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Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#41

Post by primitivesuave »

maneesh wrote: post #15

I did it with Pavlok, which is a wearable device for waking up early and changing habits. The first 100 was done through writing blog posts, getting email subscribers. When we were ready with a basic prototype, we did a webinar presentation to our email list to pre-sell it (6 months before our indiegogo). We ended up selling about 200-300 prototypes before the webinar, and 300-400 pre-orders. When we launched our Ind…

Maneesh, I found your journey truly inspiring in the way you automated a slap in the face. I had actually heard about the product before seeing the Shark Tank episode, and was aghast by their rudeness! You're clearly a smart guy and I think you made the right decision at the end.

Would you mind commenting on the value that TV exposure on Shark Tank brought to Pavlok?

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#42

Post by cheez »

nikanj wrote: post #36

We operate in the public sector SaaS space. We tried all sorts of focused marketing, but by far the best results were obtained by 1) Picking up a list of municipalities 2) Calling the main switchboard of each one and asking who makes decisions relevant to our business 3) Calling said person, setting up a live demo. There's still immense power in the human-human interaction, even if it's not webscale.

What's your average customer LTV?

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#43

Post by rabeiusura »

austincheney wrote: post #29
dasil003 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be shy, what's your tool?

http://prettydiff.com

Your tool is great has saved me countless times.

I think the web ui is a little weak, but it is miles better than anything else out there.

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#44

Post by nikanj »

cheez wrote: post #42
nikanj wrote: post #36

We operate in the public sector SaaS space. We tried all sorts of focused marketing, but by far the best results were obtained by 1) Picking up a list of municipalities 2) Calling the main switchboard of each one and asking who makes decisions relevant to our business 3) Calling said person, setting up a live demo. There's still immense power in the human-human interaction, even if it's not webscale.

What's your average customer LTV?

High thousands to low tens of thousands per year, lifetime is hard to guestimate as there's very little churn in our business. We still retain practicly all the customers we've ever made.

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#45

Post by nickpsecurity »

Huhty wrote: post #30

We run a community platform called Snapzu ( http://snapzu.com ) which is similar in nature to HN/Reddit/etc (which entirely depends on user submissions, voting, etc) so we right off the bat had to battle the notorious "chicken and egg" problem. It was really hard attracting users when the entire site depends on other users (of which obviously at first we had very little of) for content. However, we did several (mostl…

I'm your typical NoScript user from the days of web pages that were faster loading than the links we retrieved them on. I'd normally complain about one of these sites but your science link [re-]loaded seemingly in an instant, looks great, and scrolls well. So, thanks for a better experience than looking at many other demos. :)

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#46

Post by egfx »

sebringj wrote: post #22

If people really like your app AND you have a way for them to invite others easily AND share about it on their social links easily AND you started off by going to your core group personally and battle tested it, it just happens.

Total nonsense. Most apps fail to gain enough users to experience the long tail effect of which you speak. http://2fb.me was an app that connected Twitter and Facebook through sharing. I built it believing this methodology to be true but it's not.

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#47

Post by theprop »

If you have a $5k or so budget and your product appeals to a more general audience, you will definitely get 1000 users by sponsoring the Epic Privacy Browser...they have a high visibility sponsorship that reaches a few hundred thousand users...so any general service will get at least a few thousand people to try a service (actual numbers will depend on whether your service is general or niche, etc.).

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#48

Post by billmalarky »

Huhty wrote: post #30

We run a community platform called Snapzu ( http://snapzu.com ) which is similar in nature to HN/Reddit/etc (which entirely depends on user submissions, voting, etc) so we right off the bat had to battle the notorious "chicken and egg" problem. It was really hard attracting users when the entire site depends on other users (of which obviously at first we had very little of) for content. However, we did several (mostl…

Why do you have to request an invite in order to sign up?

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#49

Post by samzhao »

rkunnamp wrote: post #40
gerenuk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your product is related to SEO, social media, ppc this can work really well. We recently launched a side project in SEO vertical with couple other partners and did over $200k in sales revenue over a week through our affiliate channel. If you are looking particularly where affiliates are promoting for products then check out voluum, link assistant etc. If your product is more of a tech side and starts with less tha…

"If your product is more of a tech side and starts with less than $20-$30 then chances are less people are going to promote that." Why is that ? I didn't really get it.

Not OP, but I think it's because devs are slightly harder to sell to compared to non-devs. Also, the commission for a product less than $20 will be too low for anyone to put in any effort to promoting it.

5% of $20 is $1, meaning you won't be able to cover operation costs even if you sell 100 of it every month. If the product/course/service is $2997, and your commission is 5%, you are looking at $10k+ net profit every month if you sell 100 of that.

In addition, because the author/creator/founder of the $20 doesn't have a high profit margin to begin with, the commission rate will be very low compared to premium products/services. E.g., 5% for $20 product vs. 20-30% for $2997 product.

Re: Ask HN: How did you grow from 100 to 1,000 users?

#50

Post by sherm8n »

rkunnamp wrote: post #39
no1youknowz wrote: post #8

I looked at the other Ask HN for 100 users. Only 1 person mentioned influencers. I'm going to recommend it again, but with more detail. An influencer has a particular niche/segment in the market that they are passionate about. They may have various channels in which to communicate to their audience, these may be facebook page/groups, youtube channels, instagram. These influencers have from 100 to 100k audience member…

How do you track and pay commissions? Any tool recommendations?

Have you checked out GrowSumo.com? They were YC S15. Luke and Bryn are awesome guys. They got us connected with a handful of influencers that promoted my first startup – www.goodaudience.com. Then their software tracked monthly commissions and payouts.
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