• Adam Lyttle — iOS app portfolio (2020). Uses App Store search as his only channel: he only builds an app if he finds a keyword with high popularity and low competition, which brings steady downloads with no marketing spend. His very first app, with no such keyword, got no downloads. (source: youtube.com)
• David Smith — Audiobooks → Widgetsmith (2009) · free users. His first hit, a free Audiobooks app, reached nearly 8 million App Store downloads; for Widgetsmith years later he says growth came entirely from word of mouth, with no marketing budget. (sources: david-smith.org, david-smith.org)
• Dean McPherson — Paperform (2016). Launched with an AppSumo lifetime deal in December 2016, which the founders said brought 2,000+ users in the first two weeks. (source: sia.hackernoon.com)
• Baptiste Arnaud — Typebot (2021). Social posts and a Product Hunt launch left it with about 30 active users. A lifetime deal on SaaS Mantra in April 2021 then sold 767 deals (about $23.6K) and brought 900+ new users in three weeks. (source: indiehackers.com)
• Shri Vatz — Guidejar (2023). Two subscribers came from his X circle and a few more from a Black Friday deal. Then an AppSumo campaign passed 100 paid users in its first days and ended with 950+ paying customers. (source: fakemayo.com)

Takeaway: Great for a fast first cohort and cash, but price and support load need planning.

SEO and content marketing (4)

Slow to start but compounding: makers who wrote for search before launch had a stream of visitors on day one.

• Peter Askew — VidaliaOnions.com (2015). Bought the exact-match domain at auction and partnered with a farmer. Early buyers found the site by searching the domain's own phrase on Google, helped by some Google and Bing ads at first; the first season brought 600+ orders against a goal of 50. (sources: deepsouthventures.com, sidehustlenation.com)
• Ruben Gamez — Bidsketch (2009). Before writing product code he put up a landing page and a blog with keyword-targeted posts and free proposal templates, and emailed 30+ bloggers asking for reviews. Content marketing went on to bring most of his customers. (source: saasclub.io)
• Cory Zue — SaaS Pegasus (2019). Had been writing Django tutorials for about two years, some already ranking, and promoted a waitlist on them months before launch. After launch he kept publishing guides and sharing them on r/django; build-in-public followers were a minority of buyers. (source: indiehackers.com)
• Frey Chu — His first directory site (2022) · free users. Built it as an SEO experiment — on-page SEO, backlinks and pillar pages — modelled on a competitor with 100K+ monthly visits. It grew to roughly 60K monthly visits and a couple of thousand dollars a month. (source: wpgeodirectory.com)

Takeaway: Content written months before launch pays off at launch; start early.

An existing audience: newsletter, podcast, blog or following (3)

Makers who already had readers or followers started with a warm list. The audience usually came first and the product followed.

• Paul Jarvis — Fathom Analytics (2018). Paul shared a mockup of a simpler analytics tool on Twitter and it took off. In a joint interview with Jack Ellis, the founders say Paul's newsletter and Twitter audience brought the first paying customers, followed by a slow, steady ramp. (source: usefathom.com)
• Justin Jackson — Transistor.fm (2018). Announced the launch date to the mailing list, then posted on Product Hunt (top product of the day), Twitter, Slack groups and Reddit. The first month ended with 46 paying customers. (source: transistor.fm)
• Ian Nuttall — URL Monitor (2023). Says customers came essentially all from Twitter, where he had 36K+ followers built partly by selling a programmatic SEO course. About four months after launch it had 550+ customers and $100K+ ARR. (sources: goodreads.com, api.fxtwitter.com)

Takeaway: If you have an audience, build for it; if you don't, start building one alongside the product.

A viral post or demo (2)

Occasionally one demo post does the work of a launch. You can't plan for it, but you can ship often enough to get lucky.

• Yasser Elsaid — Chatbase (2023). Tweeted a demo to roughly 16 followers in February 2023 and it went viral; write-ups report the first payment came about 30 minutes after he added a pricing page. (source: superframeworks.com)
• Jakob Greenfeld — Gum Spy (2020). With about 600 Twitter followers, he got lucky: Shaan Puri found the product through its small “made by” badge and mentioned it on the My First Million podcast, which brought dozens of sales and hundreds of followers. (source: jakobgreenfeld.com)

Takeaway: Short demo videos of the product doing something useful travel furthest.

Paid ads to a landing page (2)

A small ad budget pointed at a landing page can validate demand before a line of code is written.

• Tom Benattar — PixelMe (2017). He and his co-founder tested the idea with a fake-door landing page and $23.95 of Facebook ads (10 sign-ups), grew a referral waitlist to 142, interviewed 15 marketing directors and served two by hand before building — reaching their first ten paying customers that October (per his co-founder's write-up). (source: medium.com)
• Brian Casel — Restaurant Engine (2011). Ran Google ads to a one-page landing page before building, collecting about 100–150 emails; around 60 joined the beta and six became the first paying customers. Content that ranked in Google became the best channel afterwards. (source: mixergy.com)

Takeaway: Use ads to test demand cheaply, not to scale an unproven product.

Patterns across all the stories

1. Launch day is a spike, not a strategy. Justin Duke turned ~30,000 launch visits into about 10 paying customers; Kevin Yun launched everywhere and had no real customers for a year. The launch works when there is follow-up.
2. The first ten are usually hand-sold. Tyler Tringas emailed old clients, Nathan Barry sent ~100 personal emails and did migrations by hand, Rob Walling asked 17 people if they would pay.
3. Audiences compound. Makers who had been writing, tweeting or podcasting for years — Justin Jackson, Ian Nuttall, Marc Lou — started with a warm list.
4. Lifetime deals buy a cohort, at a price. 3 makers here got their first big wave from a lifetime-deal marketplace. See pricing lessons from indie makers for the trade-offs.
5. Most makers mixed channels. Jon Yongfook and Max Rozen both say no single tactic got them their first customers.

Ready to launch? Pick your platforms from our list of places to launch and communities for indie makers, or ask the IndieMakerList AI how a specific maker grew. To see how long the road to $10K MRR usually takes after those first customers, read maker journeys.