By Rebecca Silver & Darren Yee

PURPOSE

At the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, we've helped thousands of founders go from idea to launch to scale by embedding customer development into the DNA of their ventures. While surveys, third-party data, and guidance from industry experts can inform your direction, they can't replace the direct connections you’ll make during the customer development process. Instead, customer development helps founders learn how to:

• A. Learn how to reach customers, to inform your marketing & outreach tactics
• B. Understand customer needs, to build products and services that satisfy those needs, all while
• C. Building relationships that can lead to successful downstream partnerships, pilots and sales.

Customer development starts with identifying who to talk to, what to learn from them, and how to find them.

1-14. FIRST PRINCIPLES (START HERE)

These rules of thumb will help with outreach across all types of customer segments:

• 1. Avoid the hard sell: Nobody likes being sold to. Period. If you lead a conversation with a sale, or ask a question as a layperson but with your company-facing branding/email (implying you’re there to sell), your customers will ignore you, delete your emails, or may even badmouth you. Instead, at the end of the meeting ask if you can reach out again in the future if you end up designing a solution based on their feedback.
• 2. Fish where the fish are: Customers within a specific archetype often cluster around specific activities, places, activities and events, online and IRL. The faster you find these places, the more likely you are to have successful customer engagement.
• 3. Go to where customers experience the problem: Where might your customers be reaching out for help with their problem, or searching for a solution? Try to intercept customers in these moments.
• 4. Make friends & provide value: The greater value you provide to the customers/community the more they’ll want to engage with you and refer others to you. Look for ways to ingratiate yourself to customers, even before you have a product/service to sell.
• 5. Lead with empathy: Approach customers from a point of genuine curiosity and empathy and you’ll be much more likely to build a relationship or close a sale in the end. That means listening over pitching, asking why, acknowledging your customers problems, and not assuming you know the answers before your customer speaks.
• 6. Learn the rules of the community: You won’t win a prize if you get kicked out of a key online forum, or in-person event for trying to sell to your customers. Consider the formal or informal “rules” of a community when trying to build inroads. If there are moderators, gatekeepers, rules against selling, etc. you want to know this up front so you can explore ways to build authentic and durable engagement within communities.
• 7. Leverage Your NYU Affiliation: Most people are more likely to help a student or researcher who is trying to learn because it feels altruistic and low-pressure, appealing to their desire to support education and share knowledge rather than being subjected to a sales pitch. This approach frames the interaction as a collaborative learning opportunity rather than a transactional exchange.
• 8. Use Your NYU Email Address: Use your NYU email address when doing outreach to signal your affiliation and lend credibility. Recipients are more likely to trust outreach from a recognizable institution, demonstrating you’re a student, researcher, or staff member acting within NYU’s educational mission. This can help your emails stand out from generic or commercial cold outreach, increasing engagement and positive responses.
• 9. Mom was right, be polite and courteous: It’s shocking how many people forget their manners when doing customer outreach. Flattery, kindness, making it easy for your customers to say “yes” to an interview by offering flexibility are always your friend. So too are brevity and sending thank yous. They show you value the customer's time.
• 10. Leverage warm contacts: Introductions through mutual colleagues and friends (warm contacts) will almost always yield more connections than cold outreach.
• 11. You’ll fail more than you succeed: Expect to fail in your outreach, and to learn from that failure. You’ll have to try multiple methods and shots on goal before you nail a formula for engaging your customers which works for both them and you.
• 12. Track your outreach and learn what works: To maximize learning and outreach, keep a simple record of every contact. Use a spreadsheet or CRM tool to log who you contacted, when, how, their response, and key notes. Tracking data helps identify effective channels, messages, or tactics, allowing you to focus on what works and quickly iterate on what doesn’t.
• 13. Handling rejection and non-response: Rejection and silence are normal in customer discovery outreach. View them as valuable feedback: your message may need tweaking, your channel isn’t a fit, or your timing was off. Use these moments to refine your approach. Persistence, professionalism, and a positive attitude will help you succeed. Consider following up with a gentle reminder like, “I just wanted to make sure this didn’t slip through the cracks. May we speak next week?” This approach can help bring your email back to the top of their inbox and encourage a response.
• 14. If you can’t find your customers, move on to a different segment: Initial customer outreach and interviews are a proxy for sales/marketing success in the near future. If you can’t find your customers, despite trying multiple methods, pick a different segment. As an early stage founder you can’t afford to waste time or money searching for a needle in a haystack, or educating your customer about why they should care, if they just don’t.

