Getting Users Is Hard

I'm building a mobile app to create and share social events with your friends. A social event would be going to the bar, house party, or meeting up for coffee. You can fill out a simple form (event name, description, date, time) and post to a feed for your friends to see. Your friends can notify you they're going by pressing the "attend" button.

Right now I'm trying to solve the communication problem. Everyday you might meet up with your friends at the bar after work, invite them to lunch, coffee in the morning, or dinner in the afternoon. But you have to do the dance. You text everyone who you want to come, wait for them to reply and they may not even want to go. And for each person you invite you have to do the dance longer. This has many times wasted over an hour for me.

So I propose a faster solution. If you want your friends to meet you at the bar, create an "Event". The event has a title of what the event is (e.g. "Going to the bar"). It has a description to get your friends excited (e.g. "$2 margaritas"). It has the address (e.g. "123 SomeBar St."). Lastly it has the time (e.g. "Tonight at 8pm"). As soon as you post it to the feed all of your friends get a notification that you just created a new event. They can then all tell you if they are going by hitting the "attend" button.

Now I'm trying to get my first users. Yesterday was my first day. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I can message that live in my target area. My list is 82 people. Yesterday I contacted 24 people and got one person to sign up, I was hoping to get five. But most of the people I messaged didn't even respond.

It's definitely a grind. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how they got some of their first users. What was it like? Or any stories of how they got their first signs of growth.

Also if you have this problem I could really use some feedback on my app. You can check it out by searching "bbook.io" in the Apple App Store.

Thank you guys for reading! Ryan Sam

Probably not super easy getting folks in your niche in a global pandemic, yeah?

Exactly my thought

You are right, getting users is hard. With a product like this, I think the best way is to just ask people face to face if they would use it. And if they say “no”, find out why not. You may not have the right product. Also, Can you use it yourself, and invite friends to stuff using your app? If they get a few invites from you and all the events are successful, then maybe your friends will want to initiate their own events. Even if you had money, this “hit the pavement” approach is pretty crucial to making sure you are selling the right product.

Also if they say yes get them to commit: install it and follow up a week later how it went.

Then if they then say no - ask those no questions.

People can lie to get someone off their back but are too afraid to be direct.