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Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#191

Post by mixmastamyk »

piker wrote: post #88
quibono wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, just downloaded the binary :) As a +1 data point it's performing really well on my machine (although I don't think the dark theme toggle works). Like I said, not the target audience but wishing you good luck with the product! Do you mind sharing the stack you used to build it?

Not at all. It's Rust using egui for the UI framework with custom text layout and shaping. It uses PDFium for rendering PDFs.

It’s neat but I’m wondering why the immediate mode gui for a word processor?

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#192

Post by jderick »

ednite wrote: post #168
d0liver wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard was it to get the partnership? Was that cold outreach, too?

Not cold—more like soft outreach. It happened at a social event through mutual friends. Classic “So, what do you do?” convo. I said software dev. They said, “Ugh, we use this tool—it’s garbage.” I listened (an underrated superpower), realized I could actually fix the problem, and suggested a meetup. One Zoom meeting later, we had the foundation of a partnership. Honestly, it could’ve been any event. Just show up, be…

Was this in SV?

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#194

Post by kureikain »

I'm building mailwip.com (and my second saas right now)

My strategy is too simple, I don't think it will works but It work good enough for me.

- Just engage in the community. In early day, I helped on the cloudflare forum. I just help generic about anything related to email, explain concept and here and there try to introduce my service. I always introduce my service last. Give people free option first, always, even if the free option is my competitor. But I do explain pros/confs of my service

- Build plugin that may drive traffic: For me, CloudFlare offers plugin ability so I built a CloudFlare app for that. It may not benefit me directly but get my name out there

I shared my revenu and publish update on indiehacker https://www.indiehackers.com/product/hanami/revenue

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#195

Post by njjv »

A while back I wrote some stock market algorithms and charting software I use in my own DYOR daily stock analysis. I decided to offer up that daily information to others. I changed my SaaS delivery approach idea to be a daily Substack newsletter instead. It is a stock market info newsletter called StockQuakes ( https://stockquakes.substack.com ) . With Substack my newsletter grew by using the Substack Recommendations feature as well as their Notesfeature. Substack takes care of the signups, etc. via Stripe. You have to have value above and below the paywall line in the newsletter to keep users. And you have to have a free version in addition to the paid version. I also put up a separate website to drive SEO traffic to the newsletter ( https://stockquakes.com ). And I post on BlueSky, Threads, and X/Twitter daily in addition to Substack Notes. Have 600 users, 5000 followers.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#196

Post by dudeinjapan »

At TableCheck (Japan's answer to Resy, Tock, Sevenrooms, etc.) our first 100 customers were definitely the hardest. It took us nearly two years, and many times I came close to giving up. Even though we had built a solid MVP, in Japan's risk-averse culture, no restaurant wanted to be the first to use our product. The question was always "Who else is using it?"--basically a deadlock.

After a lot of cold-calling, we found a 120-year old sukiyaki and shabu-shabu restaurant chain. They told us they always survived by adopting the latest technology, and were willing to try our product. Most of their staff were elderly women in kimonos, many of whom had not touched an iPad before. We were worried they would struggle, but after a few training sessions they got the hang of it--soon they were greeting and seating customers with no problem.

12 years on, we are at 13,000 restaurants on our platform and adding a few hundred more each month!

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#197

Post by ednite »

d0liver wrote: post #161
ednite wrote: post #149

For my SaaS, the first 100 users were almost too easy. I partnered with a company sitting on thousands of clients and offered my tool—free—to just 10% of their list. But I didn’t sell features. I asked what their clients hated most, then built a fix for that. One well-placed feature, and the doors swung open. Real users, real feedback—and we’re still building on that foundation. Then there’s my blog. A creative sandb…

Also, I subscribed to your blog. Content looks interesting, but asking for a name during sign up is a little off-putting.

Got it—and thanks for subscribing! Really appreciate the feedback. I used the default settings, but now I know what I’ll be tweaking tonight. Totally agree—simple is best.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#198

Post by nani8ot »

robertlagrant wrote: post #60
rwieruch wrote: post #17

Not 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…

> 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?

SoundCloud pays a similar amount per stream to the creator as e.g. Spotify. The requirement is paying for Artist (Pro) which costs 3-7€.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#199

Post by sebstefan »

delfinom wrote: post #181
sebstefan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Are you upset by the kitchen sink metaphor? lmao

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