Sam and Shaan trade war stories on exactly how they got their first 100 customers across seven different businesses — Bunk (roommate matching app), a sushi cloud kitchen, Hustle Con, the Trends newsletter, Milk Road, and more. Each story is labeled with a method: piggybacking existing platforms, floor-to-floor sales, no-risk offer, the made-to-stick infographic, pissing in the pond (niche community), and the David Blaine spectacle method.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host)
Why This Question Matters [00:00:00]
Sam: How did you get your first 100 customers? This is a very different question than general advice. Forget what you did to get to $10 million in revenue. What I want to know is what you did to get the first $10. Step one. Because if you don’t do step one, by definition you don’t get to step two.
I’ve personally grown five things to $1-10 million in revenue. One thing well north of $10 million per month. And a bunch of smaller projects ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of users.
Shaan: Same. Blab had around four million users before it shut down. So when this question comes up, we actually have specific stories — not theory.
Let’s trade back and forth. I’ll go first.
Method 1: Piggybacking (Shaan — Bunk) [00:05:00]
Shaan: First business was Bunk — a roommate matching app. Before it was an app it was just a Weebly website. We did $50,000 in sales in a few months.
San Francisco in those days was full of transient people — people who’d moved without knowing anyone, trying to afford rent in an expensive city. If you had a four-bedroom apartment with one room open, literally 100 people would apply. So we knew where the seekers were: Craigslist.
We went to landlords with three and four bedroom apartments and said: let us host a “party” at your apartment — we’ll call it an event — and we’ll invite prospective tenants to meet each other and team up to get a place. We posted individual room ads on Craigslist with links back to bunkSF.com. Back then Craigslist allowed HTML so we could make them look beautiful. We’d get 10,000 people a week to the website.
The method: piggybacking existing platform traffic. Instead of SEO, use “CEO” — go where the traffic already is, and put your hook there.
Method 2: Floor-to-Floor Sales (Shaan — Sushi Restaurant) [00:14:00]
Shaan: Second business: a delivery-only sushi restaurant in Denver at age 21. No DoorDash, no Uber Eats. So how do you get customers for a delivery-only restaurant?
I didn’t know you could run ads. That ignorance turned out to be a superpower. Planning meeting was 12 minutes. “We need customers.” “Okay, go walk around and ask people.”
I went into a downtown skyscraper. Instead of door-to-door I did floor-to-floor. Elevator to every floor, talk to whoever I see. Density was the idea — thousands of people in one building, no walking required.
By floor two I realized: I can’t just go up to people in open offices. But on every floor there’s a front desk person — the office manager. Her job is to greet visitors. She’s also the local influencer. In any tribe of people there’s someone more influential than everyone else. In an office it’s always the gatekeeper.
My first pitch was terrible. By floor three I’d figured out the right opening question: “Do you guys ever do office catering for group lunches?” Yes or no. If no — move on. If yes — now I’m talking to someone who might order 50 lunches at a time.
Then: “We just opened. Would you want to try us for free? I’ll bring a sample tray for you and a few people in the office. If you like it, I’ll leave a menu. If you don’t, I’ll come clean it up and you’re out nothing.”
We were profitable month one. Made $13K in the first month. But we quit by month three — we were exhausted and realized the sushi wasn’t the insight. The insight was food delivery. We were three years early. If we’d just been delivering whatever people actually wanted — sandwiches, burritos — that would have been the business.
The method: floor-to-floor / door-to-door brute force, plus a no-risk offer.
Method 3: The Magnet (Shaan — Anti-MBA Book Club) [00:24:00]
Shaan: Next: I posted an ad on Craigslist saying I was organizing a business book club. Got 10,000 people on my email list. Met some of my best friends that way — Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt, for one.
The reason this worked wasn’t just the event. It was the filter. The only people who sign up for a business biography book club are the exact type of business obsessives you want around you. 95% of people see this and think “hard pass.” The 5% it’s perfect for respond instantly. You get a self-selecting community of the people who care most.
The method: the magnet — an ultra-specific offer that filters for the exact right people.
Method 4: Made-to-Stick Infographic (Shaan — Roommates App) [00:30:00]
Shaan: After Bunk got acquired we turned it into a roommate-matching app called Roommates. We launched in five cities: LA, Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco — and we’d never been to most of them.
I’d read Made to Stick by the Heath brothers in my book club. The takeaway: niches make riches. BuzzFeed-style articles like “50 things only Long Islanders will laugh at” don’t get huge total traffic, but the click-through rate from actual Long Islanders is through the roof.
So we made infographics. “The Typical Roommates of San Francisco.” “The Typical Roommates of Chicago — Wrigleyville Edition.” Each infographic had 15-18 characters: neighborhood by neighborhood. We’d show a stereotypical person from the Marina, from the Mission. Where do they shop? What do they eat? Funny quotes they’d say. We pulled jokes from Yelp reviews, found the most-tagged local spots, named as many brands as possible so those brands would share it.
We tagged the restaurants and shops in our social posts. Their employees shared it within the company. Local newspapers picked it up. We got 100,000 users from five infographics. The paid app was getting millions of swipes.
If you Google “typical roommates of LA” you’ll still find those HuffPost pieces.
The method: made-to-stick hyperlocal content — niche enough to be perfectly relevant, funny enough to share, and brand-heavy enough that you get organic distribution.
Method 5: No-Risk Offer (Shaan — Biotech in Australia) [00:40:00]
Shaan: One more I’ll mention briefly. We had a biotech startup — microbes that could decompose coal underground and produce natural gas without mining. The problem: to get customers, you need landowners who’ll let you experiment on their land. Nobody trusts a new company with that.
