B2B sales ideas - I will not promote

We're a startup selling technical software into a conservative industry. The buyer pool is small (no more than a couple of thousand people in our first, home country), the price point is high, sales cycles are usually long, and buyers mostly stick with vendors they already know. Despite these challenges, we have received a lot of positive feedback for the significant value we can bring to our initial ICPs. We have one paying customer and are deciding where to spend limited time over the next couple of months. Our current bets are: A. Founder-led LinkedIn B. Booked meetings at industry conferences C. Warm introductions D. A small founding-customer program We're deliberately staying away from automated outbound and AI SDRs. Appreciate input from those who've been through this and willing to answer any of these: 1. What got you your first 5 to 10 customers? 2. What did you try that wasn't worth the time? 3. Did inbound (SEO, content, being cited by ChatGPT and similar) produce anything early, or only later? 4. If you ran a founding or early-adopter offer, did it speed things up, and what did you ask for in return? Not selling anything. Happy to share back what we learn.