How to Get Your First Users: The Minimum Evolvable Product

Here's a reality many founders overlook: most people aren't early adopters. Ask yourself—how many products do you use today where you were among the first 10 users? For most people, the answer is zero. Almost no one wants to be a startup's first paying customer. Yet every great product still manages to find a few people willing to take that leap.

The insight that Y Combinator shares with founders isn't about building a better pitch or a more polished product. It's about understanding that finding your first users is more of a search problem than a persuasion problem. You're not trying to convince sceptics. You're trying to find the rare individuals who are already predisposed to try new things—or who have such a burning problem that they'll give any potential solution a shot.

This shifts everything about how you should approach your early days.

At PQ Impact, we've helped dozens of startups navigate this critical early stage—from building their first product to finding the users who will shape its future. Here's what we've learned works.

What Is a Minimum Evolvable Product?

Beyond MVP

You've probably heard of the Minimum Viable Product. Build the smallest thing that works, ship it, and learn. It's good advice, but it's incomplete.

When you're starting out, you don't just need a minimum viable product. You need a Minimum Evolvable Product—something that can survive contact with a tiny group of people and adapt based on what they push it toward.

The earliest version of your product only needs to do one thing: survive contact with those first users. You're not building the final form. You're building something that can evolve.

This is a liberating realisation. Your product will change dramatically, so it doesn't have to be perfect from the start. What it ultimately becomes will depend on where you begin—and crucially, who you begin it with.

Why This Matters

Think of a startup as a phylogenetic tree. The root node is an amoeba. The leaf nodes are complex multicellular organisms like humans or dogs.

Almost every successful product on the market ran this evolutionary process. They morphed from an amoeba—basic functions, minimal features—to the maturity of a fully-evolved product with millions of users, a refined sales pitch, and clear value.

Early startups are more like amoebas. They have just the basic functions needed to get exposed to external pressures. From there, founders run an evolutionary search through the tree of potential future directions.

The path you take through that tree isn't random. It's determined by your early adopters.

MEP vs MVP vs MLP vs MMP: Which Approach Is Right?

You've likely encountered various "minimum product" frameworks. Here's how they compare:

MVP answers: "Does this solve the problem at all?" MEP answers: "Can this adapt to what we learn?" MLP answers:"Will users love this enough to tell others?" MMP answers: "Is this good enough to compete in the market?"

The key insight from Y Combinator is that MEP thinking is often more useful than MVP thinking in the earliest stages. You're not just trying to validate—you're trying to build something that can evolve based on what your early adopters teach you.

Most successful products start as MEPs, become MLPs for their early adopters, and eventually mature into MMPs for the broader market.

Why Finding Early Adopters Is a Search Problem

The Two Types of Early Adopters

Before you get discouraged about how few people want to try new products, understand that there are people who genuinely love being early adopters. They fall into two categories:

Type 1: The Natural Early Adopters

Some people simply enjoy trying new products. One YC partner, Gustaf, worked at Airbnb for years and loved testing products from startups, often bringing them into the company. These people exist in every organisation. They're the ones who get excited when a founder cold-emails them with something new.

Type 2: People With Burning Problems

Others have such an urgent issue that they're willing to give any new product a shot if it looks like it could make their life easier.

Here's a real example: When building an inference API, the YC team needed to ship fast and didn't want to deal with billing or public endpoints. Within three days, they found and paid a startup whose product solved that exact issue. They became that startup's first customer.

The startup's size didn't matter. Their reputation didn't matter. The problem did. So the team took a chance—and the startup delivered.

The Technology Adoption Curve

To understand why finding early adopters matters so much, it helps to know the classic Rogers Adoption Curve. Sociologist Everett Rogers identified five distinct groups in how populations adopt new innovations:

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Your job as a startup founder is to find and win that first 16%—the Innovators and Early Adopters. These are the only people who will give an unproven product from an unknown company a real chance.

The Early Majority won't touch you until you have case studies, reviews, and a track record. Don't waste time on them yet.

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The Lesson

Finding your first users is a search problem, not a persuasion problem.

You're looking for the Gustafs of the world—people who try new things—or the teams with burning needs that you can solve. You're not trying to convince the sceptical majority. You're trying to find the willing minority.

This has counterintuitive implications that most founders miss.

