To onboard early users as a founder, start with direct, personal outreach. Message potential users through LinkedIn, Twitter, or email. Not with a hard pitch, but by asking for feedback and involving them in the journey. Focus your efforts on a very specific niche or ICP (ideal customer profile) so your messaging resonates deeply and you can be efficient with your time. Be laser-focused on speaking to the right people in the right levels of seniority so you can get higher conversions and stronger product-market fit.
Engage in communities where your target users are already engaged. It could be Reddit, niche Discords, or Slack groups. Get involved and start contributing and creating conversations within relevant ecosystems. Start building a rapport with these people before introducing your product. Perhaps you’re even in a situation where you can create a waitlist that offers added perks for members. For your first users, offer hands-on, white-glove onboarding to gather insights and build loyalty. Meanwhile, document your journey publicly on platforms like X or LinkedIn; sharing progress, challenges, and wins helps build trust and attract users who want to support your success. Get a buzz going around you and your brand, and don’t forget about your own network! It can be a powerful place to start.
Sadra Hosseini, CEO | Ryft
– – – – –
In this industry it’s all about trust. Broadening our network through industry events and building strong relationships with prospects was pivotal, and we didn’t want to come off too “sales-like.” We met with prospects one-on-one, even in-person when possible, to build genuine connections before diving into the nitty gritty of how we were going to change the game for how clinical research was executed.
Initially, we did things that wouldn’t scale. I personally helped configure studies and provided hands-on support to early users, sometimes working directly alongside their teams. This gave us invaluable insights that help guide our hiring strategy for our clinical operations team.
These early champions became our best references, helping us refine our offering and ultimately enabling us to develop the scalable solutions we have today.
Michael Young, Co-Founder | Lindus Health
– – – – –
Scan.com began inside a clinic, giving us firsthand insight into the challenges patients faced accessing medical imaging. One of our co-founders, a practising clinician, referred his own patients and experienced the delays and red tape, despite private scanners sitting underused. We built a two-sided marketplace to match patient demand with that spare capacity, creating value for both sides. Crucially, personalised onboarding with a trusted clinician removed referral barriers and gave patients the confidence to go ahead. Every UK patient still speaks to a clinician today – a connection that remains one of our strongest differentiators and drivers of growth.
Oliver Knight, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer (COO) | Scan.com
– – – – –
I am a massive advocate of visualisation strategies. Every piece of software or manufactured product that is designed will define how end-user customers will view, use and benefit from it. The whole project team will see the customer experience, journey, and anticipated outcomes if you start the design using a visualisation approach. Ambiguities and misunderstandings are removed quickly. This design and development approach significantly benefits project communication, which is essential to allow the whole team to deliver the correct outcome. All the team members can see the same picture evolving in front of their eyes as the coders and designers work their magic. In a scrum environment, visualisation also ensures timely and accurate delivery and allows an early opportunity for customer focus groups to see and interact with the development. It is impossible to deliver an end-user experience that everyone likes; someone will always prefer a different font or couple, for example. Using the visualisation approach should deliver the expected project and design outcomes. It is also easy to demonstrate the benefits of visualisation to a team before a project starts. In the kick-off meeting, and before you start talking about the project, give everyone a piece of paper and a crayon. Ask them all to draw a car and then turn their paper over. Complete the meeting, which is often just a discussion with a whiteboard. At the end of the meeting, ask everyone to show the picture of the car they drew. Each drawing will be different despite the word car being only three letters long. This visual demonstrates to them that whilst they hear the same word, their visual interpretation is different. Project visualisation substantially removes that interpretation failure.
Nick Ogden, Innovator
