How to Find, Close & Keep Your First Customers
The first customer doesn't come from a playbook. They come from cold messages that probably shouldn't have worked, conversations that almost fell apart, and a stubborn refusal to take no as a final answer.
For this fireside, we're bringing in two founders who cracked early customer acquisition in some of the hardest environments to sell into — biotech labs and hospital systems without a brand, a marketing budget, or a warm intro list to lean on.
Speakers
Luis Alvear — Founder & CEO, Dimenso
Luis is building Dimenso, an AI platform for scientific labs that uses smart glasses with voice and computer vision to capture experiments as they happen, turning live lab work into structured, searchable records that plug into existing lab systems. Before starting Dimenso, Luis was one of the first engineers at GALY, a biotech company backed by Bill Gates, where he worked on AI systems for R&D. He knows what it takes to earn trust inside a scientific environment where nobody gives it easily.
Siddharth UR — Co-founder & CPO, Lexi
Siddharth co-founded Lexi, an AI medical interpreter that helps patients who face language barriers get heard in real time, no wait, no phone trees, no inconsistency. He built Lexi out of Harvard's Design Engineering program, won the HBS New Venture Competition, raised $1.4M, and made Forbes 30 Under 30. His team got their first pilots by showing up on-site at health centers and learning the workflow from the inside out.
What We'll Get Into
How they found their first customers
What closed the deal before they had a case study, a logo, or a reference
How they kept early customers loyal while the product was still changing under them
What they'd do differently starting from zero today
Schedule
4:00 PM — Founder Fireside
5:00 PM — Startup Social
Stick around, some of the best introductions we've seen at these events happen in that second hour. We close out at 6 PM.
Space is limited, register to hold your spot.