Find one person

Don't look for a market. Look for one person.

At zero customers, "who's my audience?" is too big a question to act on. "Who is the one person on the internet who most clearly needs this today?" is small enough to answer before lunch. Find that person, start a real conversation, and the next ones are easier, because people like them follow each other, post in the same places, and use the same words.

Early adopters are not a demographic. They are specific people who have the problem now, know they have it, and are already trying to fix it with something worse than what you built.

What you need

1. Who the customer is, ideally from the Who buys from me skill. At minimum: what you built and who you built it for.
2. The words customers use for the problem. Guess if you must, then correct them as you search.
3. Where the founder can realistically look: Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Discord servers, niche forums, GitHub, Product Hunt comments.

Steps

1. Describe the exemplar. In two sentences, the person who would love this most. Not a segment. One person, with a situation.

2. Write search phrases in their words. What would that person post the week the problem bites? "I launched and got zero signups", "how do you find your first customers", "built a tool for X, no idea how to market it". Write eight to twelve, mixing complaints, questions and requests for recommendations.

3. Search where they talk, not where they're listed. Search each phrase on the places they actually spend time, using that site's own search plus Google with site:. Prefer posts from the last few weeks. A recent complaint is worth ten old ones.

4. Pick the one. Choose the single person whose own words show the problem most clearly and most recently. Check they're a buyer, not someone selling a similar service or giving advice about it.

5. Find four more like them. Look at who replied to their post, who they follow, which communities they post in, and run your phrases there.

6. Plan the first touch for each. Start where they are. Reply usefully to what they posted, connect, or follow and engage before any direct message. Every honest public interaction also builds your own presence on that platform. Save cold email for later: it's the hardest place to start.

Output

The exemplar: <two sentences>

Search phrases (their words):
- "<phrase>"

The one:
Who: <handle and platform>
What they said: <paraphrase plus link>
Why them: <fit, recency, and evidence they'd buy rather than sell>
First move: <the specific reply or interaction>

Four more like them:
1. <handle> · <platform> · <what they said> · <first move>

Next places to look: <communities these five share>

Rules

• Recent beats impressive. Someone with forty followers who posted the problem yesterday beats a well-known name who mentioned it last year.
• Be respectful. Don't dig through someone's life to surprise them; it reads as surveillance.
• Never pretend to be a customer, and never fake a shared experience.
• If you can't find a single person describing the problem anywhere, that is important information. Either the words are wrong or the problem is.
• No magic numbers. Don't aim for "40 conversations". Aim to start one good one today and do it again tomorrow.

Why one person works

Speaking to one specific person reaches more people than speaking to everyone. When your first message, your post or your homepage is written for one clear person, others who share most of their situation recognise themselves in it. A vague message gives nobody anything to hold onto.

With MyPip (coming)

This is the job MyPip does every day. When the MyPip MCP is live, this skill will be able to pull the people MyPip found for you today, already checked for fit and recency, instead of you searching by hand.