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

My heuristic is that I budget 2x expected LTV per channel for the initial test. So if I think my customer could be worth $100 over their lifetime, I will allocate $200 to reddit ads, Facebook, etc. If I don't get any movement in the funnel (clicking signup; actually signing up; paying; etc...), then I abandon the channel until I have substantially updated the product or messaging. If there is some movement, then I devote effort to optimizing the funnel, starting from the ad creatives toward each segment of the signup flow

We provide SAAS to financial institutions and their corporate clients (so the below may not be relevant to your market):

1) make sure your service is a pain killer not a vitamin. This industry does not believe in vitamins and we didn't have the resources for such a long closing cycle. Our tech can be deployed in minutes, is easily understood and requires very little to no backofdice Support 2) Cold call to get meetings. I can't emphasize enough how powerful a cold call is. People on Wall Street get hundreds of emails a day but they are trained to always answer their phone. Be nice, be genuine, solve a painpoint 3) "ask for the order". Sales cycles can drag on, at some point you have to draw line in the sand and ask for the order. Do it humbly and respectfully and be prepared to hear no. The will almost always say yes

Final thought: we never took VC funding. In the beginning friends and mentors said we should as it would "add to your credibility", anecdotally I believe the opposite has happened. I've sat across from many entrepreneur CEOs who chose us not just because we were good at what we did but out of a desire to pay it forward. It's the unwritten code among founders: you grinded to get where you are and people who had no need to helped along the way, you do the same when the time comes. Point of this story is find these people as early as possible, they will become your champions.

The product looks cool. Seeing as it's a free service, how do you make money?

Edit: nevermind, now I see the option to upgrade to lanes plus

Getting the first 100 users has actually been the easiest part of the process. It's getting 100 daily new users that's really hard.

For Standard Notes[0], here's what I did:

1. Comment on privacy related HN posts about a privacy-focused notes app. That would have gotten me 40-50 users.

2. Write articles[1] on encryption/privacy/webdev. Some of them made it to frontpage HN, some didn't. That might have gotten me to 500 users.

3. Repeat. Tirelessly. Painstakingly. Depressingly. Just keep going doing small things every day. Eventually they start to compound.

[0]: https://standardnotes.org

[1]: https://journal.standardnotes.org

I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree. For launching a new technology service, generally adoption follows a pattern: technologists (people who like tech for its own sake), then visionaries in the market itself – who use the tech to boost their own career and get an 'unfair advantage' over their peers, then the chasm. Then come pragmatists, who require social proof from peers in their market, and then conservatives, who require a full service solution (all the complements must exist, such as a support infrastructure). Finally, the laggards, who will only move to a new solution when they are absolutely forced to, such as when the incumbent discontinues support for its offering.

This has all been formulated in great strong detail in the book Crossing The Chasm. Maybe if you are implementing a 'commodity' service that is innovative in absolutely no way whatsoever, you can skip the technologists, but there is such a strong community of online entrepreneurs with a great support ecosystem that I recommend everyone take advantage of it. The only problem is that you have to pay to play – not in terms of money, but in terms of contribution (sharing what you know and helping others). In this case definitely, you really reap what you sow in the karma bank.