Counterintuitive Rules for Getting Early Users

1. Charge Real Money Early

This surprises many founders. "Shouldn't we offer it free to get initial traction?"

No. Here's why:

Early adopters and people with burning problems are rarely price-sensitive. They're not choosing you because you're cheap—they're choosing you because you might solve their problem.

The goal of charging isn't revenue. It's feedback. And paying customers give sharper feedback than free users ever will.

Think about it: you're more likely to get detailed, honest feedback from an angry customer who paid real money than from someone who isn't invested enough to pay anything.

Free users will tell you what you want to hear. Paying customers will tell you the truth.

FAQ: Can you actually earn money from a minimum viable product?

Yes—and you should. Here's why charging early matters:

• Validation signal — Payment is the strongest form of validation. Someone saying "I'd pay for this" means nothing compared to someone actually paying.
• Better feedback quality — Paying customers have skin in the game. They'll tell you what's broken because they want it fixed.
• Sustainability — Even small revenue extends your runway and proves the business model works.
• Customer quality filter — Free attracts everyone, including people who aren't your target market. Charging filters for serious users.

Start with a price that feels slightly uncomfortable. If no one pushes back, raise it. If everyone pushes back, you might have a product problem, not a pricing problem.

2. Use Targeted, Personal Outreach

The ways you find early adopters don't look like how you find normal customers.

A billboard won't reach them. Generic marketing won't work. Instead:

• Targeted cold emails to specific people you've researched
• Direct messages on LinkedIn or Twitter to people in your target niche
• Knocking on doors—sometimes literally
• Personal introductions through your network

Early adopter acquisition is intimate and specific, not broad and scalable. That comes later.

A structured approach to lead generation can help you identify and reach the right people systematically—without wasting time on those who aren't ready.

3. Launch Early

This is something Y Combinator has preached from the beginning, and it's more important than ever.

In the early days, you don't know much about who your early users are. You want to engineer a wide surface area for them to find you.

Every day you wait to launch is a day you're not learning who your early adopters might be. Ship something—anything that works—and let the early adopters reveal themselves.

A clear marketing strategy ensures you're reaching the right people from day one.

4. Study Your Early Users Like an Anthropologist

When you find your first users, treat them like a hidden civilisation you've just discovered.

• How do they make decisions?
• Why would they make the strange choice to trust you?
• What do they actually want (versus what they say they want)?
• How do they talk about their problems?

You want to understand how they think at a deep level. This knowledge will shape everything that comes next.

5. Experiment Fast and Don't Fear Churn

You should be running constant experiments:

• Pricing changes
• Landing page variations
• Onboarding flows
• Feature additions and removals

At the same time, talk to your early users and try to make them love the product. But don't stress if you lose one of them.

If you annoy someone, you can usually fix it—the relationship is personal at this stage. And if they churn? That's fine too. There are plenty of others who haven't even heard of you yet.

This is one of the advantages startups have over big companies. When you run a bad experiment, no one writes about it. You're fighting irrelevance, not headlines.

Why B2B Often Beats B2C (Especially in AI)

The Economics of Early Users

Your choice of early users shapes more than your product—it shapes your entire business model.

Consider the numbers: The average personal software spend is tiny. Even for tech-savvy individuals, it might be £150/month total across all consumer subscriptions.

Meanwhile, a single corporate tool can cost more than that entire personal budget. And companies have corporate cards loaded with multiple tools at that price point.

The AI Era Amplifier

In the AI era, this gap matters even more.

Consumer apps can struggle because:

• Advertising often doesn't cover AI inference costs
• Subscriptions have to squeeze into an already small personal budget
• Users expect consumer software to be free or very cheap

This is why many AI founders choose to start by selling to:

• Prosumers — professionals who pay for tools personally
• Businesses — where budgets are larger and ROI is clearer
• High-value users — like doctors, lawyers, or executives who have high advertising value or willingness to pay

Of course, many great consumer companies will still be built. But if you're starting out and wondering where to find your first paying users, B2B and prosumer markets are often more forgiving.

Understanding these dynamics early can save months of misdirected effort. If you're uncertain about which market to target, strategic marketing guidance can help you make the right call before you commit.

How Early Users Shape Your Product's DNA

Path Dependency Is Real

Here's the insight that changes how you think about your first users: Your early adopters don't just give you feedback. They end up steering how your product evolves over time.

Product evolution is path-dependent. The direction you go depends on who you started with.

