PODCAST

Zero to First Customer: Why Your First Sale Might Be Your Brother, and That’s Okay

Author
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeCharlie Hopkins-Brinicombe

If you’re launching a B2C startup, there’s a moment that lives in your head before it ever happens: the first real customer.

In your imagination, it's a perfect stranger. Someone discovering your product, loving it, pulling out their credit card, and validating all the blood, sweat, and no-code hacks you used to get live.

In reality? Your first customer might just be your brother…

That’s exactly what happened to Max, the founder of Adventuro — a UK-based platform for booking adventure sport experiences like scuba diving, kayaking, mountain biking, skydiving, and more. It’s like Booking.com for people who want to do more than just sightsee.

Max started Adventuro to solve a pain he’d felt himself: it’s incredibly hard to find adventure experiences beyond the beginner level. Most existing tour platforms cater to tourists and casuals. But what if you’re an intermediate or enthusiast? Where do you go to progress?

“Every time, without fail, it’s been a complete nightmare to find the right experience… You end up on a kayaking tour that’s really targeted at complete beginners or families. And that was always really frustrating.”

So he decided to build something better — a platform focused on helping people go deeper into their sports. One that listed qualifications, prerequisites, and helped people mark out their progression path.

On a recent episode of The Levels Podcast — presented by Trophy, a startup helping companies gamify customer engagement — Max walked us through those chaotic early days. And what it really takes to get from zero to one.

The Painful Silence After Launch

Like many founders, Max started Adventuro as a side project while working full-time as a consultant at BCG. Eventually, he took the leap and went full-time — even though he didn’t have a technical background.

“Which is obviously scary, right? Going from a, you know, quite a well-salaried job to zero… And I'm not a coder by background. I'm not overly technical by training. So I was trying to build this thing by myself — which is, you know, steep learning curve.”

After several months of late nights and weekends, the MVP was live. The team launched in June 2023.

And then… a miracle! The first booking came through on launch day.

“It was actually the day we launched, we got our first booking and I was like, this can't be real. And it turns out it was my brother being very supportive. It was hilarious, but it was great.”

If you're building a consumer startup, this moment might sound familiar. It’s not uncommon for your first real booking or sale to come from someone close to you. That’s not failure — it’s validation that you’ve built something someone cares enough about to support.

But then came reality.

“That was the whole of July. Basically we had one booking in July, which was my brother.”

Breakthrough: One Product, One Channel

The team tried paid ads — Google and Meta — and burned through a few thousand pounds with zero conversions. But in August, something changed.

“Then in August things did start to pick up, which is great… I think we had probably, I dunno, 50, 60 bookings in August that year.”

Most of them came from a single Google Performance Max campaign. But more specifically, they came from a single kayaking tour in Cornwall.

“I think over half of our bookings that month were this single product. And we had about a hundred products on the platform.”

That’s the nature of early B2C growth — not elegant, not predictable, but full of weird spikes and surprise winners. Sometimes it’s one niche product in one location that gives you the traction you need.

It’s also worth mentioning the conviction Max had to spend real money on something, see no results, yet continue to be optimistic and forward looking. That’s often the difference between making it, and giving up.

The Crash: When Seasonality Hits

Momentum started to build. But two weeks into September, bookings fell off a cliff.

“It kind of just went to zero overnight and we were just like, oh no, I thought we were onto something.”

The seasonal nature of adventure sports caught them off guard. Summer was over, and so was demand. So Max and team made a tactical pivot: they built a gift voucher system in just three weeks and got it live before Christmas.

“We quickly built our gift voucher functionality in like three weeks… and that did actually go quite well. We sold a few thousand pounds’ worth of gift vouchers in the first year.”

That move gave them a seasonal revenue stream, and more importantly, proof that people were willing to buy even when they weren’t booking experiences right away.

The Real Lesson: Momentum Is Built, Not Gifted

Max’s early journey with Adventuro is a crash course in building from scratch with no dev team, no viral moment, and no shortcuts.

Just scrappiness, speed, and a willingness to figure it out on the fly.

And it all started with a booking from his brother.

“It was just great. It was really appreciated.”

If you’re building your own B2C startup, here’s what Max’s story can teach you:

Key Takeaways for B2C Founders

  1. Your first customer probably won’t be a stranger — and that’s fine. Just get live.
  2. Ad spend won’t work until it suddenly does. Be patient, test, and look for outperformers.
  3. Double down on what converts, even if it’s just one thing.
  4. Seasonality is real. Don’t let short-term dips kill long-term conviction.
  5. Speed wins. Gift cards built in 3 weeks helped them make thousands in December.

Final Thoughts

Don’t romanticize your first customer. Romanticize the process of earning the next one.

Whether you're building the next marketplace, mobile app, or community, your journey will be messy. You’ll have moments where it feels like nothing’s working, followed by moments where one kayaking tour suddenly saves your month.

The key is to keep conviction and stick with it long enough to see results.

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