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Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#111

Post by jaredklewis »

dkarl wrote: post #98
Doches wrote: post #19

I’ll second the PG advice: do things that don’t scale is by far the most effective tool I’ve found for finding _and keeping_ users. I’m building small-business tools for fringe retail [0] as a side-project, and those users are usually more than willing to at least investigate new apps if they even have a chance of solving some real problem their business faces. Emailing them personally with a pitch based on a few min…

offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds How did you manage to do that without making it impossible to add major new functionality to your app? Did you nail the basic functionality of the app from the starting gate and go straight into maintenance/feature-tweaking mode? meticulous hand-holding through the first few weeks usually convinces them to stick arou…

If we are choosing between the problems of:

A) Having users, with high expectations

B) Not having users

Problem A is a way better problem to have. Of course, no business would intentionally try to cultivate a user base of picky, high maintenance pain-in-the-necks. Nor would it be anyone's long term goal to be hacking on user requested features. But if those things bring users, easy trade. It's hard to think of any problem that would be more important than the problem of not having users.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#112

Post by cmorelli »

dkarl wrote: post #98
Doches wrote: post #19

I’ll second the PG advice: do things that don’t scale is by far the most effective tool I’ve found for finding _and keeping_ users. I’m building small-business tools for fringe retail [0] as a side-project, and those users are usually more than willing to at least investigate new apps if they even have a chance of solving some real problem their business faces. Emailing them personally with a pitch based on a few min…

offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds How did you manage to do that without making it impossible to add major new functionality to your app? Did you nail the basic functionality of the app from the starting gate and go straight into maintenance/feature-tweaking mode? meticulous hand-holding through the first few weeks usually convinces them to stick arou…

offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds

It seems worth noting that this can also be a dangerous strategy. It's really easy to fall into the trap of giving each customer exactly what they ask for, rather than learning what they actually need. If gone unchecked, this is the sort of product strategy that easily leads to disastrous results for product usability and experience.

This isn't to say that as a business you're always (or ever) better at knowing what your customers want than the customer is; but you are in a strategic position to be able to understand what similar customers are asking for, and distill that down to the core problem that needs to be solved.

I'm sure this isn't the extent that the original comment was aiming for, but it felt worth expanding on this since the whole topic is about early products getting users. A key component of that is ensuring you're building a product that people want to use.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#113

Post by donmatito »

ziikutv wrote: post #79
franciscop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For every new customer they can sign up that converts, I credit their account with a few free months. It totally won’t scale [...] I don't know the market/business, but why not? isn't that what Dropbox does at scale?

The other interpretation of this, if you have millions of paid users, that are getting 5 months free.. that's 5 months of you paying the bill and not getting any revenue. That wont scale in terms of maintainability. At least that is what I assumed when I read that.

That totally scales if the new user long term value is sufficient to recoup these 5 months. These 5 months free are an investment, that may or may not pay off, but if it reliably pays off, then yes, it is a very healthy customer acquisition strategy.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#114

Post by cmorelli »

jaredklewis wrote: post #111
dkarl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds How did you manage to do that without making it impossible to add major new functionality to your app? Did you nail the basic functionality of the app from the starting gate and go straight into maintenance/feature-tweaking mode? meticulous hand-holding through the first few weeks usually convinces them to stick arou…

If we are choosing between the problems of: A) Having users, with high expectations B) Not having users Problem A is a way better problem to have. Of course, no business would intentionally try to cultivate a user base of picky, high maintenance pain-in-the-necks. Nor would it be anyone's long term goal to be hacking on user requested features. But if those things bring users, easy trade. It's hard to think of any pr…

This.

There's also a difference between holding your customer's hand and building unsustainable expectations. The only expectation you've built by holding their hand through the onboarding process is that you care about your customers and want them to have a great experience. That's exactly the expectation you want your customers to have. Many startups have been incredibly successful at acquiring customers from incumbent businesses with more features and possibly cheaper products, by simply caring more about people.

At the end of the day there are people using your product (presumably). The more those people feel you care about them and their problems, the more likely they are to give you a little space as your business gets off the ground. Maybe they're willing to tolerate a few minutes of downtime, the occasional bug, or missing feature, because they know that they're always going to be treated well by your team.

