Data study
Where founders found their first customers
413 first-hand founder stories from 22 startup subreddits, 2011 to September 2026: which channel brought the first customers, how that changed, and how B2B differs from B2C.
By Dmytro Krutytskyi, KissMyPost ResearchPublished Data through September 20266 min read
Short answer
In 2025-2026, 35% of founders who said on Reddit where their first customers came from named Reddit itself, 19% other online communities (Discord, Slack, Facebook groups, forums) and 16% people they already knew. Product Hunt brought the first customers in 4% of these stories and Hacker News in under 1%. In 2011-2019 the picture was different: marketplaces such as the App Store, Etsy and Amazon led with 28%, and Reddit was 4%. One caveat matters more than any single number: these stories were posted on Reddit, so Reddit is over-counted.
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What founders actually said
I took every text post in 22 founder subreddits (r/Entrepreneur, r/SaaS, r/startups, r/SideProject, r/EntrepreneurRideAlong, r/smallbusiness and 16 smaller ones) that mentions first customers, users, clients or sales. After removing known bot accounts and duplicate cross-posts, that is 24,911 posts from 2011 to September 2026. I took a random 500 from each of 6 periods, 3,000 in total, and had every one classified (see the method below). 543 of them tell the author's own story and name where the first customers actually came from. 130 of those were ads for a product or service, so I dropped them. That leaves 413 stories.
Stories posted in founder subreddits on Reddit, so Reddit is over-counted. Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts.
Reddit went from a minor answer to the most common one. In 2011-2019, 3 of 76 founders (3.9%) said their first customers came from Reddit. In 2025 it was 28 of 73 (38.4%), and in 2026 so far 18 of 56 (32.1%).
Each point is one period's random sample of stories. Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts.
The personal network is the one channel that barely moves: 21.1% in 2011-2019 and 16.1% in 2026. Friends, former colleagues and an old employer brought the first customers in 16% to 21% of stories in every period. Marketplaces fell from 27.6% to between 4% and 15%, and paid ads from 11.8% to 1.4% in 2025.
Launch days are a small part of it
Product Hunt and Hacker News get a lot of attention from founders planning a launch. In these stories they rarely delivered the first customers: Product Hunt in 4% of 2025-2026 stories, Hacker News in under 1%. Across all years, 320 of 413 founders (77.5%) named exactly one channel. First customers usually came from one place the founder kept working, not from a launch spread across ten sites.
B2B and B2C start in different places
Stories where the buyers were clearly businesses or consumers. Source: KissMyPost analysis of public Reddit posts.
For B2B founders (167 stories), the top sources were people they already knew (25%), Reddit (21%), other communities (16%), meeting people in person (13%), LinkedIn (12%) and cold email (9%). Paid ads came up once (0.6%). For B2C founders (176 stories), marketplaces led (27%), followed by people they knew and paid ads (16.5% each), then Reddit and organic social video (13% and 13%). Cold email came up once.
| Channel | 2011-2019 | 2020-2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | B2B | B2C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stories (n) | 76 | 72 | 66 | 70 | 73 | 56 | 167 | 176 |
| 3.9% | 12.5% | 12.1% | 18.6% | 38.4% | 32.1% | 21.0% | 12.5% | |
| Other communities | 6.6% | 12.5% | 6.1% | 12.9% | 20.5% | 17.9% | 15.6% | 6.8% |
| People they knew | 21.1% | 20.8% | 21.2% | 18.6% | 16.4% | 16.1% | 25.1% | 16.5% |
| X (Twitter) | 2.6% | 11.1% | 7.6% | 12.9% | 16.4% | 8.9% | 6.0% | 8.0% |
| Marketplaces | 27.6% | 13.9% | 15.2% | 4.3% | 6.8% | 14.3% | 5.4% | 26.7% |
| Social video | 6.6% | 12.5% | 10.6% | 4.3% | 6.8% | 10.7% | 4.2% | 12.5% |
| Cold email | 3.9% | 2.8% | 0.0% | 7.1% | 4.1% | 8.9% | 9.0% | 0.6% |
| Partners | 3.9% | 0.0% | 6.1% | 1.4% | 2.7% | 7.1% | 1.8% | 3.4% |
| 2.6% | 8.3% | 10.6% | 10.0% | 4.1% | 5.4% | 12.0% | 2.8% | |
| In person | 9.2% | 9.7% | 7.6% | 7.1% | 5.5% | 3.6% | 13.2% | 4.0% |
| Cold DMs | 1.3% | 2.8% | 3.0% | 2.9% | 6.8% | 1.8% | 5.4% | 1.1% |
| Product Hunt | 2.6% | 4.2% | 10.6% | 10.0% | 8.2% | 0.0% | 7.8% | 5.1% |
| SEO / content | 5.3% | 1.4% | 1.5% | 5.7% | 2.7% | 5.4% | 4.2% | 3.4% |
| Paid ads | 11.8% | 12.5% | 7.6% | 8.6% | 1.4% | 5.4% | 0.6% | 16.5% |
| Directories | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.0% | 2.9% | 1.4% | 1.8% | 0.6% | 0.0% |
| Hacker News | 2.6% | 4.2% | 0.0% | 4.3% | 1.4% | 0.0% | 3.6% | 1.7% |
| Press | 5.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.8% | 1.1% |
| Other | 2.6% | 2.8% | 3.0% | 5.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.3% |
A story can name several channels, so columns add up to more than 100%. All-years shares in the text are weighted by the number of candidate posts in each period.
