Whether they found you by coming in through the ether, or whether you went out and pounded the pavement (or phone, or email, or…) and sourced and closed them. And now they’re paying you – profitably. Because here’s the thing. Ten customers may not seem like much. We called these guys “beer money” in the early days at EchoSign. Ten customers was $200 a month. Didn’t really pay the bills on four engineers and three other guys. Barely paid for beer. But … Ten is actually amazing. Yes, you may still fail, of course, because of cashflow issues. But 10 is your first sign of pre­success – even though it’s very likely that at least one will turn out to be a dud, while you’re learning which customers you can make successful, or not, in a contract. Because it means three things: First, you can definitely get 20 … and then 100. I mean if you can get 10 unaffiliated customers to pay you (no small feat), I guarantee you can get 20. And if you keep going at it, you will get at least to 100. And then 200, at least. At a minimum, you can keep doubling and doubling. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s possible. Second, more importantly, it’s amazing you got those 10. 10 is not a small number! Because why the heck should they trust you, and pay for your product? It stands on its own without you needing a prior relationship. It’s a huge vote of confidence. Maybe you were on TechCrunch, Reddit, Bob’s Insurance Newsletter, or some blog – great. But in the real world, with Mainstream Buyers, no one has ever heard of you. You’re not “the thing” all their friends are buying, making them feel that without it they’re being left behind. Third, it means you built something real. Something valued. Most importantly, something you can build on. These 10 customers will give you a roadmap, feedback, and indeed, the path to 1,000 more customers — if you listen carefully. You won’t heed all their advice, of course, but the feedback from these first 10 customers won’t be from outliers. It will be transformational. I guarantee it. Because your 1,000th customer most likely will be just like your 10th, in concept and spirit, in category and core problem solved, in pain point at least. At EchoSign, the first unaffiliated customer was a distributed sales manager of a telesales team. The exact industry she was in was unusual (debt consolidation), but digging deeper, the actual use case was exactly the same, in spirit if not in workflow, as 80%+ of the customers that came later. The same as Facebook, as Twitter, as Groupon, as Google, as Verizon, as BT, as Oracle … The same as all of them. The same core “goodness” that you’ve built attracts all of them. Of course, you’re going to need to build tons more features, mature your product dramatically, etc. But the core will be the same goodness as Customers 1­10 experienced. Trust us. 10 customers may not pay the bills. But if you got them from scratch, you have the very