Ask HN Successful Startups: How did you find your first customer?

It was inspiring to read the post from a couple of days ago 'Who is living off their startup fulltime?' http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1924909

I would like to learn the art of finding your FIRST customer, arranging meeting/phone call with them, getting them to talk to you and eventually signing them up as your beta customer.

How did you go about this?

Thanks