WHERE TO FIND YOUR CUSTOMERS

Your customer engagement approach will vary based on your audience and your own constraints—like location, budget, and time. Below is a menu of methods to test for fit with your customer ecosystem.

15-20. EMAIL/NEWSLETTER ENGAGEMENT

• 15. Email lists w/ in targeted communities: Apollo.io, ZoomInfo, and other platforms can help you identify qualified leads/emails within different customer segments/categories.
• 16. Local Organization Newsletters: Find local chapters or associations that your target customer might join and sign up for the newsletters to get a heads up about events or other ways to get involved.
• 17. Hacking email formulas: Many companies have standard ways they assign emails (like first initial, last name @ company.com); If you can find an email from a couple employees you can hack the formula for the rest.
• 18. Personalization: Avoid sending out mass mailers with generic asks, and instead leverage AI tools to personalize emails to each respondent. New tools will allow you to send a large quantity of emails with customizations (beyond the customer’s name/company), increasing the odds of their response. There’s currently no specific platform we recommend for this - consult your favorite AI search tool, or Product Hunt for recommendations.
• 19. Testing messages: Every outbound email is an opportunity to test messaging, even in the earliest stages of your customer development process. If you have a long list of contacts, A/B test both subject lines and email copy with a handful of contacts first, see what seems to be more effective, iterate, then message the broader group. Use tools like **Mailchimp** and Kit to track segments and test performance.
• 20. Track responses: Tools like Mixmax, **Superhuman** and others can provide you excellent intelligence on engagement with your emails, allowing you to track if recipients have opened and shared your emails (without the recipient knowing), to give you clues on when to follow up.

21-29. IRL COMMUNITIES & CCONFERENCES

• 21. Join meetups/events: For those who are lucky enough to live in regions rich in your customers (like NYC) look for events on **Luma, Meetup, Eventbrite** and other platforms, which match the interests of your customers. As many events are private/invite only, network with colleagues/friends in your field to score invites. Online events are also an option though engagement with other attendees (and the organizers/speakers) can be very limited.
• 22. Lead your own meetups/events: We are HUGE fans of organizing your own events, which are designed to attract your customer. We learned from the best that calling your customers to you vs. going to them can be a powerful tool. In person is always better, but not always possible depending on your/your customer’s location.
• 23. Conferences: For many B2B customers, trade conferences represent a great and reliable way to get face time with your audience. Below some tactics for successful conference engagement.
  • 24. Volunteer: If ticket prices are too high, check if there are student tickets available or volunteer opportunities.
  • 25. Present: Often ~6 months in advance of a conference there will be a call for presentations/speakers. Throw your hat in the ring and offer to lead a panel/event or to present. This will help establish thought leadership/credibility and draw potential customers to you.
  • 26. Sneak into/join after hours/side events: Most conversation happens between formal conference sessions. See what you can do to get access to the social events surrounding a conference where you can buy your customer a drink and some of their time.
  • 27. Schedule meetings in advance: Conferences often list the attendees and almost always list the speakers in advance. Message individuals ahead of the conference to schedule time to meet over breakfast/coffee, so you don’t have to compete with attendees who are trying to snag on the spot meetings with them.
  • 28. Collect business cards: We’ve seen clever founders leverage limited tabling or postering opportunities at conferences to capture their customers' attention. One of our favorite founders literally put out a jar to collect business cards in exchange for being entered into a drawing for a prize. The jar filled up in an hour.

• 29. Volunteer engagements: When working with sensitive topics or vulnerable groups (like kids, the elderly, or those with medical conditions), volunteering for organizations or patient advocacy groups supporting these communities is a powerful way to build real relationships. Don’t make it purely transactional - lead with empathy.

30-35. IRL GENERAL PLACES

For those targeting more mainstream consumers you might find your customers at a store, a park, or a bar. Strangers on the street generally don’t want to talk to you, but you can find authentic ways to meet and learn from them anyway. For all “intercepts” you’ll have to be brief - you may only get one question answered before your customer moves on.

