MicroFounder - Find customers on marketplaces 🛒

The first big question for microfounders is about how to come up with the idea. The second big question is about finding the first customers.

We have previously covered Twitter, side projects, and cold emails as some of the popular sources of initial clients. One of the other ways is to get your startup listed on marketplaces. Popular marketplaces – like Shopify – get millions of visits per month.

"Most of the initial customers just came from being very early to Airtable’s marketplace." – 🎣 Data Fetcher ($9k/mo) by Andy Cloke

After finding the initial customers, Andy started working with content marketing – mostly blog and YouTube – and around 60% of the customers come from there. But Airtable store is still bringing in rest of the 40%:

"The majority of people still just find Data Fetcher in the marketplace."

At the first thought this seems to be working only with microstartups built on top of other platforms, like Airtable or Notion, but there’s another way to get listed by having developed an integration with the marketplace owner.

Cartfuel is one example. They have built an integration with HubStop which got them listed on the marketplace, and this is one of the top channels for their new customers:

"Blogging, YouTube and the Hubspot marketplace." – 🛒 Cartfuel ($1k/mo) by Jay

But as with everything, it’s a good idea to work with multiple channels, as not everyone will get the same amount of exposure and while you may get the initial customers from there, it may not last forever:

"Yes you can use only Shopify App Store if you are on the first page, but don’t rely only on that." – 🛍 Widebundle ($30k/mo) by Mat De Sousa