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Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#331

Post by _QrE »

nicooo wrote: post #327
_QrE wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://sparkflow.ai/ That implies that the product is ready, which it does not seem to be? The product does seem interesting, what do you do to differentiate yourself from different offerings that do basically the same? E.g. you mention Discord on the website - are you finding all the relevant discord channels for me, or do I have to join them myself, and you j…

Hi. I should have phrased it differently as I'm not totally ready yet (as you rightly pointed out). Yes, I find the discussions, let you engage with them trough the app, and monitor replies. Do you mind sharing the competition you're referring to? I've not found any similar solution so far. Thanks

Not sure if I'm allowed to link to stuff, but you can find a bunch of alternatives to offerings like these (the most basic being google alerts), both free and paid, if you look for them - especially on sites that exist to list alternatives.

Some let you link accounts, some give you lists of platforms they scan. I've specifically mentioned Discord because there's no easy way to discover communities without being invited, so if you can actually discover relevant Discord communities and monitor discussions (beyond the few sites that aggregate some popular communities), then you have a USP, since most products don't do that, at least in any capacity that people think is worth paying for.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#332

Post by cosbgn »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #311
cosbgn wrote: post #41

I run a small but fairly successful "embed chatGPT on your site" widget https://rispose.com I'm acquiring customers by: - Offer a 100% free unlimited solution (with branding) I get a lot of daily clicks from people coming from my customer's website - Offer a really good price. My competitors are about 5X more expensive. I'll eventually maybe raise my price, but for now I have a lot of people switching to my tool - Af…

Nit: Are you maybe German? You write "10.000" in a couple of places on your landing page, where native English speakers would expect to see "10,000".

Italy/Finland! - Fixed, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#333

Post by rwieruch »

diordiderot wrote: post #278
rwieruch wrote: post #17

Not sure if my "products" compare to yours, but I’ve seen some success with a few of them over the years, maybe there are some takeaways (or pitfalls to avoid) for you: CloudCamping (PMS): 250+ Businesses, 2023 - Positioned as more modern, more accessible, and more affordable than the competition - Limited competition due to the complexity of the product - Personally visited campgrounds to demo the product - Sent phy…

CloudCamping's UI is beautiful. Did you use a UI framework or css library? How do you handle payments while only taking 1%? Stipe charges at least 1.5%.

Just good ol’ MUI :)

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#334

Post by rwieruch »

joeguilmette wrote: post #308
diordiderot wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudCamping's UI is beautiful. Did you use a UI framework or css library? How do you handle payments while only taking 1%? Stipe charges at least 1.5%.

my guess: pass the processing fees onto the either the consumer or provider.

Yes, the campground owner pays the processing fees. Stripe allows us to get 1% of the cake with their API.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#335

Post by rwieruch »

nicbou wrote: post #276
rwieruch wrote: post #17

Not sure if my "products" compare to yours, but I’ve seen some success with a few of them over the years, maybe there are some takeaways (or pitfalls to avoid) for you: CloudCamping (PMS): 250+ Businesses, 2023 - Positioned as more modern, more accessible, and more affordable than the competition - Limited competition due to the complexity of the product - Personally visited campgrounds to demo the product - Sent phy…

I had a good chuckle at postcard marketing working well in Germany. Of course it does.

Yes, it’s very German. But I think it didn’t work, because I never heard back from someone mentioning the postcard :’)

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#336

Post by akoboldfrying »

reverseblade2 wrote: post #328
akoboldfrying wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks really interesting! Optimisation problems like this are so much fun to solve and seem like such a natural fit for the SaaS model. Could you give more of an idea about how much it "took off"? Based on earlier comments of yours, it seems that you have some paying customers. Has it grown very gradually? Do you have much churn? Also curious how you have been splitting your time between algorithm development fo…

I guess i am around 150 MRR level or less perhaps. So it pays the costs and leaves me some money and I can run it forever given the condition satisfied. I have spent countless months on the algorithm earlier. It improved from trash to something commercially reasonable gradually, it was more like getting stuck for a while then getting small break throughs. My biggest mistake was changing my domain perhaps. Earlier it…

Thanks! I know what you mean about "countless months" on an algorithm... Glad you were able to improve it to a useful level.

