Ask HN: How do you answer, “How many customers do you have?”

I once attended a conference with a bizdev guy who answered like this:

"How many clients do you have?"

"Hmmm... I think we're under 300 right now"

In reality, we had none. I couldn't help but chuckle, but it was technically true and he closed some deals that way.

Lots of companies would consider the answer to that question to be confidential information.

When I worked at a startup, the initial deployments were well aware that they were beta sites and that they would be working with us to polish the product. This could have been taken both ways: they would have some input on development, but they could expect to face some issues with it from time to time.

The other day I talked to a business partner and told him that our customer base grew by 150% in the last year. He then asked for absolute numbers. I just told him the absolute numbers are still embarrassing low and left it at that.

Stick with your honest answer of none.