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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?

#41

Post by nolok »

franciscop wrote: post #36
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 [...] I don't know the market/business, but why not? isn't that what Dropbox does at scale?

I would go one step further and say referral promotion/advantage is one of the easiest and most common scalable "cheap marketing" tool. My bank does it, my dropbox does it, my hosting company does it, even the place where I buy my jeans does it.

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

#42

Post by leblancfg »

karthiksk2012 wrote: post #37

Really great feedback. The reason I asked this question is I just launched my app https://pipecourse.com/ and its been few days. I tried cold emailing people but getting almost no response. Any particular feedback for this will be appreciated.

If you want real feedback, take away every mention of YOU and the company from the home page. Rewrite it from the perspective of your potential first 100 users. Show them exactly what pipecourse is doing that they can't find on some other site.

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

#43

Post by nolok »

jefozabuss wrote: post #40
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?

To scale it probably needs to provide $ incentives, since power affiliates would rack up thousands of free months which they could never use.

Yes and no, you just need to offer credits. The point is not about re-sellers (that don't have the need to spend what they earn on your service), for those you need $, it's about referral, and if you're selling FOOs, you're probably fine selling a FOO with a 15% discount if it also guarantees you another FOO bought at full price, or even if both FOO are at discount.

People accumulating so much credit to the point that they can't spend it is a non issue in that referral (like Dropbox) is meant to be scaling wide, for scaling tall you need a re-sellers system (like say what Amazon or OVH are offering).

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

#45

Post by karthiksk2012 »

leblancfg wrote: post #42
karthiksk2012 wrote: post #37

Really great feedback. The reason I asked this question is I just launched my app https://pipecourse.com/ and its been few days. I tried cold emailing people but getting almost no response. Any particular feedback for this will be appreciated.

If you want real feedback, take away every mention of YOU and the company from the home page. Rewrite it from the perspective of your potential first 100 users. Show them exactly what pipecourse is doing that they can't find on some other site.

Got it. I actually created a pipecourse on my startup thinking it will be a way to show users one of the usecases of the platform.But i get your point.Thank you.

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

#46

Post by steveridout »

mdavid626 wrote: post #34
steveridout wrote: post #7

These got Readlang's first 100 users: 1. This post to a language learning forum: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T... 2. This post to r/LanguageLearning: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1b08ly/re... If there's a subreddit where your potential audience hangs out that's a good bet. Try to be honest, humble, and non-spammy.

[Readlang] You are missing a sign up link on your home page... I can sign up after installing the chrome extension, but that's just strange.

Alongside the "Install Web Reader" link there's a "Start Learning" link which will take you into the web-app and allow you to sign up. I figured "Start Learning" would be more inviting than "Sign Up" but this is something it might be worth AB testing.

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

#47

Post by iEchoic »

/r/wow got Guilded's[0] first 100 users. Reddit has a (well-earned) reputation for being very hostile to self-promotion, but I think it's under-appreciated how charitable and enthusiastic redditors are, too. If redditors can tell you put your heart into something, you don't sound like Lord Business, and you actually listen to their feedback, they'll go above and beyond to help you out. Users like this are invaluable, and just as importantly, they make making things fun.

[0] http://www.guilded.gg

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

#48

Post by steveridout »

lacampbell wrote: post #33
steveridout wrote: post #7

These got Readlang's first 100 users: 1. This post to a language learning forum: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T... 2. This post to r/LanguageLearning: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1b08ly/re... If there's a subreddit where your potential audience hangs out that's a good bet. Try to be honest, humble, and non-spammy.

Cool product. I noticed that in the reddit post you offered it to people for free. How did that pan out?

Thanks! It worked fine to get some initial feedback and users. A few months later I added some limits to the free plan and offered a premium subscription, currently at $5 / month or $48 / year. Around 2% of free signups end up converting to paid.

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

#50

Post by hokihy72 »

homero wrote: post #32
hokihy72 wrote: post #29

For us it was through a Kickstarter ( https://medium.com/@alexobenauer/how-i-launched-my-company-w... ), and the majority of the first 100 backers (that I didn't already know) were from Hacker News.

What happened to mail pilot

We stopped selling it last year to focus on our next product, which is aimed to solve the root of the email problem. It definitely has a future, so stay tuned!

But through working with our customers for years, we saw that while we really helped people get their email more organized, we weren't solving the root problem: that anyone can dump anything they want into your inbox in the first place.

We felt called to double down on a killer solution we figured out for that problem first (https://throttlehq.com/).

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