Getting Customers
First customer contracts
Choose a design partner who can do the work
Section titled “Choose a design partner who can do the work”The October 14 member roundtable added a selection question before negotiating the first contract: can this customer help you learn while the product is unfinished? A recognizable logo is less useful if the team will only engage after the product is ready.
Look for a real use case, access to the people doing the work, an owner who can coordinate feedback, and willingness to try an evolving product. Confirm the commitment in the conversation before treating enthusiasm as a design partnership. Ask what they can test, when they can test it, and how you will review the result together. This is our synthesis of the discussion, not a prescribed meeting frequency.
Some enterprise customers can fund useful development; others bring a long approval process without access to users. Qualify the actual relationship and your capacity to deliver. When a customer also wants co-development or technology rights, review strategic partnerships and IP before committing.
Full price, visible discount
Section titled “Full price, visible discount”The playbook from office hours: never write a $25K contract as a $25K contract. Write it as the full price with a discount applied. Two reasons — the renewal negotiation starts from the real number, and the discount becomes currency. What you trade it for:
- Deployment and utilization minimums — they have to actually use the thing
- Biweekly consolidated feedback — one organized channel, not scattered emails
- Agreed before/during/after KPIs — so the success story is measurable
- A pre-approved case study — contracted, not hoped for
The roundtable version of the same idea went further: discounts as deep as 90% for a first customer are fine if the contract obligates the proof points — reference calls, a case study, even trade-show appearances. The later sales motion writes itself: the first buyer paid the discounted price; everyone after pays full.
The single best thing you can get from them is not money, it’s actually the story of why it was so great.
Counter on duration, not price
Section titled “Counter on duration, not price”When a buyer lowballs, don’t defend the number — shorten the term. Take the $25K, but for six months instead of twelve. A year is too long for a trial anyway; three to six months is normal, and the shorter clock puts renewal pressure on the buyer, not you.
Anchor price against their existing spend
Section titled “Anchor price against their existing spend”Price discovery starts with quantifying the buyer’s current pain in dollars: “you’re already spending $500K a year on this problem” makes your price read as a fraction of existing cost rather than a new line item. If you can’t find that number in discovery, you’re not done with discovery.
What the contract signals to investors
Section titled “What the contract signals to investors”If somebody has a bunch of revenue, but very low utilization, that’s not an investable business.
At pre-seed, traction quality beats the revenue number: adoption, reference-able happy customers, and utilization are the evidence. A structured first contract manufactures exactly that evidence. See also How seed VCs actually decide on why one big-logo pilot is weaker than several mid-size deployments.
This playbook is the design-partner motion: you are still manufacturing the first story. Once a customer is buying the product as prescribed and using a paid pilot to de-risk rollout, switch to Pilots that convert — one to two months, always paid, success criteria in writing, and the engagement ends with a purchase order rather than a hope they renew.
The same discount-for-commitment structure is also the non-dilutive way out of a pre-revenue catch-22: verbal “if you build it, we’ll buy” and no investor traction. Pre-sell at a steep discount — Tesla-style pre-orders — for enough cash to build and deliver the first units, with reference-customer obligations in the contract. That motion showed up again in the runway session.
Sources
Section titled “Sources”Earlier sessions: fundraising office hours (May 2026) with an exited founder on contract structuring and price discovery; a member roundtable (May 2026) on converting early customers into proof points; a working session (Sep 2026) that split this design-partner motion from a paid customer pilot that has to end in a purchase order; and a runway working session (Sep 2026) that used steep pre-orders as non-dilutive cash to get out of a build-it-first catch-22.
Additional source: anonymized member roundtable, October 14, 2026, on selecting a design partner able to commit to learning and feedback. Participant identities and private customer situations are omitted.