11–20 of 374 posts
Apply this logic to the jump from 20 to 100 if it makes the task less daunting for you.
Long term, only paid ads and SEO will work (and SEO can be fickle)
Short term, run some paid experiments (knowing you will probably not get positive return yet) and maybe some influencer marketing (they'll cost money, but not as much as paid ads depending on the niche)
The process was classical. Over two years I created a community to sharing cases and insights from building LLM-driven systems. We focused on creating good non-toxic and collaborative atmosphere. No ads or SEO to grow it, standing out by sharing real-world cases and helping others.
Thanks to the community, got 100 customers within the beta-testing period. Then 300 more came over the last 4 months, after opening the sales.
I have a course on building AI solutions in business (based on success stories from companies in Europe/USA). Sold ~400 seats so far, mostly through my community and word of mouth. No external ads or cold outreach. The process was classical. Over two years I created a community to sharing cases and insights from building LLM-driven systems. We focused on creating good non-toxic and collaborative atmosphere. No ads or…
B2C is hard... Long term, only paid ads and SEO will work (and SEO can be fickle) Short term, run some paid experiments (knowing you will probably not get positive return yet) and maybe some influencer marketing (they'll cost money, but not as much as paid ads depending on the niche)
Find a way to make it free to start. This is how Firebase, Supabase and friends work. Getting 100 people to sign up for a free service is still work, but significantly less.
CloudCamping (PMS): 250+ Businesses, 2023
- Positioned as more modern, more accessible, and more affordable than the competition
- Limited competition due to the complexity of the product
- Personally visited campgrounds to demo the product
- Sent physical postcards (old school!) to campgrounds with product updates and announcements
- Due to limited competition, it is now ranking very high in the German marked on SEO
The Road to React & The Road to Next: 1000+ Users, 2024
- Gave away The Road to React for free in exchange for an email, grew the mailing list this way
- Benefited from early timing (luck!), it was the first book on the topic
- Initial version wasn’t polished, but I kept iterating and improving it each year
- In 2025, released the paid course The Road to Next to my audience, now over 1,000 students enrolled
SoundCloud (DJ/Producing as “Schlenker mit Turnbeutel”)
- Active from 2010–2015 as a hobby, grew to 10,000+ followers (a lot for the time)
- SoundCloud allowed 1,000 direct messages per track
- Carefully selected 1,000 high-engagement listeners in my music niche and personally messaged them to check out new tracks
So yeah, a mix of timing/luck, outreach that does not scale, being better than the competition I'd say.
Grown way past 100 users with: • Make a great product. Everyone tells you "build it and they will come" is not working anymore, but it's working _for me_. • Outreach via your network. Talk to people with the intent of learning, not selling. • I'm personally on a freemium model. But that's in the developer-to-developer market, which is vastly different from your B2C EDIT: https://www.bugsink.com/ link to product, may…
The need is real, and the problem is real. I am one of the users myself. I built it because I felt the need myself. I ran the MVP with 15 others in my network with similar profiles. Quesiton is how to scale beyond that.
First 100 users, meet them one by one wherever you can (forums, friends, ex-coworkers) and call them to talk to them and help them out with onboarding if needed. Straight up cold outreach and warm intros. Next 500 will most likely come from referrals if these first 100 users are happy. Apply this logic to the jump from 20 to 100 if it makes the task less daunting for you.