The last question of the Women Founders Summit Q&A was the most practical one: how did each of you land your first contract or customer? Was it a connection? Marketing? Something else?
The answers had one thing in common. Nobody's first customer came from a perfect funnel. They came from a room.
This is the last post in the series, and it might be the most useful one.
The game night that became a business
One founder's story started with a drive and an idea. A SCORE mentor liked it and introduced her to a venture capitalist. She walked into that meeting knowing almost nothing about VC, unprepared, and said something about gamification. He told her he'd pay for that if she could figure out how to gamify it.
She didn't know how to make a game. So she made a physical card game and put it on Kickstarter. Then the pandemic hit, and she turned it into a tech product.
To get it in front of people, she hosted a virtual game night and promoted it on social media. People joined from across the country and from the UK, because everybody was stuck at home.
Her first two clients were UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, both from people who attended that night. Then someone else from the same event, who worked at a pharmaceutical company, asked her to bring it in.
She hadn't even thought about education or pharma. She'd built a consumer product. The pivot to selling to businesses wasn't her idea. It was the people in the room.
Why rooms beat funnels early on
Early on, you don't have enough data for a funnel to teach you much. What you need is fast, honest reactions from real people. Rooms give you that.
The game night worked for three reasons any founder can copy:
- She gave people a reason to show up that wasn't a sales pitch. It was fun, free, and useful.
- She asked for feedback out loud. She told the room she didn't know what to do next with the game and asked what they thought.
- She followed the energy, not her plan. When buyers showed up from places she didn't expect, she went where they pointed.
You don't need a game. You need a gathering where people experience what you do and tell you what they'd pay for.
Go to every room for a year
Another founder on the panel, an introvert who came from corporate, made a deal with herself. For a full year, she went to every event she was invited to. That way she'd know which ones to skip the next year.
It led to partnerships, podcast invitations, and press. More than that, it led to a circle: other people who felt just as out of place at the first event, who started going to the next ones together.
That's how most rooms turn into revenue. Not one big night. A lot of small ones, with the same faces getting more familiar.
Persistence is part of the room
Rooms open doors. Follow-up keeps them open.
One founder had a great first conversation with a major health system, then got ghosted for a year. She kept following up every other week. They kept opening her emails and saying nothing. Then one day they came back ready to go, and that client is now renewing.
Another panelist has sent a monthly newsletter for 15 years and can trace about $1 million in revenue to it. Same idea: a gentle tap on the shoulder, over and over, without being a pain.
You never know what's happening on the other side of the silence. Keep showing up anyway.
Build the room yourself
The summit itself proved the point. The hosts at Cognite talked about the women's group they built inside their company, a community built by its members, for its members. Samia Kohler and Katarina Lujic built the summit the same way. And every founder in that room left with at least one new person to call.
If the room you need doesn't exist, build it. Here's a simple version:
- Pick a small, specific group. Ten people who share a problem you solve beats a hundred strangers.
- Give them something real. A workshop, a working session, a game night, a panel. Not a pitch.
- Ask out loud what they think. And write down every "if you did that, I'd pay for it."
- Follow up within a week. Then keep following up.
Where this series lands
I started this series after almost talking myself out of a room. Over seven posts, the same lesson kept coming back: the people around you matter more than any tactic. They tell you when to pivot. They introduce you to investors in other states. They remind you that you've done hard things. And sometimes they become your first customers.
So go find your room. Or build one.
If you want help designing the event, the story, or the follow-up that turns a room into a pipeline, The Cheeky Rooster is here for it.