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Podcast: The SaaS Podcast - AI, Growth & Product-Market Fit for SaaS Founders
Episode: First Customers: 130 Cold Emails to 8-Figure Revenue
Description: Two college students spent five days brainstorming startup ideas. Nine years later, their product reached a billion unique visitors and generated 8-figure revenue. Daniel Ha got Disqus's first customers by emailing 130 of his favorite websites with an honest pitch: "We're building something. Don't really know if it's interesting yet." Most ignored it. But the handful who responded became early customers who shaped the product.
Disqus's startup traction became self-sustaining because the product was embedded on publisher websites - every commenter who used it discovered it and brought it to others. Those first paying users created a viral...