No matter who you are, no matter what your technology, you are looking for the innovator and early adopter. You are looking for the customer looking for you.
Let that sink in. Who would be looking for you if nobody knows who you are?
Finding the customer who does not know you, but has a compelling need for what you have must be your absolute, 100% strategy. Because if you think it is expensive finding someone who wants you before they know you, try selling to someone who does not really need what you have.
The strategy must be clean, simple, inexpensive and achievable.
The strategy must be 100% about finding the customer looking for you.
Why?
There are customers out there, perhaps many, who need and want what you have. They do not know you and you do not have the funds to find them with shotgun marketing. If you choose that route, you will have to bring in outside financing and thus lose your equity.
Marketing types will push you to buy lists, hire cold calling resources, build expensive web sites, and all of this is wasted. The early adopter is not found via traditional means.
Your first real customer may be an eventual partner, may be the company who wants to purchase your company. It may just be a Fortune 1000 firm that has a specific, deep need for your product.
The strategy of finding the customer looking for you eliminates expensive sales campaigns, eliminates any need for expensive marketing and gets you to the money the fastest, cheapest way possible.
That customer is never one that you can find with traditional thinking. We have some stories on the site, and we add more, about how people have found that first customer.