I followed some invaluable advice from Arvid Kahl: «Start with the audience, not the idea». Since I already built a large audience in marketing, it was clear to me that the highest chance of success was to build something for this existing audience. From working in the agency that I build I knew that many European companies struggled with finding a web analytics software that was compliant with the new, stricter privacy laws in the EU. So I came up with a privacy friendly web analytics software, based on open source. In the first weeks we had little success though. So I came up with a second product: a privacy friendly marketing automation software, also based on open source. That one became an instant hit. Meanwhile, both products got a significant number of customers.

Since I built something for my existing audience in marketing, I was lucky to find some first customers from that audience. I also did launches on Product Hunt and other sites, with no success.

As of today, our customers come from these sources:

31% Agency Partners & Affiliates
22% Personal Network
13% (Various)
11% (Unknown)
9% Search Engine Advertising (SEA)
7% Organic Search (SEO)
6% Links from other sites
2% Existing customers that bought another product

Start with the audience, not the idea ;-)

For more details, here's how I grew Friendly from 0 to $1K MRR: https://stefanvetter...