The Tesla Case Study

Consider Tesla's journey. Specifically, their "amoeba": the Tesla Roadster.

The conventional story is that Tesla needed a high-margin product to fund the CapEx investment required for the Model S, and eventually the Model 3 and Y. That's probably true.

But there's a second interpretation: Tesla was searching for early adopters.

They wanted to find the people crazy enough to buy:

• An impractical $150,000 car
• That didn't go very far on a charge
• That couldn't fit much inside
• That had nowhere to publicly charge
• That looked strange

Who were these people? Tech enthusiasts who valued innovation, acceleration, and being first—more than comfort, practicality, or convention.

Timeline:

• 2008: Roadster launch — Finding early adopters willing to pay premium for innovation
• 2012: Model S — Expanding to luxury market, still prioritising tech and performance
• 2017: Model 3 — Mass market, but DNA shaped by early adopter preferences
• 2020: Model Y — Mainstream success built on early adopter foundation

The Downstream Effects

Now look at today's Tesla Model Y, a mass-market vehicle:

• Faster 0-60 than a Lamborghini
• Better tech than a BMW
• But worse suspension and comfort than a Toyota

Why? Because early adopters cared much more about tech and acceleration than comfort.

Would a mass-market vehicle designed in a vacuum have a 0-60 of under three seconds? Probably not. But it's an outcome of the evolutionary search algorithm that Tesla ran.

If early adopters had been willing to pay $150,000 for a slow, plush vehicle, Tesla's cars would look very different today.

A B2B Example: Slack

Consider Slack's evolution. Their early adopters were tech companies and startups—teams comfortable with new tools and allergic to email.

These early users shaped Slack's DNA:

• Integrations with developer tools (GitHub, Jira)
• Casual, emoji-friendly communication style
• Channel-based organisation over hierarchical folders

When Slack expanded to enterprise, they had to add features like compliance tools and SSO. But the core product DNA—informal, integration-heavy, developer-friendly—remained. Enterprise customers adapted to Slack's culture, not the other way around.

What This Means for You

Your first users aren't just customers. They're co-creators of your product's future.

Choose them wisely, because:

• Their feedback will shape your roadmap
• Their preferences will influence your positioning
• Their use cases will determine your feature priorities
• Their willingness to pay will set your pricing expectations

The product you end up with in five years will be a direct descendant of the product you build for your first users today.

The Minimum Evolvable Product Framework

What Makes a Product "Evolvable"?

An evolvable product has these characteristics:

1. Simple Core It does one thing reasonably well—well enough that someone with a burning problem will use it despite its limitations.

2. Fast Iteration Capability You can change it quickly based on feedback. This usually means:

• Simple architecture
• Minimal technical debt
• Founder-led development (at first)

3. Direct User Access You can talk to every user personally. You know their names, their problems, their feedback.

4. Feedback Loops Clear mechanisms for users to tell you what's working and what isn't.

5. Room to Grow The core concept can expand in multiple directions based on what you learn.

What to Build First

When deciding what to include in your first version, ask:

• What's the smallest thing that solves the core problem? Not elegantly—just functionally.
• What can I ship this week? Not this quarter. This week.
• What will generate the most learning? Prioritise features that will teach you about your users.
• What's easiest to change later? Avoid architectural decisions that lock you in.

The goal isn't to impress anyone. The goal is to survive contact with early users and adapt.

Practical Tactics for the Search

Where to Find Early Adopters

Online Communities

• Niche subreddits related to your problem space
• Discord servers for your target industry
• Slack communities (many industries have them)
• Twitter/X communities around specific topics
• Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Product Hunt

Professional Networks

• LinkedIn (targeted, not spammy)
• Industry conferences and meetups
• Professional associations
• Alumni networks

Direct Research

• Who's complaining about this problem publicly?
• Who's using hacky workarounds?
• Who's written blog posts about the pain point?
• Who's asked questions on Stack Overflow, Quora, or Reddit?

The Cold Outreach Template

When reaching out cold, keep it short and specific:

Subject: [Specific problem] for [their specific situation]

Hi [Name],

I'm building [product] to help [target users] with [specific problem].

I noticed [something specific about them that suggests they have this problem].

Would you be open to trying an early version? I'm looking for feedback from people who actually deal with this.

