How to secure your first 10 paying SaaS customers

On Weds I shared a proven method to consistently book calls with your ideal customers using a simple reframe that boosts reply rates by 3-4x (with proof it works).

Today we’ll cover what you should be doing on those calls to effectively validate your SaaS idea and close initial customers.

In the early days, your only focus should be pinpointing pervasive, painful problems and testing your solution concepts against real market demand.

Identifying the problem comes through structured interviews (reply "SOP" now for the detailed method), while validating demand happens through actual sales.

Here's something I believe: You do not need to have a fully built product to start making sales. 

Realising this sooner rather than later can save you months of frustration and thousands in wasted $$$. Prospects might show interest during meetings but until they pay demand remains unvalidated.

This experience is often learned the hard way. It’s basically a rite of passage for founders.

The severity of the problem you want to tackle is important. When the issue is genuinely urgent, customers won’t care about your signup process, onboarding, or UI. They won’t mind manual intervention or basic no-code solutions behind the scenes. They simply want the problem solved effectively and immediately. This urgency is your clearest signal that you're targeting the right issue.

If prospects repeatedly request "nice-to-have" features or delay payments until your product is polished, these are red flags. It means either your targeting is off or your value proposition isn’t compelling enough to take payment.

To uncover genuinely urgent problems and stress-test your assumptions, use the Structured Interview Method.

This proven method systematically reveals customer pain points, validates your solution, and smoothly transitions prospects into paying customers.

Here's how this process looks in practice:

• Book 5-10 conversations weekly with your hypothesised ICP (using the approach from last email)

• Conduct structured interviews to refine your understanding and continuously update your assumptions

• Transition from structured interviews to sales with the explicit goal of converting prospects into paying customers

You must transition to sales. Don't get trapped in an endless cycle of feedback loops. Until you've secured ~5 paying customers, demand hasn’t been validated.

This stage feels chaotic, hence why I call it the 'eat crap' phase. It’s where rapid learning and pivots that suck occur, eventually guiding you towards the right direction.

Make every structured interview count. Every interaction should clearly lead to one of these outcomes:

• They become a paying design partner

• They support as an influencer

• They provide referrals or clear next steps

The "structured" component of the Structured Interview Method ensures you’re operating with intention. Anything less is LARPing as a founder. Don’t get caught up in casual coffee chats.

Once you've closed a customer, your focus should shift to delivering on your promise which is when you build v1 and validate your solution. This is important because you might be great at sales but do a bad job of solving the customer’s problem - both are required to create a sustainable business.

Reply "SOP" and I'll send you the Structured Interview Method, providing a clear path to validated demand.

Next Weds I'll share lessons from scaling a SaaS startup from $0 to $20M ARR in just 3 years.

Cheers,

Liam

P.S.

If you’re an early-stage B2B SaaS founder, we will help you hit $1m in 12 months just like we have for others. Read more about this process here.

$0 to $20m ARR in 3 years
$1m added in 6 months
$3k to (now) $97k per month in 12 months