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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?

#131

Post by rwieruch »

thenthenthen wrote: post #103
rwieruch wrote: post #93

Earlier 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.

Thanks for the flashback! My first coding assignment in highschool was to build a camping management tool in Visual Basic. This is what got my into coding.

Good for you that it was just a coding assignment! I naively jumped into building this SaaS without realizing how many features a modern property management system actually needs :)

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

#132

Post by nikolayasdf123 »

abdullin wrote: post #42
nikolayasdf123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, this is much slower growth... danger must be it is so slow it must be non-existent. but I am with you on same boat, there are too many AI ads for crappy apps but I guess it speaks to flood of crap-ware, and flood bad content in social networks ^not meaning about you, of course (those folks must not be even on HN)

Building something that people truly need - might not lead to huge sales right away, but I believe this to be a good long-term strategy. Sprint vs marathon. Just keep on pushing on it, and it will eventually work out.

as Andrew Grove said "if you are walking through the desert of death, keep walking"

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

#134

Post by rwieruch »

nielsole wrote: post #114
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…

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 un…

Thanks for your feedback and for validating the pricing model! We see it the same way.

Most property management systems charge campground owners several thousand dollars upfront, before they can even try the software. That’s where our approach stands out: we offer a low barrier to entry paired with a modern user experience. Many competitors started over 15 years ago, and you can tell by how outdated their products feel.

Taking just a 1% cut can pay off if it helps capture more market share, this was my thinking too. We’re not quite there yet, as not all of the 250 campgrounds on our platform have adopted online payments. Still, it’s both exciting and a bit terrifying to see some of them already processing over $250,000 in annual bookings through our system.

I’ve had a few sleepless nights, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend building a marketplace product to everyone. Once real money flows through your platform at that scale, things get intense fast.

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

#135

Post by rylan-talerico »

I'm building an AI product management co-pilot (https://magical.pm) that helps PMs write requirements faster.

Here is my approach:

1. Engineering-As-Marketing: Building features that have the potential to create word-of-mouth growth (e.g., the AI will write product requirements in Shakespearean sonnets: https://www.magical.pm/?goofballModal=true).

2. Programmatic SEO: Sitemap has over 1,000 keyword-rich pages (no AI). To accomplish this, I leverage my app's Templates feature and tools that pair well with my app (Jira, Linear, Asana, etc).

3. Blog: Product management blog, designed to find traction in product management communities.

While my SEO grows, I'm improving the product's usefulness. Once it is ready, I will launch it via ProductHunt and begin a bigger marketing push (increased content marketing, community outreach, etc).

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

#136

Post by johncole »

nicooo wrote: post #115

I’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://…

I went to sign up and got sent to a typeform telling me thanks for my email address. Did I fall for the hustle?

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

#137

Post by hurap »

0xsnowcrash wrote: post #96

My product, TestSmithy ( https://testsmithy.com/ ), automates testing AI-generated code (e.g. Vibe coding). The way I'm acquiring customers is to offer a free Pro subscription worth over $100 to the first 100 early adopters.

How does it create the tests?

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

#138

Post by nikolayasdf123 »

abdullin wrote: post #42
nikolayasdf123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, this is much slower growth... danger must be it is so slow it must be non-existent. but I am with you on same boat, there are too many AI ads for crappy apps but I guess it speaks to flood of crap-ware, and flood bad content in social networks ^not meaning about you, of course (those folks must not be even on HN)

Building something that people truly need - might not lead to huge sales right away, but I believe this to be a good long-term strategy. Sprint vs marathon. Just keep on pushing on it, and it will eventually work out.

anyways, hope it works out well for you friend. tough for everyone! keep up all the hard work!

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

#139

Post by curiousigor »

Built a free product (https://heymeta.com) to solve my own problem and posted it here on HN and Reddit as well as Product Hunt (that was in 2018 when it was still relevant).

Currently getting 15k/unique/month (it has dropped a bit less, but steadily getting up after the rewrite and bigfixes).

When the website doesn't have sponsors, I promote my other free macOS tool (https://dockey.publicspace.co) (with a donation option) that get quite a nice flow of visitors from it.

I'd call this a success, although it's not enough to pay the bills or anything :)

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

#140

Post by pj_mukh »

nicooo wrote: post #115

I’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://…

Interesting product! One problem: I want to get a handle on the quality of online conversations you flag. Do you know that on the free tier, the top 5 you flag are the best of your filter?
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