I am assuming the first celled creatures were plants. How did they synthesize sunlight?
There are bacteria called Extremophiles that live in the cracks and microfissures of rocks that derive their energy(food) directly from minerals in the rock & from the chemical processes associated with weathering etc. There are other Extremophiles that use heat from volcanic vents and process minerals again for food.
Some Russian scientists and a couple of dead American ones claim these are the sources of oil & natural gas and not reprocessed plankton etc from ancient oceans. The cool thing about this idea if true, is oil & natural gas are then renewable resources since these things exist deep in the earth’s crust at a high temperature and pressure and aren’t going away. These things aren’t theoretical they have been known about for years. In the past they’ve been viewed to be an interesting nuisance. Maybe they’re more!
And they are certainly present in surprising abundance at deep ocean volcanic vents happily living in and reproducing in hot poisonous volcano polluted water.
More important how did the seed/spore or whatever know it needed specific nutrients to survive and grow at all,
much less, hmm, gonna need more energy that just this heat and on and on in the design phase of identifying need, environmental elements and deriving a solution?
Lots of data necessary as well as the need to process said data no matter how simple the organism.
In the beginning was the WORD....