The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers

A Sleep-Deprived Founder’s Guide to Revenue

By: Collin Stewart

Narrated by: Collin Stewart

From one of North America’s top sales development leaders comes a powerful three-stage blueprint designed to guide startups to predictable revenue.

Are you a startup founder with a great product but no sales? Do prospective clients say your product is interesting, but no one’s buying?

Collin Stewart, founder and CEO of Predictable Revenue, shares hard-earned lessons about navigating the chaos of a startup and the daunting task of finding your first customers. The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers is a straight-talking guide for founders focused on tackling the essential steps to growth in the right sequence.

This is an invaluable resource for any founder, organized into informative, practical sections covering the three major steps in a startup’s journey: finding product-market fit, closing your first customers, and building a scalable revenue engine. It offers clear milestones, practical benchmarks, complete with real stories of successes and pitfalls to help founders learn from mistakes and make lasting impact. With advice that starts with the uncommon art of actually listening to prospective clients, Stewart leads you from measuring the strength of your product-market fit through to hiring your first sales rep, using language and techniques that will make sense to all regardless of their sales experience. Through step-by-step milestones and benchmarks, he demystifies the process of finding your first customers, empowering founders to move forward with clarity and confidence.

©2025 Collin Stewart (P)2025 Collin Stewart

A must read for any aspiring or current founder that needs help selling.

Collin takes a novel easy to understand approach to the very difficult task of closing first deals and starting to scales. The humor helps!! Highly recommend!

Invaluable, No-Fluff Guide to Launching a Venture

This book quickly became one of my favorite business resources. Its content is rich, accessible, and refreshingly free of filler, with just enough humor—a rarity in business books. The author also cites several strong strategy-focused titles. While this book is primarily a tactical sales guide for launching a new venture, many steps also align well with early-stage marketing and product development.
Who will benefit most:
1. MBA students – I’d have traded much of my MBA coursework for what’s in here, and at a tiny fraction of the cost.
2. Young entrepreneurs – You could learn all of this through experience, but it would take a decade and cost well into six figures in trial and error.
3. Experienced executives – You’ll recognize much of the content but still pick up new insights, and unless you’ve documented everything you know, this serves as an invaluable reference.

I especially appreciated the conclusion, which neatly summarizes all the concepts. I listened to the audiobook first and then bought a hard copy for easier reference. The audiobook’s pace feels rushed, and there are occasional recording glitches. If you’re naturally critical, acknowledge the imperfections and push through—they’re worth tolerating for the value you’ll get.
A final caution: if you have limited product development experience, take the claim that new products must be 10X better with a grain of salt. Treat this book as an excellent guide to sales rather than a product strategy manual.

The Book That Changed How I Think About Product–Market Fit

The most important lesson I learned from this book is that Product–Market Fit isn’t binary. It exists on a spectrum, and it can shift over time.

It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in entrepreneurship.

practical and true

holistic and up to date guide to startup sales written by someone who built deep understanding from struggle and study