Great post. We at Rave Analytics just got out of stealth.We enable retail investors to discover market structure in real time. This is good advice for us to keep up our growth.
We are already working on a native experience and email.The part about the network effects is quite interesting too. Its really hard to get network effect
How to get your first 100k active users
111–120 of 159 posts
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#112Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#113BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. It's my superpower!
Hey Anne, my qns is with regards to getting a forum started. I see that Winnie have great topics discussion with questions asked and answered by users. For a new forum, there are bound to be empty-room syndromes. How did you guys manage to kickstart discussions in the beginning? Is it all organic or is there some growth hack involved? This qns have been bothering me a while and I can't seem to get any good readings a…
Hi there, I can try to answer this question from a user perspective. I was an early Winnie user in their public beta and it's one of my top two favorite startups that has launched in the last couple of years.
Initially it did feel like an empty room, but this was before the ability to start discussions with other users and ask questions. Initially you could only add reviews of places. I remember adding a couple of reviews and since I didn't get any immediate engagement from other users it felt like I was adding valuable content but it wouldn't really be useful until they got a large number of users.
When discussions became available the biggest thing was that Anne and her co-founder Sara were really active users and shared their knowledge of being parents. Every single post that I added was liked and/or commented on by them. If you asked a parenting question or posted something in the early days it would be answered/commented/liked by Anne and Sara and often within minutes. They also would add valuable and engaging content on a daily basis whether it was an interesting article, something funny, or just asking a question that could be answered by users and start a discussion. When you see how active both of them were it makes you feel like posting something or commenting is okay and at least going to be acknowledged and appreciated by them even if there weren't a whole lot of other users that were active. I always knew that in the early days the biggest thing was just continuing to add valuable content and eventually the engagement would follow. After a few weeks I started to see other users become more active and start liking my posts and adding their own which just continued to grow until they got to some of their big growth events like being featured in the app store or launching their daycare directory.
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#114"Grow even before you launch" and "Go big or go home" really resonate with me. We were able to sign up a few thousand people to our new product waitlist through two main channels: exhibiting at conferences and answering questions on Quora. In the past, I would have just done a small beta with friends, but I guess I'm getting a little wiser over the years :) Going big from the beginning is really a tough one. I alread…
I get the idea of building your users/interest before it event exists but I personally am not 100% on board with that idea especially if the product doesn't exist yet.
And I know who am I, nobody. But as a person who hears about some service like "We'll help you get hired by these new methods of looking over resumes" great. sign me up. I sign up "Sorry we're in private beta at this time." like what? Why did I Go through all of that process to be told it's not available.
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually landing pages for early stage products tend to be iffy but you've killed it honestly! I got what your product was in 10 secs. What would be awesome is a link to a demo wishlist!
Agree with this, your landing page is _so good_ I'm going to use the format to replace my own garbage landing page. Thank you for the inspiration, this is awesome. You're starting a movement! By the way, congrats on 171 users :)
Wow, thank you! Good luck with your own project too!
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#116"Get featured by apple/google" Honestly, its like giving financial advice and saying "Ok, win the lottery or marry someone rich"
It's not really like winning the lottery. There's a lot of different kinds of promotional features they can give you, with different levels of publicity. You just have to make a high quality app that does something useful or new (or a good game), and ask their editorial team if they can promote your app. They'll usually give you some kind of promotion on the store. It's "editor's choice" and the other front/center fe…
and how do you actually contact the editorial team?
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go true native, not hybrid Users don't care. Most of them can't tell.
And you're the reason I don't use very many phone apps. Developer apathy becomes user apathy. If you make great apps, your customers will be enthusiastic about using them. If you make mediocre apps, you will attract mediocre users, or no users at all.
For a very long time, and it may still be true, both Uber and Instagram were hybrids. While you may not use them a lot of other people certainly aren't apathetic about those app. Facebook was a hybrid app for years although it's a native app now.
Mediocre apps are annoying, I agree, but that rarely has anything to do with the underlying technology.
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#118What if your product doesn't really have any inherent network effects? How do you incentivise your paying customers to share the platform that's giving them a competitive edge (my SaaS is B2B)?
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#119[deleted]
Re: How to get your first 100k active users
#120Not that you need my vote, but I agree with all of this. In particular: - Go true native, not hybrid - Use ads for testing ideas - Don't forget about email! I'm also intrigued by your approach of not going market-by-market like a lot of local-focused marketplaces do. Your approach seems to make sense, and obviously worked for you. I particularly like that you had a different onboarding flow for users in new markets,…
Go true native, not hybrid Users don't care. Most of them can't tell.
I'm an Android developer and a few times in 2017 I confused a Corodva app with a native app. With Chrome 63 and customized over-scroll behavior Twitter PWA is really impressive, no reason to install native Twitter app. 2018 might be breakthrough year for hybrid and PWA apps.