How to find your first users with a minimum evolvable product

Executive overview

Most people aren't early adopters — almost no one wants to be a startup's first paying customer. Finding first users is a search problem, not a persuasion problem. You're looking for people who love trying new things or have a burning need you can solve.

Your product doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to survive contact with a small group and evolve fast based on what they push it toward.

Build a minimum evolvable product — one that adapts to early users, not a final form you have to get right.

Tactics for finding early users

• Charge real money early — paying customers give sharper feedback than free users
• Use targeted personal outreach: cold email, direct contact — not broad advertising
• Launch early to maximise surface area for early adopters to find you
• Study early users like an anthropologist — understand how they make decisions and why they'd trust you
• Experiment fast: pricing, onboarding, landing pages, features
• Don't stress over churn — the relationship is personal and fixable; others haven't heard of you yet

Why many AI founders start with businesses, not consumers

• Average personal software spend is small; corporate tools each cost more than a typical consumer's total monthly spend
• Consumer apps struggle when ad revenue doesn't cover AI costs and subscriptions compete for a tiny personal budget
• Prosumers and businesses are more likely to have burning problems and price tolerance

Product evolution is path-dependent on early adopters

• Think of a startup as a phylogenetic tree: you begin as an amoeba and evolve toward complexity through external pressures
• Tesla's Roadster was an evolutionary search — finding people willing to pay $150k for an impractical car
• Early Tesla adopters cared about tech and acceleration over comfort; that shaped every mass-market vehicle that followed
• A product designed in a vacuum for the mass market would look very different from one shaped by early adopters
• Where you begin and who you begin with determines what your product becomes