Very well said.
Will add that from experience, the suggestion of knocking down technical issues is so important it’s mandatory, and it does not stop once you get users, it will be required forever with a successful product. BUT! ... IMO it’s a very slow way to acquire users, and the engagement improvements are incremental at best, unless you are making sweeping changes or hit something viral (unlikely!!) or were missing something truly glaring.
I did a lot of testing between adding features, addressing bug fixes, and then random attention-getting marketing like blog posts that happen to mention cats or money or other things people care more about than software. There was no comparison to the amount of attention they got, the tangential posts got many, many more people in the door than the technical posts. The steady feature improvements are what will keep people there, while fluffy emotional blog posts are what will attract a lot of window shoppers. It’s better if the blog posts are relevant to your app and feature announcements, of course, but I’m saying you can get users faster without writing software. It’s just a hard problem and a delicate balance, and don’t get stuck thinking “if I build it they will come.” Some amount of marketing is needed. And don’t get stuck writing ads or blog posts either. Some amount of attention to the software is needed. Do as much of both as you can.
It’s very difficult to get users to talk, whether they like your app or not. Most of the time they don’t know enough to be able to articulate what they want or need, even though they can sense it. And the people that talk loudest aren’t often the most important to listen to, especially if they’re not paying for anything.
Good Luck!