• 30. Intercepts in stores/public spaces: Go to the point of sale/service for competing products (or which attract the same customer). Below are more specifics:
  • 31. CPG products: Go to the grocery store, bodega, pharmacy or salon. Idea for a new kind of nut milk? Stand in the aisle at Whole Foods waiting for someone to reach for almond or oat milk and spark a natural conversation about why they chose that particular product.
  • 32. Look for the lines: For those lucky enough to have customers willing to wait in line for experiences or products (e.g. TikTok famous products, waiting for consumer services), congratulations, you have a PERFECT opportunity for customer discovery.
  • 33. Intercepts in offices/private spaces: For those waiting for private services (gyms, medical centers, etc.), waiting outside these spaces, wearing your NYU ID and carrying a clipboard can make you look “official”. This helps when targeting both the staff and the patrons of these services.
  • 34. Social haunts: Where does your customer base go after work to relax and hang out? In NYC companies of different types still cluster in certain neighborhoods - and the haunts (coffee shops, bars) of the employees can be great places to casually interact with your customers. Offer to meet your customer before or after work, and buy them a coffee or a beer in exchange for a few minutes of their time.
  • 35. Fliers: Fliers and signs can actually be effective if you can identify places to post where your customers congregate. Targeting undergrads? Post by the dorms, library or cafeteria. Targeting parents of elementary school children? Post fliers outside a school or by a playground (we promise this will be less creepy than just hanging out on the playground without a kid with you).

36-42. REFERRALS

• 36. Hands down the easiest way to engage with new customers is to ask existing contacts to introduce you to others like them, leveraging the following approaches:
  • 37. Gatekeepers/Mavens: Identify and leverage super connectors to identify customer prospects. These could be professors, those who lead startup accelerator programs, subject matter experts, or anyone who’s job involves bringing together/interacting with large groups of people in your customer segment. Be nice to them - if you burn these relationships they can also block access to communities.
  • 38 Forwardable emails: Make it as easy as possible for referrals to happen by crafting forwardable emails, or shareable social content.
• 39. Navigating large/bureaucratic organizations: Without an insider helping you navigate the inner workings of complex organizations, it can be difficult and frustrating to get face time with your target audience. For support:
  • 40. Find internal champions: Look for people with a strong stake in your success—ideally, those who are cross-functional, influential, and well-liked. Build real relationships with them; they can unlock key connections.
  • 41. Climb the org ladder: Start with junior staff and assistants to build trust and open doors to senior decision-makers. These early chats are about relationships, not insights—warm the path upward.
  • 42. Talk to recently exited employees: Employees who recently left your target company no longer have active work relationships to protect. Ask these individuals to give you a peek into the org chart or influence structure at the company.

43-69. DIGITAL MEDIA

NOTE 1. Almost all of the below platforms will require you to set up an account to browse or engage.

NOTE 2: When you’re in stealth mode (e.g., not yet sharing you’re working on a startup) be careful not to join these groups with your company email addresses!

