“Investors don’t want to be convinced — they want to be shown.”
That’s the lesson Jeremy Long, a second-time founder, learned the hard way after burning six weeks on a glossy pitch deck and raising... absolutely nothing. “I spent more time building a narrative than a product,” he admits. “But once we had 12 users paying us $30 a month? Suddenly investors were calling me.”
Long’s experience isn’t unique — it’s instructive. Early-stage founders often over-index on storytelling, aesthetics, and strategy decks without realizing that the most powerful fundraising tool is evidence of traction. Not hundreds of users. Not even revenue. Just 10 real people using your product because it solves a real problem.
🚀 Why 10 Customers Are the Tipping Point
Getting your first ten customers is hard. That’s the point.
It means you’ve done something that 90% of startups haven’t:
Identified a specific pain point,
Found people who feel that pain deeply,
Convinced them to try your solution — before you had prestige or press.
This early validation does several things:
Signals demand: If 10 people want it, 100 might.
Surfaces insights: Those 10 people will teach you more than any advisor.
Builds investor trust: Real usage proves your assumptions aren’t just “hypotheses.”
“If you’re pre-revenue but have people actively using your app every week,” says Anna Cho, a pre-seed investor at TinyCap Ventures, “you’re lightyears ahead of someone with just a pitch.”
🛠️ Build → Talk → Iterate (Repeat)
Early traction doesn’t require a finished product. In fact, half-working solutions that solve 80% of the problem are often better at generating useful feedback.
Take BoxyDrop, a logistics SaaS startup. The founder, a former warehouse manager, launched the first version as a spreadsheet + Zapier hack. “I charged five clients $25/month for something duct-taped together,” he recalls. “But I learned what they actually needed — and what they didn’t care about at all.”
That cycle — build something tiny, get a few users, fix the biggest pain points — is infinitely more valuable than theoretical roadmaps.
🧠 Why This Beats a Deck
A pitch deck is a promise. A customer is proof.
Decks are useful — but without traction, they become speculative fiction. And the earlier you are, the more important that distinction is.
Here’s what traction says that a deck can’t:
“This pain point is real.”
“People care enough to try (or pay for) a solution.”
“We know who we’re building for, and we’re in the trenches.”
Every investor will ask some version of: “But how do you know people want this?”
Having 10 users lets you answer with confidence: “Because they told me. And they’re still here.”
💬 Real Founders, Real Lessons
“My first customer came from a cold DM on Reddit. We talked for two hours. He’s still with us, 18 months later.”
— Zara Lane, founder of DayTracker (B2B wellness platform)
“Our first 6 clients came from a Notion page and a Calendly link. We hadn’t even written a single line of code yet.”
— Luis Ortega, founder of Tranchly (B2B payments)
These aren’t unicorns. These are lean, indie, underestimated founders. And they’re doing it right.
📌 The Takeaway
Forget trying to “raise” your way into momentum. Use momentum to raise.
Before you build a deck, build a list of 10 people who care about what you’re solving. Message them. Call them. Offer to solve the problem manually if needed.
It’s not flashy. It’s not scalable. But it’s real.
And real wins.
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