From Zero to 1,000 Customers: The Brutal Truth About Early-Stage SaaS Growth

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Forget Building a Product - Distribution Is the Real Game

Building in the AI era has never been easier. AI-first tooling, vibe coding, and no-code workflows let teams ship faster than ever before. But here’s the catch: building isn’t the hard part. Distribution is.

Jacob Bank, founder of Relay.app and former product lead for Gmail and Google Calendar, breaks down the raw, uncomfortable reality of going from zero to 1,000 paying SaaS customers - and what it really takes when you don’t have a billion-user base behind you.

The False Confidence of a First-Time Founder

Jacob’s early trajectory - Stanford PhD dropout, successful exit (Timeful), product leadership at Google - gave him confidence. But when it came to building and scaling a new product from scratch? He got hit hard with reality.

“I was embarrassed by how naive I was about go-to-market. Even basic techniques eluded me.”

Stage 1: Zero to 10 Customers

Goal: Validate the idea. Fast feedback. No fluff.

What worked:

The Mom Test: Used to avoid ego-flattering feedback and uncover real user pain.
One-on-one interviews: 10 targeted users are enough to get signal.
Communities like Reddit: Non-promotional, value-first engagement.
Founder’s Network: Seed users from warm intros.
Avoided: Cold email - it flopped. 10,000 emails = 1 paying user.

“Nothing happens unless you make it happen.”

Stage 2: 10 to 100 Customers

Goal: Go from signal to traction. Time to grind channels.

What worked:

Partner Marketing: Joint webinars + marketplace listings (e.g., SmartSuite) drove real conversions.
Bottom-of-Funnel SEO: Alternatives pages (“Zapier alternatives”) drove consistent, targeted traffic.
Product Hunt: One-time boost, not scalable.

What didn’t scale:

Community posts and founder hustle didn’t move the needle beyond early traction.
Programmatic SEO lost to entrenched players like Zapier.

“If the market leader dominates a zero-sum channel (like SEO), find a different one.”

Stage 3: 100 to 1,000 Customers

Goal: Build a compounding, scalable growth engine.

What broke through:

LinkedIn virality: A single post demoing an AI agent (LinkedIn profile lookup) went viral → 600K impressions.
Repeatable content model: Concise value props + 4-sec GIFs + clear CTA = scalable top-of-funnel.
YouTube + Email: Mid-funnel depth. Educates and converts post-discovery.
Community + Word-of-Mouth: A 700-member engaged user base shares templates and spreads Relay organically.

“LinkedIn is now our #1 top-of-funnel driver. But I’m still leaving value on the table by not following up with 5,000 comments.”

What Didn’t Work (Yet)

Affiliate programs: 7% of revenue - good, but not explosive.
Implementation partners: Great feedback, modest volume.
Other social platforms: TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Twitter? No consistent traction yet.

Framework for Distribution-First Thinking

Pick your current milestone
(10 → 100, 100 → 1,000, etc.)
List 3-4 growth channels you can rapidly test.
Measure. Double down. Discard.
Re-run the process every time you hit your next customer milestone.
Ask: Can this channel scale with my user base?
If not, it’s a short-term crutch - not a growth engine.

Don’t Run from Competition - Run Toward It

“It’s way easier to explain why you’re better than Zapier than to explain something new in the abstract.”

Relay.app embraced going head-to-head with incumbents. Not by mimicking them - but by building for a user they were underserving: non-technical teams that need automation, visibility, and AI-native tools.

The Only Metric That Matters: Retention

“Cohort retention is the only real way you know you’ve hit product-market fit.”

Everything else - hype, impressions, even revenue - is noise without it. Relay didn’t build for the trend. They built for staying power.

Final Takeaways

Early-stage SaaS isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing the right few things—relentlessly.
Nail one channel at a time. Get everything you can out of it before chasing the next.
Forget growth hacks. Build something people keep coming back to.

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