Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users? • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by ttd » Wed, May 14, 2025, 1:07 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #123

carlosjobim wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found B2C much easier than B2B, and much more pleasant too. SEO is extremely easy: Write in very clear prose what you are selling and give potential clients as much information as possible. This is all you need for SEO, apart from purely technical stuff like load times. Turning your SEO efforts into real sales is also easy: State your price(s) very clearly on the website and then make it as easy as possible for…

> Get out of their fucking way when they have their wallet out. Cannot be emphasised enough. I have seen enough B2C funnel optimization work to be able to say that at every minor obstacle you create 90% of the people will fall off. You need to get people invested in your solution and make it super easy for them to throw money at you.

Can you share any examples of obstacles like that you've seen?

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

#342

Post by prakashn27 » Wed, May 14, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

cosbgn wrote: post #41

I run a small but fairly successful "embed chatGPT on your site" widget https://rispose.com I'm acquiring customers by: - Offer a 100% free unlimited solution (with branding) I get a lot of daily clicks from people coming from my customer's website - Offer a really good price. My competitors are about 5X more expensive. I'll eventually maybe raise my price, but for now I have a lot of people switching to my tool - Af…

How does this work? Does all files that I upload are in context or do you use rag?

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

#343

Post by anshumankmr » Wed, May 14, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

I am having trouble making a product itself. Constantly having to rewrite things. So still very inspiring to see what people are upto here.

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

#344

Post by nullderef » Wed, May 14, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

TikTok - you don't need followers to get views. It's not easy, especially if you've never used the platform before. But for B2C it's one of the best platforms.

Do founder stories ("I built this") or demos ("here's this SaaS you'll like"). They get less views than memes or tangential videos. But conversion is much higher and you'll get replies from people who liked it or tried it out. So you can send them a message to ask for feedback.

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

#345

Post by dvdgrdll » Wed, May 14, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC

This is the workflow I use based on what other successful companies have done:

1. Start by defining an Ideal Customer Profile and be very specific (for examples, Facebook started with Harvard students in certain social circle). A good way to know how to be specific is by using a framework to define your ICP, like this you know if you are collecting the right information or not

2. Once you define your ICP, depending on the framework you are using will have mapped where they usually "hang out" online and offline -> At the beginning prioritse offline more than online. You are doing things that don't scale.

3. Having that information, you then design a way to get in front of them. If you are going the "online" route, then it can be Paid Ads, it can be social media DMs, etc... I only recommend the only route once you know you have the right messaging tested by talking with users that became paying customers.

As a final note: try to get as many users that fit the same ICP as possible at the beginning, you'll want to seem a big fish in a small pond.

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

#346

Post by OJFord » Wed, May 14, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

permo-w wrote: post #325

dcchambers wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would call Creative Cloud B2B... I imagine the bulk of their subscribers are using the tools for professional use. And even then you can choose to subscribe to a subset of tools (eg just photoshop) for a much cheaper cost.

B2B and SAAS are not mutually exclusive though, are they?

To be clear, I can name tonnes of B2B SaaS in (and well beyond) that realm. I was replying firmly in the 'B2C' scope of the parent comment 'B2C @ $50/month from an unknown company'.

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

#347

Post by netrap » Wed, May 14, 2025, 7:59 PM UTC

vanschelven wrote: post #10

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…

nice website..

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

#348

Post by xandrius » Wed, May 14, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

helro wrote: post #68

I got 20k+ downloads for my app by posting on Reddit. It's an app/website blocker for iPhone & Mac, so I focused on relevant communities like r/digitalminimalism and r/dumbphones with genuine, non-spammy posts: https://www.atten.app I also tried "apps gone free" campaigns by posting on Reddit and using sites like AppRaven. These were very effective for visibility, the launch is currently the #5 all-time post on r/mac…

Honest question: how do you post on Reddit without getting bashed for self-promotion in the subreddit which people would probably like the product/thing?

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

#349

Post by radius89 » Wed, May 14, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

It's easier said than done, I suppose, but my first ~500 users for https://radius.to/ were from HN after hitting the front page. A year later, I still get a decent amount of traffic from that post.

I'd imagine you'd get pretty good results on both ProductHunt and Reddit as well if you can get enough upvotes, though the latter is pretty difficult to promote your products on these days unless it's legitimately relevant to the community you post in.

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

#350

Post by guywithahat » Wed, May 14, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

jakevoytko wrote: post #174

For my newsletter[0], I just reached 231 subscribers in 5 months. Getting to this point has involved posting to as many channels as possible (without wearing out my welcome in any of them) My first 40 subscribers came from direct friends and my LinkedIn network. I got about 150 subscribers from a single popular post on Hacker News, posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43461618 The remainder have come fro…

The thing about twitter is once you do pay for a checkmark, you get a ton of traction and boost. And there is a certain amount of logic to it; if you're willing to pay $8 how badly do you really want to grow your reach.

It is frustrating though, because it makes it slightly harder to find communities of people who just want to have fun but it's better for people trying to grow a service.