I recently sat down with Jim Verducci, founder and CEO of Wristband, and asked him a simple question:

“How did you get your first 10 paying customers?”

His answer surprised me.

But before we get to that— what is Wristband?

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Wristband is a multi-tenant auth provider for SaaS applications that serve enterprise companies.

Think Auth0, AWS Cognito, etc… but actually designed from the ground up for multi-tenant enterprise applications (and with generous feature tiers).

You can check out Wristband here.

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How did Wristband get their first 10 customers?

During our interview, we surfaced seven different marketing tactics that contributed to Wristband’s early customer traction:

Tactic 1: Webinar networking (1st customer)

Jim attended a Tech Stars webinar on Zoom. People spammed their LinkedIn profiles in chat. He connected with at least 25 people and researched what they were each building. One company stood out and Jim reached out to their CEO. During a two-hour conversation, Jim learned that this company had struggled with Auth0 and Descope. After this, Jim got introduced to their CTO, and they became Wristband’s first customer.

Tactic 2: Paid accelerator networking (2 customers)

Jim joined a paid accelerator at the end of 2023. Two customers came from that cohort. One founder was paired directly with Jim during the program but didn’t convert until recently. This founder sells to enterprises with long sales cycles and was hesitant to commit budget early. Another founder from that cohort invited Jim to their coworking space in San Francisco. That’s where Jim met someone who would eventually become his big case study customer. Both of these customers took over a year to convert. Jim could have pushed them harder to pay sooner, but he valued their long-term relationships.

Tactic 3: Slack communities (2 customers)

Jim is active in multiple Slack communities. One founder he met in a sales-focused Slack built a relationship with Jim by talking about non-Wristband stuff. When this founder started his company and needed auth, he chose Wristband. Another customer came after Jim referred business to their security firm, whose lead engineer became a vocal Wristband advocate.

Tactic 4: Reddit SEO (2 customers)

There’s a Reddit thread about multi-tenant identity providers where someone mentioned Wristband. This thread keeps surfacing at the top of Google results. A couple of customers found Wristband through this thread, booked demo calls, and Jim invited them to join the Wristband dev community. They eventually converted - one of them over a year later when their next project got traction.

Tactic 5: Word of mouth/referrals (2 customers)

One of Jim’s customers gave Wristband a case study after converting. Months later in an accelerator Slack community, a founder asked for an affordable WorkOS alternative. The case study customer tagged Jim, which led to another conversion. Separately, a technical founder found Wristband, recommended it to his client who became a customer, and is now building a partnership to use Wristband for multiple clients.

Tactic 6: Reverse cold outreach (1 customer)

Jim calls this one an “uno-reverso.” A CEO cold reached out to Jim on LinkedIn trying to sell their solution. As the CEO explained their product, Jim flipped the script and asked about their auth setup. They ended up becoming each other’s customers and formed a strategic partnership where they name-drop each other when opportunities arise.

Tactic 7: LinkedIn posting (1 customer)

During Wristband’s Product Hunt beta launch in summer 2024, Jim posted heavily on LinkedIn. A CTO Jim had previously worked for noticed the activity and reached out. This CTO was looking for an alternative to Auth0 and Okta - his previous experience with them had been horrible. He thought Wristband looked ready and brought them on at his current company.

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What does all this actually mean for founders trying to crack early customer acquisition?

Jim’s journey reveals four hard-earned lessons:

Lesson 1: Tapping your existing network and cold outreach is overrated

Jim has a long history in Silicon Valley doing tech and consulting. Only 1 of his first 10 customers came from that network - and only after months of LinkedIn content, not direct outreach. He also sent hundreds of different cold emails and LinkedIn DMs. Nothing ended up converting.

### Lesson 2: Community + personal follow-up worked for him

Jim personally followed up with every single signup - through email or by inviting them into Wristband’s dev community. No conversion happened without building a human relationship first. Show up in communities, be helpful, talk about things that aren’t your product. Engage your users..

Lesson 3: Enterprise sales cycles are brutally long

Even companies actively unhappy with their existing auth solutions took 6-12 months to convert. And it wasn’t about integration effort either. Customers had other priorities, budget cycles, and complex decision-making hierarchies. Jim’s response was to focus on what he could control: faster onboarding, better documentation, and shifting focus toward SMBs with actual budgets and pain points - while still serving early-stage startups who remain easier to onboard and represent the pipeline of future SMB customers. As the platform improved, conversion times began trending downward.

Lesson 4: One well-placed recommendation or die-hard fan can keep delivering

A single Reddit thread where someone recommended Wristband keeps driving customer signups. Two of Jim’s customers referred two more. Build a product that solves a genuine problem well with a great customer experience and you’ll create fans who do your marketing for you.

A big thank you to Jim for his time. And if you’re building an enterprise multi-tenant B2B SaaS you can check out Wristband here.

Customer acquisition for early-stage B2B SaaS

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