How to Find New Customers... Without Wasting Your Time!

For our latest NEXUS deep dive, we're looking at how to find new customers, and build deeper relationships that drive repeat purchases.

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Finding new customers is one of those things that sounds simple on paper but quickly becomes overwhelming in reality. There are endless channels, tactics, tools, and opinions, and most founders end up either doing too much at once or overthinking it and doing nothing at all.

The truth is, customer acquisition in the early and growth stages isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing a small number of things, very intentionally, and doing them consistently.

So here how our advice on how best to approach it in a way that actually works.

Start with clarity, not activity

Most customer acquisition problems aren’t actually acquisition problems. They’re clarity problems.

If you’re not crystal clear on who you’re serving, everything downstream becomes harder. Your messaging feels vague, your content doesn’t land, and your outreach gets ignored.

Instead of defining your audience in broad terms like “startups” or “SMEs”, go much deeper. Think about the stage they’re at, the specific problem they’re dealing with, and how urgently they need it solved.

A pre-revenue founder trying to get their first customers behaves very differently to a £1M ARR founder trying to scale. If you speak to both in the same way, neither will feel like you’re talking to them.

A useful exercise here is to look at your best existing customers and reverse-engineer them. What do they have in common? What triggered them to say yes? That pattern is far more valuable than any theoretical persona.

When you get this right, everything else starts to feel easier.

Go to where your customers already are

A mistake many founders make early on is trying to build an audience from scratch before they’ve validated anything. It feels productive, but it’s often slow and isolating.

In reality, your customers are already gathered somewhere, in communities, on platforms, inside conversations that are already happening.

Right now, for most founders, that tends to be places like LinkedIn, niche Slack or WhatsApp groups, industry-specific communities, events, and even parts of Reddit where real problems are being discussed.

The key here is not just to show up and post, but to participate. Spend time each day engaging in conversations, responding to people, and adding value where it’s relevant.

This approach does two things at once. It gives you immediate access to potential customers, and it helps you understand how they think, what language they use, and what actually matters to them.

Distribution almost always beats creation. There’s no point creating great content if no one sees it.

Turn content into conversations

A lot of founders fall into the trap of broadcasting, posting content, sharing updates, and hoping something sticks.

But early customer acquisition is far more direct than that. It’s built on conversations.

When someone engages with your content, that’s not the end of the interaction, it’s the start of one. When you comment on someone else’s post thoughtfully, you open a door. When you ask a genuine question, you invite a response.

This is where your first customers come from.

Instead of measuring success by likes or impressions, think in terms of conversations started. A single post that leads to five meaningful conversations is far more valuable than one that gets thousands of views but no action.

In the early days especially, growth is manual. And that’s a good thing, it gives you signal, feedback, and relationships.

Show your work as you go

People don’t just buy products. They buy trust, momentum, and belief in what you’re building.

One of the most effective ways to build that trust is to show your work publicly. Share what you’re building, what you’re learning, what’s working, and what isn’t.

This doesn’t need to be polished or overly strategic. In fact, the more real and consistent it is, the better it tends to perform.

When people see you showing up regularly, talking about your space, and making progress, you become familiar. And familiarity is a key step before trust.

Over time, this compounds. Someone might see your content five or ten times before they ever reach out, but when they do, the relationship already feels warm.

Start with warm before going cold

Cold outreach has its place, but it’s often the hardest way to get early traction.

The fastest wins usually come from people who already have some level of connection to you, your network, your customers, your peers, your community.

Most founders massively underestimate how valuable this is. They sit on networks that could unlock introductions, opportunities, and first customers, but never actively use them.

A simple message asking for one or two relevant introductions can go a long way, especially if it’s clear who you’re looking to connect with and why.

These conversations tend to convert faster, close easier, and lead to better long-term relationships.

Make every customer work harder

Acquiring a customer is hard. Letting that relationship stop at a single transaction is a missed opportunity.

Every happy customer has the potential to become multiple customers through referrals, testimonials, and shared experiences.

After delivering value, ask for an introduction. Capture a testimonial. Turn their success into a simple case study.

It doesn’t need to be complicated. Even a short message explaining what you helped them achieve can become a powerful asset.

The goal is to create a natural loop where one customer leads to the next.

Move fast and test properly

One of the biggest blockers to growth is overthinking.

Founders often spend too long trying to choose the “right” channel instead of testing multiple options quickly and letting the data guide them.

Right now, there are a handful of channels that consistently work when executed well, organic content, direct outreach, partnerships, and small-scale paid experiments.

The key is to approach each one as a short experiment. Give it focused effort for a couple of weeks, look for signs of traction, and then decide whether to double down or move on.

Speed matters here. The faster you learn what doesn’t work, the faster you get to what does.

Make it easy for people to say yes

Finally, a lot of founders don’t have a traffic problem. They have a clarity problem.

If someone lands on your page or hears your pitch and can’t quickly understand what you do, who it’s for, and why it matters, they won’t convert.

Your offer should be simple, clear, and easy to act on. Early on, that often means fewer options, straightforward pricing, and a low-friction entry point.

A useful test is to show your website or pitch to someone unfamiliar with your business and ask them what they think you do within a few seconds. If they struggle, that’s where the work is.

Clarity removes friction. And when friction goes down, conversion goes up.

The bigger picture

Finding new customers isn’t about hacks or one-off tactics. It’s about building a system that combines clarity, consistency, and real human interaction.

The founders who win here aren’t necessarily the loudest or the most visible. They’re the ones who show up consistently, learn quickly, and stay close to their customers.

If you focus on that, growth becomes a byproduct of how you operate, not something you’re constantly chasing.

Whatever you do, good luck and keep pushing - you've got this!

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