What to do with this
- B2B: list everyone you have worked with and every place your buyers already talk. People you know, communities, meeting in person, LinkedIn and cold email cover most B2B first customers here. Ads almost never did. Audiences keeps that list of places in one spot.
- B2C: put the product where buyers already shop. Marketplaces and app stores were the top B2C source, and B2C is where paid ads show up at all (16.5% of B2C stories, 0.6% of B2B).
- Treat Reddit as conversations, not a launch. The stories that credit Reddit describe answering threads and posting progress in the founder's own words. Find Subs shows where your buyers already talk. Founder subreddits remove posts that read like ads, and 24% of the channel stories in this sample were ads.
- Don't plan your first customers around a launch day. In 2025-2026, Product Hunt came up in 4% of stories and Hacker News in under 1%.
- Pick one channel and stay with it. 77% of founders named a single source.
Limits
- These are stories posted on Reddit. Founders who found customers on Reddit are more likely to write about it there, so Reddit's share is inflated. This measures what founders on Reddit report, not where all startups find customers.
- Ads push Reddit up further: with the 130 ad posts included, Reddit's share across all years rises from 19.1% to 23.4%.
- Each period is a random sample of 500 posts, so a single period's share can be off by up to about 13 points either way (95% interval). The direction of the Reddit rise is clear; its exact level in any one year is not.
- Stories are self-reported. "First customers" sometimes means the first sale and sometimes the first 100 users.
- 70 of the 413 stories don't say whether the buyers were businesses or consumers; they are left out of the B2B and B2C split.
Method
Candidates: text posts in 22 founder subreddits that contain "first", an optional number, and customers, users, clients, sales or subscribers, from 2011 to September 2026. I removed accounts on a known-bot list and kept one copy when the same author posted the same title in several subreddits. Sample: 500 random posts per period (2011-2019, 2020-2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026). Classification: two independent language-model judges read every post (title plus up to 1,800 characters around the first mention) and marked whether it is the author's own story with a channel that actually brought the first customers, whether it is an ad, which channels, and B2B or B2C. They agreed on 2,616 of 3,000 posts (87.2%); a stronger model settled the other 384. I checked 40 random final verdicts by hand: 36 were fully correct and 39 of 40 were right on whether the post is a first-customer story. Shares across all years are weighted by each period's number of candidate posts.
If you spot a mistake, tell me and I'll fix it here with a dated note.
Questions people ask
Where do most startups get their first customers?
In 413 founder stories posted on Reddit from 2011 to 2026, the most common sources in 2025-2026 were Reddit (35%), other online communities (19%) and the founder's personal network (16%). In 2011-2019 marketplaces led (28%). The stories come from Reddit, so Reddit is over-counted.
Does Product Hunt bring first customers?
Rarely, in these stories: 4% of 2025-2026 founder stories credit Product Hunt with their first customers, and under 1% credit Hacker News.
What is the best channel for first B2B customers?
In 167 B2B stories: people the founder already knew (25%), Reddit (21%), other communities (16%), meeting in person (13%), LinkedIn (12%) and cold email (9%). Paid ads: 0.6%.
How were the stories classified?
Two independent language-model judges read every post, a stronger model settled the 384 disagreements, and I checked 40 final verdicts by hand (36 fully correct).
The data
The counts behind this article are in these files. They're free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; please credit KissMyPost and link to this page.
- CSVChannels by period, 2011 to 2026Founder stories naming each first-customer channel in each of six periods, plus 2025-2026 and all-years weighted shares.
- CSVB2B vs B2CStories naming each first-customer channel, for B2B and for B2C founders.
- PNGMain chart, 1600 × 1000The then-and-now chart on this page as an image.
This study uses the same data as KissMyPost, a Reddit analytics tool. Its search shows where any phrase of up to three words, a brand name included, came up in Reddit posts and comments back to 2005: by month, by subreddit, and in the threads themselves. More from the same data: how often people talk about brand mentions and the biggest subreddits.
Check your own subreddit
See when your subreddit is most active, what gets posts removed and what its readers talk about.
About the author
Dmytro Krutytskyi is the founder of KissMyPost, a Reddit analytics tool. He studies what online communities talk about, who writes in them and how audiences overlap, and writes up what the data shows here, with the method and the numbers. Questions about the data, or need a cut we didn't publish? Write to him directly.
Cite this study
Krutytskyi, D. (2026). Where founders found their first customers. KissMyPost Research. https://kissmypost.com/research/where-founders-found-first-customers