• 43. First Principles: Most of the social platforms below offer ways to filter users based on their interests based on #s, likes, follows, groups or other indications of interest. Direct message users, join a conversation or group, and explore paid/upgrade features like ads for more advanced testing of messages and content.
• 44. Beware of the bots: Some platforms are notorious for fake accounts (X we see you 👀). As you sign up for an account take note of the level of verification and anonymity you’re allowed. The more anonymous, the less verification, the looser the rules, the more likely for fake information to corrupt your research.
• 45. Business-forward social media: LinkedIn For many B2B customers, LinkedIn represents the most widely adopted/used database of professionals. This expansive tool can be leveraged in different ways:
  • 46. Friends of friends: Look through your own LinkedIn contacts, as well as contacts of mentors and advisors, to ask them to make referrals for you.
  • 47. Alumni networks: Alumni from your university or highschool are more likely to respond to cold outreach.
  • 48. General groups: Allow you to filter by areas of interest, based on groups customers may belong to.
  • 49. Pages: Allow you to filter by areas of interest, based on what pages customers may be following.
  • 50. Sales Navigator (Paywalled): Advanced search and lead recommendations for sales professionals.
• 51.-57. General use social media
  • 51. Facebook: Everyone and your grandma has a Facebook account. Though not cool, still highly used w/in specific communities, especially for their Groups (see Facebook Groups below). Allows (paywalled) “boosted” posts and ads, with in depth abilities to target based on users’ likes, demographics and interests.
  • 52. Instagram: Visual content platform, useful for targeting potential customers based on #s, and followers (of brands, influencers in specific areas); As part of the Meta family, has similar targeting ads and targeting abilities as Facebook. Great for showcasing early product concepts, and for testing experiential and visual content.
  • 53. Pinterest (NYU founded company!): Popular with designers, visual content social platform, which like Instagram is great for showcasing early product concepts, and for testing experiential and visual content.
  • 54. Twitter X (NYU founded company!): Opinions on Elon Musk aside, popular text-dominant social content for breaking news and up to the moment trends, allowing you to identify potential customers based on #s, and followers (of brands, influencers in specific areas) and ask questions using Grok.
  • 55. TikTok: Video storytelling platform, with rich comments offering insight and audience sentiment surrounding influencers and topics.
  • 56. Youtube: Video platform with prolific comments sections, rich in insights relevant to posted content.
  • 57. Other: Other popular platforms such as Snapchat or Truth Social, can offer similar functionality as other platforms listed above.
• 58.-63. Online communities/groups Below are some of the most popular community/group platforms, offering access to private communities (See 6. Learn the rules of the community, above, before proceeding):
  • 58. Facebook Groups: Public and private groups by interest area, including private clubs, alumni groups and others. Some groups are moderated and you must apply to join, while others are open access.
  • 59. Discord: Popular with technical individuals and gamers, Discord offers both public and private moderated groups. Some groups are discoverable while others are private and you’ll have to be invited to join.
  • 60. WhatsApp: In the US, WhatsApp offers private group forums, with different rules of engagement. Groups are not discoverable, so you must be invited to join.
  • 61. Slack: Offers private group forums, with different rules of engagement, which can provide a font of customer leads. Groups are not generally discoverable, so you must be invited to join.
  • 62. Nextdoor: Location-specific online communities, useful when doing outreach to specific groups within specific neighborhoods.
  • 63. Circle (mostly paywalled): Brands use Circle to engage with their customers, which can be beneficial for you if your customers overlap with those of existing brands. Join as fellow “customer” for intel, or start your own Circle after your launch.
• 64.-65. Question-based Communities/Forums Below are some of the most popular question-based community forums (See 6. Learn the rules of the community, above, before proceeding):
  • 64. Reddit: Anonymous discussion threads around specific topics, with very strict rules banning solicitations, or anything that smells of marketing of any kind. Due to the anonymity of users, it may be difficult to know if respondents are really in your target audience.
  • 65. Quora: Similar to Reddit, offers the ability to spark discussion threads and ask questions, but with more participation from niche experts, and less active discussion relative to Reddit.
• 66. Blogs/newsletters (sometimes paywalled): In sites like Medium, or Substack, you can discover and follow authored articles on myriad topics. Leverage comments sections where you can identify potential customers, or even leave useful comments which can help you solicit useful feedback from other readers.
• 67.-70. Going beyond using social media for basic prospecting & outreach
  • 67. Leverage influencers: It goes without saying having influencers share your ask (for interviews etc.) can be a huge way to get interest. But fair warning to be sure the influencer’s audience clearly matches the customer archetype you’re going for, or you’ll get a LOT of false leads. A micro influencer who’s audience directly aligns with yours may be much more helpful than a general influencer with millions of random followers.
  • 68. Become a micro-influencer: Levering the platforms above, start your own group, or lead a conversation which allows you to demonstrate your expertise long before releasing your product/service. Through these means you can attract potential customers to you vs. the other way around. Successful NYU companies like Revelio Labs launched and attracted investors this way.
  • 69. Post short surveys to qualify customers: It can be difficult to qualify if someone is in your customer archetype in many platforms listed above. While we frown on using surveys alone as ways to engage your customers, short (5 questions max) surveys can help you rule in or rule out if someone is your customer, and give them the opportunity to book a time to meet you for longer conversations. This is a good use of surveys for customer discovery, but is not a replacement for interview-based discovery.
  • 70. Test visual content: Other than artists and designers, most people lack strong visual vocabulary so Instagram, Pinterest and other platforms can be excellent ways to test customer’s visual preferences. **Learn how Sabai (NYU founded company and NYU Startup Accelerator Program alum)** used Instagram on day one of their business (2 years before they launched their products) to learn about their customers' wants. Embed polls & questions in Stories or ask questions in your posts to get feedback.

71.-72. COMPETITOR LISTINGS

NOTE: With any reviews, beware that the more anonymous the reviews, the less likely they are to be reliable. Beware of the bots!