> it was more like getting stuck for a while then getting small break throughs

Like simulated annealing itself ;-) (Yes, I watched the deep dive clip)

Really cool that you give API examples right on the landing page BTW. Do you know if many customers use the API directly? Also really interesting to me that your algo is quick enough that you can return a solution directly before the HTTPS connection times out (I would have thought it might take half an hour to optimise, meaning you'd probably need to instead return some kind of handle that the user can use to pick up the solution via a different endpoint later).

A couple of minor nits I noticed, hope this is helpful rather than annoying:

- The "Blog" link at the top appears to produce a copy of the original landing page. Maybe just delete that link?

- The "API Response Structure" section is duplicated

- In the deep dive clip, at 5:31, the subtitle contains "three dpaq.ing", while at 5:54, both the voice and the subtitle say "third bin packer" (I suspect you meant "3D bin packer")

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#337

Post by Aziell »

I’ve been thinking about how to handle the early stages as well. The first 100 users are definitely the hardest, and I think the key is to start by reaching out to core users and turning them into partners.

The focus should be on building trust and creating a community around your product. Getting these early users to share their stories and feedback can make a huge difference. With more real voices, others will be more likely to believe in what you’re offering. That way, the next 500 users should come along pretty quickly.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#338

Post by reverseblade2 »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #336
reverseblade2 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess i am around 150 MRR level or less perhaps. So it pays the costs and leaves me some money and I can run it forever given the condition satisfied. I have spent countless months on the algorithm earlier. It improved from trash to something commercially reasonable gradually, it was more like getting stuck for a while then getting small break throughs. My biggest mistake was changing my domain perhaps. Earlier it…

Thanks! I know what you mean about "countless months" on an algorithm... Glad you were able to improve it to a useful level. > it was more like getting stuck for a while then getting small break throughs Like simulated annealing itself ;-) (Yes, I watched the deep dive clip) Really cool that you give API examples right on the landing page BTW. Do you know if many customers use the API directly? Also really interestin…

Yes, most of the project evolved because of potential customers who later disappeared. Someone shows up and says, “Hey, we’ll pay you if you provide this feature,” so I implement it… and then they vanish

The API came about the same way. Currently, there’s just one active API user: a company from Sri Lanka that built a Unity WASM interface on top of it.

I coded the algorithm completely from scratch, with no external inspiration and fun fact, it’s written in F# using functional programming. There are a lot of immutable lists floating around. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have been able to write it without functional programming (even though it’s notoriously slow for this kind of problem). The immutability allowed me to focus on individual parts of the app without worrying about side effects.

That said, how it works and how fast it works still feels like magic to me, just like any meta-heuristic algorithm applied to combinatorial problems.

And thanks for the feedback! I knew the Blog link was broken after I redid the landing page, but I didn’t notice the duplicated API Response Structure section. I’ll definitely fix that. Though part of me thinks, “Should I really bother?”

Also, thanks for catching the audio/subtitle issues. I was aware of both, but I figured it wouldn’t make much difference at this stage. Maybe that attitude explains my low traction… who knows? Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to point these out!

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#339

Post by ozim »

abdullin wrote: post #40
ozim wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok now we move goal posts how to build first 100 community members

When I was starting my community, I joined other similar communities and tried to be helpful there. No ads or links, just answering questions and supporting. People that were genuinely interested to learn more about the topic - opened my profile and followed the links there. This and interesting content was enough to grow community organically to 14k subscribers over 2 years. Another approach to speed up the growth -…

Great answer, more people should understand there is no easy hack and overnight success is mostly preceded by years of consistent work every day.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#340

Post by akoboldfrying »

reverseblade2 wrote: post #338
akoboldfrying wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I know what you mean about "countless months" on an algorithm... Glad you were able to improve it to a useful level. > it was more like getting stuck for a while then getting small break throughs Like simulated annealing itself ;-) (Yes, I watched the deep dive clip) Really cool that you give API examples right on the landing page BTW. Do you know if many customers use the API directly? Also really interestin…

Yes, most of the project evolved because of potential customers who later disappeared. Someone shows up and says, “Hey, we’ll pay you if you provide this feature,” so I implement it… and then they vanish The API came about the same way. Currently, there’s just one active API user: a company from Sri Lanka that built a Unity WASM interface on top of it. I coded the algorithm completely from scratch, with no external i…

Cool! And yes I'm a little surprised that you used a functional programming language for the implementation, I'll have to have a look at F#.
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