[Your name]

What makes this work:

• It's short
• It's specific to them
• It acknowledges you're early
• It asks for feedback, not commitment

Signs You've Found an Early Adopter

• They respond quickly
• They ask detailed questions about how it works
• They describe their problem in depth (without prompting)
• They offer to pay before you bring up pricing
• They suggest features (lots of them)
• They introduce you to others with the same problem

Signs You Haven't

• Polite but non-committal responses
• "Sounds interesting, keep me posted"
• Questions focused on your company (funding, team size) rather than the product
• Requests for extensive documentation before trying anything
• Need for multiple approvals or stakeholder buy-in

When you find the latter, move on quickly. You're searching, not convincing.

The Early Adopter Decision Tree: Move fast, don't try to convince skeptics.

Useful Frameworks for Early Traction

The 3-3-3 Rule

A simple framework for startup marketing focus:

• 3 channels — Don't spread yourself thin. Pick only 3 acquisition channels to focus on.
• 3 months — Give each channel at least 3 months before deciding if it works.
• 3 metrics — Track only 3 key metrics per channel to avoid analysis paralysis.

For early-stage startups, those 3 channels are typically: personal network, cold outreach, and one community (Reddit, Twitter, or industry-specific).

The 100 Users Framework

Before worrying about growth, focus on getting 100 users who genuinely love your product:

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Build momentum

If you can't get 100 passionate users, you have a product problem, not a distribution problem.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake 1: Trying to Convert Sceptics

If someone isn't excited after a short explanation, they're probably not an early adopter. Don't spend weeks trying to convince them. Spend those weeks finding someone who gets it immediately.

Mistake 2: Building for the Mass Market Too Early

Your first product shouldn't appeal to everyone. It should appeal intensely to a small group. Broaden later.

Mistake 3: Waiting for the Product to Be "Ready"

The product will never be ready. Ship when it works at all, then evolve.

Mistake 4: Ignoring Who Your Early Users Actually Are

If your early users are different from who you expected, that's data. Maybe you should follow where the market is pulling you.

Mistake 5: Treating Early Users Like Regular Customers

Early users aren't buying a product. They're joining an experiment. Treat the relationship accordingly—more intimate, more collaborative, more forgiving of their feedback.

Mistake 6: Not Charging

Free users aren't committed. Their feedback is less valuable. Charge something, even if it's small.

Mistake 7: Scaling Acquisition Before Finding Product-Market Fit

Don't pour money into marketing until you've found users who love your product. You'll just be scaling indifference.

The Search Algorithm: A Summary

Here's the framework for finding your first users:

Phase 1: Prepare

• Build a Minimum Evolvable Product—simple, functional, changeable
• Identify where early adopters for your problem might congregate
• Prepare for personal, targeted outreach

Phase 2: Search

• Launch early to create surface area
• Use direct outreach to potential early adopters
• Look for people with burning problems or natural early-adopter tendencies
• Move quickly past anyone who isn't excited

Phase 3: Learn

• Study your early users like an anthropologist
• Charge real money to get real feedback
• Run constant experiments
• Don't fear churn—learn from it

Phase 4: Evolve

• Let your early users shape the product direction
• Understand that evolution is path-dependent
• Build what your early adopters need, not what you imagined

Phase 5: Expand

• Once you've found product-market fit with early adopters, broaden your search
• Use what you learned to find adjacent audiences
• Scale what's working

Conclusion

The Minimum Evolvable Product philosophy is ultimately freeing.

You don't have to build the perfect product. You don't have to convince sceptics. You don't have to have everything figured out.

You just have to find a few people willing to take a chance on you, build something that survives contact with them, and evolve based on what they push you toward.

Your product will change a lot. What it becomes will depend on where you begin and who you begin it with.

So start the search. Your first users are out there—not waiting to be convinced, but waiting to be found.

Ready to Find Your First Users?

At PQ Impact, we help startups move from idea to early traction—fast. We've guided dozens of founders through the critical early stages, and we know what separates the startups that find their users from those that struggle in silence.

How we can help:

• MVP Development: Build your Minimum Evolvable Product with a team that understands speed matters more than perfection.
• Lead Generation: Find and reach your early adopters systematically, not randomly.
• Marketing Strategy: Develop a go-to-market approach that targets the right 16% from day one.
• Fractional CMO Services: Get senior strategic guidance without the full-time commitment.

Let's talk about your startup →

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