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How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

lennyrachitsky.com

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Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#71

Post by kartayyar »

alixanderwang wrote: post #47
kartayyar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get inbound links for your initial blog content?

I post them on HackerNoon, which has a "originally published at" backlink. They tweet the ones with good engagement repeatedly, people shared those tweets. It makes its way into roundups and newsletters. Occasionally, people steal them and say they authored it, but they leave the backlinks so whatever. I post some on relevant forums as well.

Thanks. Though don't many forums treat links as nofollow and thus don't contribute to page rank?

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#72

Post by FpUser »

mromanuk wrote: post #67
FpUser wrote: post #31

I had zero problems acquiring first 1K customers for my product. Just spammed some relevant forums. Actually I got way more then 1K this way. Problem was that said amount was not making it worth for me. And acquiring more presented a challenge. Basically lacking external investment to increase market share by whatever means I put that particular product on a diet (invest few hours here and there). Since then it bring…

Are you commenting on every thread and linking to your site? How do you spam a forum? (Genuinely asking)

I did not comment on every thread. But I do answer some relevant questions on forums where my answer is likely to be appreciated and my signature is linked. Sometimes write short semi-article in the post (same thing with the signature). Also do product announcement once per forum. Sometimes they have rules against it but they also often let it slide. At some point was noticed by some reviewers and that had some positive outcome as well.

But as already said nothing really stellar in that particular product I mentioned

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#73

Post by mohsinhaider »

jacobobryant wrote: post #28

A strategy I've been thinking of for my startup (10-20 WAU currently ) is going through old HN discussions that are relevant to my product, finding people who I think would be interested in it based on their comments, and emailing them with a quote from their comment and an explanation of why I think they specifically would be interested. (and then ask them to try it out & give feedback). I thought of this since I wa…

I have utilized this approach, but on Reddit instead of HN. I launched a tool I was working on and got my very first users from Reddit who were passionate about the topic. Now, those users are evangelists and they've helped spread the word to their communities which has lead recent numbers hovering around 2k WAU.

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#74

Post by hnick »

bigtones wrote: post #60
gdhbcc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally advertising regulations require you to disclose any relationship with the company. That's why youtuber put #ad on their videos

No, under US law you're required to disclose if you have been paid specifically by a third party to promote their product or service. You don't have to disclose a mear 'relationship'.

An employee is being paid. Is that a specific exemption?

I don't know what they count as advertising per se but if endorsement via private message counts then the FTC's page[0] calls this out as "position with the company":

"Connections between an endorser and the company that are unclear or unexpected to a customer also must be disclosed, whether they have to do with a financial arrangement for a favorable endorsement, a position with the company, or stock ownership."

[0]: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/adv...

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#75

Post by nojvek »

Beware of survival bias. This article tells a tale that if you do similar things, you’ll get a billion dollar success too.

Suppose a black founder was out in the mall asking to install an app on your phone, security would drag them away.

Most of the founders went to prestigious colleges with enough connections and saved income to let them work on ideas before it became profitable. As the income divide gets larger, less and less Americans have that luxury.

For every founder that made it, they’re prolly 100s that didn’t make it even if they did the same things.

For a large chunk of the planet, surviving to day is a struggle, they can’t weather out months blowing their only savings on an idea that may or may not work.

This is why most founders tend to be white men from mostly wealthy backgrounds. Most VCs are in a similar demographic and would fund them, so it’s somewhat a self fulfilling cycle.

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#76

Post by FatalLogic »

jedberg wrote: post #20
CM30 wrote: post #2

Surprised the Reddit 'solution' to this (fake accounts and activity until real people decide to join) isn't on the list. Fake it til you make it is definitely a strategy that a fair few successful products, services and communities used to kick things off.

That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them. Reddit used the "tell your friends" method first, and then "have PG blog about us", which really accelerated their growth, and falls under "Leverage Influencers".

>That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them.

This statement appears thoroughly contradictory, unless you're using an unusual definition of either appeal or attract. IMHO most people are going to see those words having almost the same meaning in the context you used them

In 2012, Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder, was honest enough to attribute Reddit's initial ability to attract new users to their fake user strategy first of all [1]. Even while they were doing that, he said, they still needed a few months to get the site self-sustaining so they could stop faking user engagement.

In that talk, Steve Huffman never even mentions influencers. Paul Graham didn't write about Reddit until 3 or 4 months in, after they had retired the fake user posting, though I agree with you influencers and friends must have been a help

[1] https://youtu.be/zmeDzx4SUME?t=28

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#77

Post by rofws »

nojvek wrote: post #75

Beware of survival bias. This article tells a tale that if you do similar things, you’ll get a billion dollar success too. Suppose a black founder was out in the mall asking to install an app on your phone, security would drag them away. Most of the founders went to prestigious colleges with enough connections and saved income to let them work on ideas before it became profitable. As the income divide gets larger, le…

This.

IMO, every successful founder has had at least one of these things in plentiful when starting up - money, connections, or deep insight into a painful problem. Luck, of course, cannot be overlooked.

I think learning what worked for someone is good. But more important is learning what did not work (which is only realised in hindsight)

There is a subreddit called r/shutdown. I keep visiting it from time to time to learn what not to do.

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#78

Post by jedberg »

FatalLogic wrote: post #76
jedberg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them. Reddit used the "tell your friends" method first, and then "have PG blog about us", which really accelerated their growth, and falls under "Leverage Influencers".

>That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them. This statement appears thoroughly contradictory, unless you're using an unusual definition of either appeal or attract. IMHO most people are going to see those words having almost the same meaning in the context you used them In 2012, Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder, was honest enough to a…

The fake users are orthogonal to finding new users, which is what this post is about. The fake users were about retention, not new users. They kept people using reddit after they found reddit, but it wasn't a way to find new users.

Reddit launched on June 23rd, 2005, and Paul blogged about them in the first week of August. Only five weeks after launch. They were definitely still using the fake users then. In fact when I joined the company in 2007, we still had the ability to create new users on submit, we just didn't do it anymore.

Steve probably just didn't mention the PG blog post because he forgot. If you ask him, he'll gladly tell you about how PG basically forced the wide release of reddit by blogging about them despite Steve's objections.

Re: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users

#80

Post by z3t4 »

alixanderwang wrote: post #25

I bet the companies using inventive ways to get their first users like the ones listed in the article are in the minority (but certainly make for more interesting stories to read/write about). I launched a SaaS product recently, and after a pretty successful HN launch, I've been trying different ways of marketing. What I learned, and this may be obvious to many, is that the boring path of getting users by gamifying S…

Content is not enough. You need inbound links. Getting links was much easier before when people ran their own blogs - they would link to content they thought was good.
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