Solution: find people who have “stranded coal” — coal that’s too deep or awkwardly structured to mine economically. For them, the coal has zero value anyway. We’d knock on their door, tell them they’re sitting on coal, and offer to do the whole experiment at our cost. If it works, we split the upside. If it doesn’t, they’re out nothing.
We got five interested customers immediately. One came back and said: “If this works, I don’t want you going to my competitors. I’ll give you $5 million and the land and handle the permitting — but if it works, I want to buy 50% of the technology for $50 million.” We took the deal. The science turned out to be harder than expected in the field and I left before we found out what happened.
The method is the same one Alex Hormozi used to build his gym launch business. He’d tell gym owners: “I’ll increase your revenue by $100K using my marketing method. I keep 15% of whatever we bring in — if we bring in nothing, you pay nothing.” Same as MainStreet, which grew fast in the tech startup community by saying: “There are R&D tax credits available. We’ll do it for you and keep 20-25% of whatever extra credits you get. You’re not going to do this anyway.”
The method: no-risk offer — you eliminate the trust problem by offering something where the downside is zero for the customer.
Method 6: Pissing in the Pond (Sam — E-Commerce Brand) [00:52:00]
Sam: When we launched our e-commerce brand, I call the method “pissing in the pond.” Don’t boil the ocean — you’re too small. Instead, find a small pond that’s hyper-obsessed about your niche.
We found Facebook groups dedicated to comparing products in our exact category. Each group had maybe 5,000 people total. Small in aggregate, but insanely focused.
Instead of posting “buy our product,” we told our story. “Wanted to share the ups and downs of trying to launch a brand like this for the last six months.” The things that went wrong. Where we got scammed. How naive we were. People started rooting for us.
We did $28,000 in revenue in month one. Ad spend was maybe $500-1,000. Most of the revenue came from those groups.
The reason those 100 customers matter more than random 100: they’re the hyper-obsessed core of the niche. They’re the people others look to for recommendations. Getting them to give a damn about you early is worth 10x random traffic.
The method: pissing in the pond — go to the smallest, most obsessed community that cares about your thing and tell your underdog story there.
Method 7: Personal Story + Newsletter (Sam — Hustle Con and Trends) [00:58:00]
Sam: Hustle Con was my first event series. I decided to host it in May, event was in July — six weeks to make it happen. I made $60K in revenue, $50K profit that first one.
The method: I wrote a blog post about each of the eight speakers. Every Tuesday and Thursday I posted one to Hacker News and relevant subreddits. First day I got 1,000 people to the website. I set it up so you couldn’t even see ticket details without entering your email — the popup collected addresses before you got any info.
Those email addresses went into a sequence. They got post one, then post two, then post three. Each new post also went to Reddit, getting more subscribers. I made each speaker look like a hero — glowing articles that they shared with their companies. Employees shared it to be proud. That’s how we got to 2,000-5,000 daily visitors and eventually 10,000 email subscribers. Just me, in my San Francisco apartment kitchen.
For Trends — my paid research newsletter — I wrote a one-page Gumroad sales page telling the story of how Bezos saw the internet growing at 2,300% per year and said “nothing grows that fast unless it’s in a Petri dish.” I framed the product as: I’m going to find you the next Bezos-level insight. Early bird pricing: $100 for lifetime access instead of $300 per year.
I found the 300 most engaged people on The Hustle email list and sent it to them. I got on the phone with all 100 who signed up and asked why they did it and what they were looking for. Then I built the first report around their answers. 18 months later, Trends was doing $400-500K per month.
Shaan: Marshall, who built Shephard (an overseas hiring agency), did the same thing. Tweet one: “I’m launching a new business tomorrow — hint, it’s an agency.” Tweet two: “I’ll explain it in my newsletter.” Newsletter: personal story of how his business margins were 0% until he hired overseas, and how he went from barely profitable to a 15% margin.
The newsletter went to 12,000 people. 11% click rate on the link. Normal ad: 1-3% click rate. The story made it 10x more effective. That’s the power of revealing a problem over pitching a solution.
The method: personal story + sequential content — reveal the problem, not the solution. Let the story do the selling.
Method 8: David Blaine Spectacle (Sam — Milk Road) [01:10:00]
Sam: For Milk Road — the crypto newsletter — I had an audience I could have just announced it to. But I wanted to juice it. So I did what I call the David Blaine method.
David Blaine freezes himself in a block of ice. Buries himself underground. Flies away holding balloons. He creates a spectacle — a stunt that has stakes. There’s something on the line, and you genuinely don’t know if it’s going to work.
I put $1 million in a crypto wallet and announced publicly: I’m going to try to turn this $1 million into $10 million through trading, or go bust trying. Watch me.
I turned $1 million into $350,000 at the low point. And people watched that too — watching me lose money was just as entertaining as watching me win. The “build in public” concept works when there’s actually a narrative: hero, goal, obstacle, and stakes. Not just “I’ll share monthly updates.” Put something on the line.
Buffer and ConvertKit built their audiences this way — sharing revenue, salaries, everything. Pat Flynn did it monthly on Smart Passive Income. It works because extreme access plus stakes creates a story people want to follow.
The method: the David Blaine spectacle — call your shot publicly, put something on the line, and let people watch whether you make it.
The Recap [01:18:00]
Sam: So to summarize the methods:
- Piggyback — use existing platform traffic (Craigslist, Reddit, App Store)
- Floor-to-floor — brute force, hand-to-hand combat, just go get them
- The magnet — ultra-niche offer that self-selects the perfect early adopters
- Made-to-stick infographic — hyperlocal, brand-named, funny, built to share
- No-risk offer — eliminate the trust barrier by removing all downside for the customer
- Piss in the pond — find the smallest, most obsessed community and tell your underdog story
- Personal story + sequential content — reveal the problem, not the product
- David Blaine spectacle — public stunt, stakes on the line, build in public with a real narrative