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Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
111–120 of 374 posts
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
wow I didn't see it that way at all, they looked good to me.
They are very obviously "AI generated genre" which many still don't pick up on. Whether art that is obviously AI-generated is appealing or effective - that may also be the case
shrug, i don't mind, looks good
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anyone wants to check out these things: - CloudCamping (still only German market for now) https://www.cloud-camping.com/ - The Road to Next (fully launched last month) https://www.road-to-next.com/ - Music https://soundcloud.com/schlenkermitturnbeutel Feel free to AMA.
Was there any particular reason you stopped making music? I'm listening to one of your mixes right now and I'm wondering if you were influenced by Klangkarussell at all (or maybe the other way around?) or if that was just the general 2014 vibe.
I’d say it was mostly the general 2014 vibe. But yes, I listened to Klangkarussell and many other German producers. I was probably most influenced by Alle Farben, who was known for his mixtapes before he started producing his own tracks (which I wasn’t really a fan of). But I also showcased a darker side in some of my mixtapes (like "Der schwerste Gang einer Ente" where I used artists like Burial).
I saw myself more as a consumer than a producer. I mainly created mixtapes because I was constantly discovering and consuming new music. When I had the chance to play at a club or an open-air event (I tried it once), I quickly realized I wasn’t too comfortable performing in front of an audience :)
Around that time, I had just started learning to code and built my first little automations to help me discover even more music on SoundCloud. So I noticed this was another (more lucrative with the similar level of passion) career path where I didn't had to be in front of an audience.
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#114Not sure if my "products" compare to yours, but I’ve seen some success with a few of them over the years, maybe there are some takeaways (or pitfalls to avoid) for you: 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 phy…
I like the simplicity of pricing on CloudCamping.
* It includes price differentiation. Grounds that want to save the last penny can do so by handling payments themselves. I guess camping grounds are very price sensitive.
* It grows with size of the value provided
* Grounds can start using the tool without paying anything. Thus low barrier of entry
* It seems unlikely anyone can win over existing customers based on undercutting your price.
* 1% of revenue of a business sector can make up a nice indie business.
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#115I’ve had success twice using targeted social media outreach — specifically by joining relevant subreddit discussions and commenting on YouTube videos where my target audience was already active.
Instead of simply promoting your service right away (it often feels spammy), I recommend genuinely engaging in conversations until the right opportunity comes up.
I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://sparkflow.ai/
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> SoundCloud (DJ/Producing as “Schlenker mit Turnbeutel”) Pardon my ignorance - does SoundCloud let you monetise, or is it purely it being cool that people are listening to your tracks?
Not ignorant at all. I'm not sure if they’ve added any monetization features over the years. Back then, it was arguably the best platform for getting discovered as a producer or DJ. When I stopped making music, I was getting a lot of requests to play at clubs across Germany and Europe. At the time, I preferred to stay anonymous, so I never made the leap into the professional or public scene. Still, I was in touch wit…
Might be fortunate instead: they're setting up to be able to train AI on specifically you and then, if needed, make music AS you undercutting you. Such is the way of things these days.
I dropped Soundcloud paid version too, and migrated to just YouTube. Currently YouTube is trying very hard to learn to reply to my fans AS me, but through pushing buttons to immediately supply AI-generated responses. I'm sure anyone else with a substantial YouTube presence has seen this too.
So far, they are not self-pressing the button and taking over replying to my fans for me, against my will. So far. They'd also be looking at some challenges in AIing my content as it's weekly open source software development serving a specialized audience, though they would have a considerably easier time AIing my thumbnails, as those are a very predictable pattern and reproducible.
Regarding OP, and in the light of what I've said, maybe ask yourself in what way you can disambiguate yourself from any random AI-powered startup in targeting what for the other startup will be an arbitrary or shotgun selection of customer targets. Is there an audience you can work specifically for, and is there a way you can signal to that audience that you're particularly aware of them and interested in working for them?
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#117I’ve had success twice using targeted social media outreach — specifically by joining relevant subreddit discussions and commenting on YouTube videos where my target audience was already active. Instead of simply promoting your service right away (it often feels spammy), I recommend genuinely engaging in conversations until the right opportunity comes up. I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://…
This is inception level promotion, I’m not even mad at ya lol
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#118Grown 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…
> https://www.bugsink.com/ link to product, may give an idea of what we're doing. It's immediately obvious to me that the illustrations are AI slop You should invest 20 bucks into getting some pictures of a guy in a datacenter, or 200 to pay some dude on Fiverr to draw you some sinks, instead of having these be the first thing customers see when checking out your product
I'd wager that paying customers really don't care whether the images look AI-generated or not.
They care much more about whether this product solves a problem they have.
This is based on my 17 years of running first a successful B2C product then a successful B2B SaaS.
Minor changes to one's home page tend to have little observable change in numbers of trial signups, the rate of conversion to paid customer, and so on.
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#119I’ve had success twice using targeted social media outreach — specifically by joining relevant subreddit discussions and commenting on YouTube videos where my target audience was already active. Instead of simply promoting your service right away (it often feels spammy), I recommend genuinely engaging in conversations until the right opportunity comes up. I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://…
Heh how meta.
Makes sense though. I’ve been thinking of creating a very similar tool; delighted that it might already exist!
Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
#120B2C @ $50/month from an unknown company is a HUGE ask.
Even a known company! I can't name a SaaS that does. It's in the realm of telecom/utility bills.