Cultivating strong customer relationships is a great element in any business, and it's virtually a requirement in modern B2B.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#115

Post by EGreg »

Doches wrote: post #19

I’ll second the PG advice: do things that don’t scale is by far the most effective tool I’ve found for finding _and keeping_ users. I’m building small-business tools for fringe retail [0] as a side-project, and those users are usually more than willing to at least investigate new apps if they even have a chance of solving some real problem their business faces. Emailing them personally with a pitch based on a few min…

For every new customer they can sign up that converts, I credit their account with a few free months. It totally won’t scale, but it helps me grow into markets where I can’t physically travel out and do sales in person.

Why wouldn't it scale? It is a great way to make virality.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#116

Post by peterhartree »

Here's what I did for my Chrome extension [1]:

1. Searched the Chrome Web Store, Twitter and Google for users who had said lukewarm or negative things about another extension which addresses a similar user problem in a different way.

2. Searched the same places for people who were clearly interested in the topic of focus and email productivity.

I spent a day or so manually emailing several hundred people in this way. This initial push - and the events that it lead to (e.g. people I contacted recommending the extension to others) - got me 100 WAU within a couple of weeks (and lots of helpful feedback).

(I tried some other things which were much less effective. Listing sites, in particular, were largely a waste of time, though my Product Hunt submission came good when the extension was featured a few months later.)

[1] https://inboxwhenready.org

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#117

Post by derwiki »

gargarplex wrote: post #62

Lots of people come up with a good idea for a product, launch, then wonder where to get users. "Start with the market, instead," evolves their consciousness. I offer a different approach: start with the customer acquisition strategy and then build your product. 1) Build a landing page describing the problem and your solution, in terms of emotional value benefits 2) Drive paid traffic to the landing page. Get at least…

> 4) Cross post that very same narrative to discussion forums: Facebook, HN, Reddits, Indie Hackers[forum], wherever.

This seems more effective if your primary market is the startup crowd. It could also be distracting if they're not the target demographic and you overvalue their feedback.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#118

Post by Doches »

dkarl wrote: post #98
Doches wrote: post #19

I’ll second the PG advice: do things that don’t scale is by far the most effective tool I’ve found for finding _and keeping_ users. I’m building small-business tools for fringe retail [0] as a side-project, and those users are usually more than willing to at least investigate new apps if they even have a chance of solving some real problem their business faces. Emailing them personally with a pitch based on a few min…

offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds How did you manage to do that without making it impossible to add major new functionality to your app? Did you nail the basic functionality of the app from the starting gate and go straight into maintenance/feature-tweaking mode? meticulous hand-holding through the first few weeks usually convinces them to stick arou…

> ...nail the basic functionality of the app...

As much as possible, yes. The app is essentially a point-of-sale system with a bunch of reporting features bolted on; nailing that core POS functionality in a way that kept it easy to build new reporting features on top was always my top priority.

> Were you able to keep up with expectations when you got enough users to sustain the business?

This is the situation I'm in now, actually -- most of my early users are in a nice steady-state, but I have lost a few who weren't happy with the drop in support as I slowed down on their specific, special-snowflake requests. All of them were also early adopters of the affiliate marketing scheme, though, so they've basically signed up their replacements already, and those users are entering into an app that's in a much more steady state, and have expectations set accordingly.

It's not a perfect outcome, and you're 100% right to call out those high expectations as a potential problem -- but as problems go I find that it's better to have demanding users than non-existant ones :)

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#119

Post by codingdave »

welanes wrote: post #88

1. I scoured the reviews of similar apps and listed the main feature requests that were being stonewalled and implemented them. 2. I then set up keyword alerts for Reddit and Twitter and when somebody mentioned [similar app] I popped in and suggested they try Lanes which, btw, has feature [similar app] has not implemented . 3. I got lucky^. Photos of Lanes began appearing on Tumblr blogs (the #studyblr community) and…

As a side note to #2, I tend to monitor reddit for people who do that in response to my stuff...I watch discussions on reddit, and when people pop on just to pimp their own competitive products, I remind them via links to reddiquette that such behavior is not appropriate. Reddit is a funny place in that they'll stick with their own, and wait for you to implement a feature vs. jump to someone they think is on reddit solely to market their own product.

Of course, I've also found reddit traffic to be fairly worthless. They show up. They don't buy.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#120

Post by cdiamand »

I did the following for http://www.oppsdaily.com

1. Posted landing page in a slack chat (first ~10 users)

2. Posted on the indiehackers forum (+30 users)

3. Got mentioned in the indiehackers weekly newsletter (+150)

4. Posted to hacker news (+?)

5. Posted to product hunt (did not go so great)(+?)

6. Started posting weekly metrics to HN - made the frontpage (+1500-2000)

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