• 71. Points of sale with reviews: It’s common for marketplaces such as Amazon to post reviews. Not only can you mine reviews for intel about competing products, but some sites allow reviewers and sellers to respond to you, allowing you to ask questions from the perspective of the customer.
• 72. Product/service review sites: Product Hunt, Trustpilot, SourceForge, etc. offer searchable (sometimes curated) lists of products/services within different categories. Intel here will allow you to better understand who your competitors are targeting, and what’s working and failing for their customers.
• 73. Google reviews: Google aggregates reviews of businesses from across myriad places customer’s make reviews. Because of the breadth of sources Google pulls from, reliability is variable.

74.-77. TRADE FORUMS & JOB PLATFORMS

• 74. Job search websites: Can provide a sense of what companies/teams are prioritizing (as personnel often represents the highest cost for B2B customers), as well as contacts.
• 75. Discussion Forums: Industry-specific forums (e.g., Spiceworks for IT, Contractor Talk for construction, Startup CPG for CPG) are great for both networking and lead generation.
• 76. Online Directories: Directories offer a list of companies by sector (e.g. Crunchbase or Pitchbook for startups, or Yelp or **Foursquare (NYU Founded Company!)** for brick and mortar stores). And don’t forget Google - though the overuse of sponsored listings may obfuscate the long tail listings you’re searching for.
• 77. Industry trade publications: Be they online or print, publications often include directories of companies and starting points for contacts.

78-83. RESEARCHER/SCHOOL FOCUSED COMMUNITIES

As an academic entrepreneurship center we see A LOT of founders whose customer bases are fellows students, faculty or researchers. Read below if that’s you.

• 78. Student clubs: Search for and join campus clubs (official or unofficial) to find like minded peers around different demographics or interest areas.
• 79. Student events: Look for event listings (via newsletters, bulletin boards, online calendars), which may attract those on campus in your target demo.
• 80. IRL Bulletin Boards: Post fliers on selected bulletin boards near the departments/students you’re targeting.
• 81. Online networks: Look for opportunities to post to newsletters, campus discussion groups (e.g. slack) to solicit interviews/customer engagement.
• 82. Networks of scholars/researchers: If your customer is within the research community, Pubmed, Researchgate, and GoogleScholar can be an effective way to search for specific subject matter expertise across different disciplines and institutions.
• 83. Academic conferences: If researchers/academics are your target, beyond what’s listed above in the “conferences” section, look for opportunities to present your research at conferences/symposia to bolster your credibility and draw your audience to you.

84-85. PRO TIPS

• 84. AI is your friend: Perplexity (NYU Founded Company!), ChatGPT (Also an NYU Founded Company!) Gemini etc. can give you additional suggestions specific to your customer segment, including helping you craft outreach emails/materials.
• 85. Don’t forget the library! For those starting companies out of university ecosystems like NYU, your campus libraries may have access to otherwise paywalled databases and resources. Research librarians can be a huge help as well.

NEXT STEPS

Want to know what to ask your customers? Or what customers to target? We recommend Talking to Humans, our go to pocket guide for all things customer discovery. For those at NYU wanting to dig deeper, sign up for a coaching session with us for personalized guidance, or apply to our Startup Bootcamp (for students) or Tech Venture Workshop (for faculty & researchers), our intensive customer development workshops.

Disclosure: By the time you read this, some of the ideas suggested above will likely be out of date or uncool. Sorry. This isn’t meant to be a complete list, but if we missed anything critical please email Rebecca (rgs4@nyu.edu) with additional suggestions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For a step-by-step guide to conducting customer discovery interviews, we recommend Talking to Humans by Giff Constable and Frank Rimalovski, which is widely used at NYU and beyond. This blog post is designed as a practical companion to the book, focusing specifically on Chapter 5: ‘How Do You Find Your Interview Subjects?’ (page 44), by providing a comprehensive menu of outreach tactics to help you connect with the right people for your interviews.

This post is adapted and expanded from Jason Evanish’s original resource, ‘95 Ways to Find Your First Customers for Customer Development or Your First Sale.’ Jason’s comprehensive list has been a foundational reference for founders seeking practical tactics for customer discovery and early sales. We’ve updated and supplemented his work with new tools, platforms, and academic insights to reflect the latest best practices in 2025.