I built and sold two agencies. If I started again, here’s how I’d get the first 10 clients. I co-founded two software agencies. We grew them to 350 and 200 people and sold them in 2021 and 2025. Here’s how I’d do it. CLIENT #1: START WITH TRUST List 10–20 people who know your work. Former bosses, colleagues, people you’ve worked with. Ask what’s broken in their business. Listen before pitching. Offer a small, paid project: - One clear outcome. - Fixed scope and price. - 2–4 weeks. Be honest about your experience. You can be new to running a company and still be good at the work. Charge less if you need to. Avoid free. You need to learn whether someone will pay. CLIENTS 2–10: SELL IT YOURSELF You need to hear the objections firsthand. That’s how you learn what clients actually buy. - Pick the industry or technology where your first projects went best. - Turn results into case studies. Use real numbers. -Ask happy clients for two introductions while the result is fresh. - Partner with a software vendor whose customers need implementation. - Start turning down work that pulls you away from your niche. At Divante, focusing on ecommerce gave buyers a much clearer reason to call us. Another way in: contribute early to a technology with growing demand. Becoming a core contributor gives clients a concrete reason to choose you. Disclosure: I’m now building Open Mercato, an open-source ERP/CRM framework, so I see this from the software vendor’s side too. Also, watch client concentration. One client paying 50% of your revenue has a lot of control over your business. BEYOND 10: MAKE SALES REPEATABLE Ten clients isn’t a magic threshold. But by now, you should see patterns worth documenting. - Write down qualification questions, pricing rules and how you build proposals. - Hire a salesperson once you have something that works for them to repeat. - Publish useful reports, benchmarks and project breakdowns. - Build reusable IP from problems you keep solving. - Grow existing accounts where you can deliver more value. Our work on an open-source ecommerce frontend helped bring international enterprise leads. It later became a separate product company. That took time. Start by making each project leave something useful behind for the next one. A practical test: take two weeks off. Do leads still come in? Can your team move deals forward? Where are you stuck: landing client #1, reaching ten, or making every sale depend less on you?