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

If you start with a fresh idea, then you have to test and discover if what you are offering is viable. By taking an existing product or service, and improving upon it, that entire first phase of discovery is done for you.

That's why most new businesses aren't building something novel (ie: opening up a restaurant, retail store, software consulting, etc...).

That discovery phase is expensive. So if you're boot-strapping or limited on capital and time, then you're in a situation where creating something new is extremely risky. Even large companies with lots of resources often fail when launching a novel product.

Not every company is like Apple.

And conversely, many successful companies built on existing solutions. Google wasn't the first search engine. Facebook wasn't the first social network. Microsoft Word wasn't the first word processor.

I'll agree that "It's better to create a new market." But only IF you have the resources to take on that kind of risk.

By definition if the startup can get users to do something, anything, then those users are doing something, anything using the startup - also by definition. If they weren't doing something, anything with the startup, they would either a) be doing something, anything without the startup (pain point) or b) experiencing a need-state (something, anything as a latent need that they are not using.) This would follow from definitions.

If you're not begging the question, could you propose a hypothetical startup as a counterexample, i.e. describe a startup that would not be solving a pain point or need-state of some sort, if we imagine the (counterfactual) scenario that people do however use it.

For example: if a startup sells you the right to remove a virus (that you didn't know about, and which doesn't exist). Is this a pain point? Is this a latent need? By definition it would have to be, as you are paying for it. That's why I say you're begging the question. Kaspersky by definition is filling the need to feel secure (by the definition that they are actually making sales.)

If a fitness company really sells you the knowledge that you're at least doing something, by staying enrolled, even though its model depends on 90% of people not showing up. That would be an example. Are they filling a need to be enrolled, without going? By definition, they are.

If these skinner-box games (apps) get traction, without being fun, then are they filling a need? By definition they are. Zynga by definition is filling a need to "casually game". (By the definition that they are doing so.)

McDonald's is by definition filling a need for McDonald's food and/or experience etc.

So to talk about 'needs' or 'pain points' are both somewhat silly, if we get to define these things as anything you can get people to do. (Your chance at a counterexample would be to state something you can get people to do, that would not be a latent need or a pain point - for example if you get people to behave very irrationally to use your service. Go ahead and try to come up with examples.)

Specifically, I don't think people felt "pain" over not having a Facebook wall of their friends' updates. It's just something Facebook created for them. It's no good to retroactively say that it was an 'unfilled need' as by definition this would be a catch-all for anything that doesn't fit in the first bucket, of pain points.

Basically, I am saying that if a startup does anything, it would fit by definition into something that was already done, and therefore a pain-point, or something that wasn't already done, and therefore a latent need the moment you start selling it, retroactively, since the beginning of time. The moment the first of something is used or sold it becomes a retroactive latent need going back to the beginning of time. It's simply begging the question completely.

Nor is this a shallow observation. If we switched it to, "build something that people will use", then that is not a very good answer to how to get your first 100 users, as the definition of something that people will use, is something that people use. By definition you can get 100 users if you build something that a hundred people will use...

I suppose you can make deeper observation that the goal of a startup is to make something that people independently will decide to use based on a description alone, or an initial experience, or their friends using it, or its having social prestige, or based on a specific advertising copy, or in the context of the industry and other advertising they've seen, or based on their historical purchasing habits and impressions, or . . . . . . . . .

you see, as soon as you make it deeper, it no longer fits your buckets at all, really. At most we can make it a shorthand for, "produce a company that you would be a customer of", since you can probably judge introspectively whether that you would be a customer if you were still an outsider, given the company's products, copy, marketing, etc.

But make no mistake: plenty of successful startups do not have the kind of offering their founders would have jumped at.