Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#111

Post by patio11 » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

pairing wrote: post #103

itengelhardt wrote: post #26

Here's a tactic that has worked for me so far 1. Set up a blog on your domain 2. write 20+ articles on industry-related topics (this alone will bring in some traffic) 3. get a number of emails from prospective customers 4. write a PERSONALIZED email to everyone on the list and ask if they are interested in an interview to be published on your blog. Offer a link from your blog as additional incentive My response rate…

"3. get a number of emails from prospective customers" Can you elaborate on this step? How are getting these emails?

Typically, you swap them their email address for something they'd presumably want. Instant download of a white paper, one-month free course delivered over email about $FOO, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#112

Post by dsugarman » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 4:32 AM UTC

Focus on getting a product to the point that some small group (as small as one person) really loves the product. If you focus on that getting to 100 will be easy. Of course you will need to pick a product that at least 100 people have a use for.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#113

Post by spencerfry » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 5:05 AM UTC

namenotrequired wrote: post #84

spencerfry wrote: post #29

I've grown https://www.uncover.com (a simple tool to give employees perks and rewards) in various different ways. A lot of it began with telling my network of friends who run startups. Getting them signed up. Then getting them to tell their friends how much they liked it. Once that source was depleted, I began to do a lot of content marketing. I started writing for a lot of different blogs, websites, etc. That helped…

I'm not in your target audience, but I found your site originally on a Show HN and have seen it be recommended to others on various places ever since so you seem to be doing something right! :)

Thanks! That's awesome. Referrals are our best source of new customers.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#114

Post by loomio » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 5:19 AM UTC

Our first customer for our collaboration tool Loomio (htp://www.loomio.org) was the coworking space we were working in and the social enterprise hub that was based there.

We built a tool that was instantly useful to them, and in exchange we instantly had 100+ users. We released an extremely "M" MVP and had real users from day one. Because they were using it free and we were building features in response to their direct feedback, they were very understanding about it being a rough prototype. Two years later, they voluntarily opted to generously backpay us for use of the tool (we didn't even ask them to).

If you can get real users from very early on, even if your tool is rough, do it! It will help you build what's really useful to people, and involving early users in the design process actively means they are motivated to use the tool early and help you make it work as well as possible as quickly as possible.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#115

Post by shasa » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 5:33 AM UTC

Back in Dec 2012, when we were planning to launch TripTern we were bootstrapped and didn't have any money for marketing. So we relied heavily on Facebook for promotion. One thing that we used to spread the word was to create promotional material based on movie posters ( see the links below). It helped us in getting the initial signups and also was instrumental in us getting featured on Mashable.

https://www.facebook.com/useTripTern/photos/a.38683168472634...

You can see the entire album here

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.386831684726346.90...

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#116

Post by blase40 » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 5:38 AM UTC

I struck up a partnership with the owner of the largest forum in my vertical. I just published this blog post about the whole process a few days ago:

How One Strategic Partnership Generated Hockey Stick Growth For Our Online Community http://justinblase.quora.com/How-One-Strategic-Partnership-G...

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#117

Post by missn » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 6:33 AM UTC

BorisMelnik wrote: post #109

cold called - I hired interns and commission based workers to call people they thought would buy our product. I didn't have to worry about selling it to the customers, I just had to figure out how to sell it to our sales reps. Cold calling worked great, just got tired of the bS that came along with it.

Can you elaborate what you meant by the "bs that came along with it"? Was it mostly setting up the system (getting the right folks, script, etc.) that was hard?

Really interested to hear your experience (and the "pain points") as I know someone who is trying to write a book about this and he's always on the lookout for folks with different perspectives.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#118

Post by MarkIceberg » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 6:57 AM UTC

HN got me the first 260 users for http://crushify.org (Reddit was a no show.)

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#119

Post by ChrisNorstrom » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 7:44 AM UTC

gabemart wrote: post #42

I haven't done any promotion for http://asoftmurmur.com besides posting to reddit and HN, and it now has 400-500 regular daily users. It depends entirely on what type of product or service you're offering. Another key thing is to understand the community. There is radical cultural diversity between subreddits which manifests in very different reactions to self-promotion. It's essential to engage appropriately and res…

Please add "Crickets" pleeeeeeease. And make sure it's the subtle crickets and not the really harsh sounding ones. Find crickets that sound like these: http://naturesoundspa.com/nature-sounds-for-sleep/relaxing-c... and NOT these: http://naturesoundspa.com/nature-sounds-for-sleep/undisturbe...

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#120

Post by NicoJuicy » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 8:05 AM UTC

gabemart wrote: post #70

_g2lm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say, that's probably partly because you actually have a good product. Added to my bookmarks. I've been looking for something like this for years. Thanks for making it!

Thanks very much for using it! I built it because I wanted it to exist. I got tired of jury rigging three instances of VLC together on my laptop every time I wanted some background noise.

Ever tried http://coffitivity.com/ ?