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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?

#361

Post by amanchanda »

Maybe I should give more context on what I am building. It is an AI ghostwriter for LinkedIn content (https://socialhq.me).

I was fed up with human ghostwriters and honestly I didn't have enough time myself to write for LinkedIn consistently. So, I ended up designing this. I ran it with a few founders in my network and they loved it. That's when I decided to make this into an MVP. Now we have our initial set of beta users and we are just now starting to commercialize it.

So, my current ICP are individuals who want to build their brands on LinkedIn. So, its predominantly an individual user product ATM.

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

#362

Post by amanchanda »

nicooo wrote: post #209
arewethereyeta wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like that sort of marketing where the OP creates a question for himself to answer from another account.

I was not involved in the original comment. But maybe I should expand my product to build this ;)

I can vouch for this. I don't know nicooo :)

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

#363

Post by amanchanda »

jrvarela56 wrote: post #231
amanchanda wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Makes sense. So basically, what we are doing, you want us to scale that. Correct?

Your current approach has specific techniques I would remove altogether to focus on the core interaction between you and the user: talk to so many of them so often that you truly understand their problem and how they shop for a solution. Once you understand that and make them happy, you’ll come up with ideas to experiment how to get more users.

So, I am one of the users myself. I built it because I needed it. I ran it by few users in my network. We are constantly getting feedback from our early beta users, which are around 200. Not all of them are active.

My main problem is TOFU, which I need to solve for.

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

#364

Post by amanchanda »

mpeg wrote: post #30
amanchanda wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen results with paid experiments at this early stage? One thing we are considering is to do a paid masterclass (low ticket) and run paid ads for that. Bring them in the funnel and get them signed up to use the product.

Without knowing what the vertical is, hard to say whether a masterclass like that would provide good results. I know for some verticals things like free webinars etc can provide decent results, but that's usually b2b So, usually paid experiments won't really give you a return at an early stage, but occasionally they can if you get lucky, but at least they'll give you an idea of what your CAC can be, and give you a st…

I just added more context in a comment above. I am building an AI Ghostwriter for LinkedIn content (https://socialhq.me)

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

#365

Post by jrvarela56 »

amanchanda wrote: post #363
jrvarela56 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your current approach has specific techniques I would remove altogether to focus on the core interaction between you and the user: talk to so many of them so often that you truly understand their problem and how they shop for a solution. Once you understand that and make them happy, you’ll come up with ideas to experiment how to get more users.

So, I am one of the users myself. I built it because I needed it. I ran it by few users in my network. We are constantly getting feedback from our early beta users, which are around 200. Not all of them are active. My main problem is TOFU, which I need to solve for.

Checkout stuff by Reforge (reforge.com) to learn about how to prioritize this kind of stuff.

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

#366

Post by supportengineer »

coolcase wrote: post #301
supportengineer wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Solve a real, hair-on-fire problem It's too bad these folks can't post somewhere in a central place, instead of us going to them and having to drag it out of them.

The emergency room?

This is an interesting concept. What is the equivalent of the emergency room for a struggling business?

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

#367

Post by OJFord »

permo-w wrote: post #353
OJFord wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I can name tonnes of B2B SaaS in (and well beyond) that realm. I was replying firmly in the 'B2C' scope of the parent comment 'B2C @ $50/month from an unknown company'.

fair enough, but it wasn't clear

Yes it's a very clear day today, lovely weather.

Oh you meant the topic in thread? Fair enough, but it wasn't clear.

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

#368

Post by fullStackOasis »

rwieruch wrote: post #262
jasondigitized wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to hear more about the postcards you sent. Did you send these to cold prospects? Did they work? What do they look like?

Hey Jason, just saw your email and wanted to reply here. Unfortunately, I don’t think the postcards really worked. We sent them to various regions across Germany, but my guess is they ended up in a pile at the campground reception and never reached the actual owners. That said, we manually scraped around 500 campgrounds near us, designed postcards that highlighted CloudCamping’s key selling points, and sent them out…

I used to run a SaaS, and I also used postcards to try to promote it! Why not use emails? I was sure that emails would get spam-collected, but physical postcards might get some attention.

I don't know if the tactic worked.

These days, if I were mailing postcards, I'd make sure to add a special QR code to them. That way, if someone went to my sales page using the QR code, I'd have an idea that the postcard had been seen by the right person. Postcards are rather expensive (both the postcard and the stamp). Who wants to keep trying that without knowing it was successful?

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

#369

Post by MarcelOlsz »

xandrius wrote: post #348
helro wrote: post #68

I got 20k+ downloads for my app by posting on Reddit. It's an app/website blocker for iPhone & Mac, so I focused on relevant communities like r/digitalminimalism and r/dumbphones with genuine, non-spammy posts: https://www.atten.app I also tried "apps gone free" campaigns by posting on Reddit and using sites like AppRaven. These were very effective for visibility, the launch is currently the #5 all-time post on r/mac…

Honest question: how do you post on Reddit without getting bashed for self-promotion in the subreddit which people would probably like the product/thing?

You post those giant threads that get 600+ upvotes in niche webdev/cs communities and you tuck in a link to your thing amongst many others, making it virtually impossible to detect as promotion.
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