Book page Appendix F: First Customer Path Worksheet

Appendix F

First Customer Path Worksheet

Introduced in Chapter 20. Reused in Chapter 24.

“Get your first customer” is a chain of decisions, most of which founders make by default. The path makes each one explicit and asks for evidence rather than assumption. Enter at the first step where the word “evidence” is doing more work than the evidence can support.

buyer → paid problem → smallest offer → price and commitment test → skeptical-buyer check → conversation → buying decision

For one real buyer, complete each step with observed information:

  1. Buyer. Who, by name or by observable conditions, owns the consequence of the problem and can act? How do you reach them? What evidence supports this?
  2. Paid problem. What are they already spending, doing, or risking because of it? Use Appendix B. What is the cost in their terms?
  3. Smallest offer. What single bounded outcome could this buyer evaluate and purchase within a clear scope? State it without naming a feature unless the feature explains the outcome.
  4. Price and commitment test. What number, what terms, what ask? What did the buyer do when they heard it?
  5. Skeptical-buyer check. Appendix E, applied to this buyer. What is the strongest reason they would decline, and what did you do about it?
  6. Conversation. Through what path did it happen? What was asked, clearly? What did the buyer say and do?
  7. Buying decision. Yes, no, or deferred. The stated reason. The commitment made, if any.

Record. Keep one row per buyer with the answers above. It is the evidence record the book refers to, and it is what makes Appendix G possible.

Repeat or revise. After each decision, run the same path with the next similar buyer if the evidence says it is working. Change one step if the decision showed that step was wrong. Do not change three steps at once.

Self-serve products. The steps do not change; where they happen does. The buyer is defined by in-product behavior, the paid problem by what users abandon or pay for elsewhere, the offer by what is legible on a pricing page in four seconds, the commitment test by the checkout, the conversation by onboarding and first emails, and the record by instrumentation. Find the cohort that reached the price step and treat what distinguishes it as the buyer definition.