Reaching my first 100 users without money or audience (at 10K users now)

32 points | by felixheikka 2 days ago

6 comments

  • MeetingsBrowser 2 days ago
    This seems like it would only work if your product is targeting other founders as users.

    > Our absolute first users came from our idea validation post on Reddit.

    > It took us two weeks of daily action like this to reach our first 100 users.

    Did you distinguish between people who tried it to give feedback and people actually using it?

    > This was mainly in “Build in Public” but also in “Startup Community”

    I've never been active in this type of community, but it seems like a self fulfilling prophecy.

    Feels like a group of people agreeing to follow each other on social media so they can tell others they have X followers.

    • felixheikka 2 days ago
      It works well for products targeting founders since they're very active online. However, there's no problem to find social media communities of gardeners, lawyers, content creators, etc., to be active in.

      Not everyone who gave feedback ended up being an active user, but they were all part of our target audience. Otherwise their feedback would've been quite irrelevant.

      "Feels like a group of people agreeing to follow each other on social media so they can tell others they have X followers." made me laugh not gonna lie, but it's actually a nice community of founders. Currently at 140k members.

      • southernplaces7 2 days ago
        And despite giving a polite reply that provides further information and your viewpoints on adopting this marketing strategy in other fields, you just get downvoted because.. who the fuck knows why when it comes to random pedantic idiocy.

        Loved your post above, useful tips on one of the hardest parts of starting small, and I made sure to save it.

  • deverman 4 hours ago
    Thanks I'm going to start the grind by commenting here now!
  • felixheikka 2 days ago
    For the curious, my SaaS can be found here https://buildpad.io
  • nico 2 days ago
    Great story, and excellent example of being intentional about targeting, engaging and building an audience
  • andreton 2 days ago
    Huge believer in providing value first to build a community and brand.
  • chukaebi1 2 days ago
    this is cool. thanks for sharing. was your app paid only or freemium? if the latter, how many of those first 100 went straight to paying?
    • felixheikka 2 days ago
      No problem. We kept the MVP free because we wanted to get more people through the door who could provide the valuable feedback we needed.

      It wasn't until around 150 users that we launched on Product Hunt and got our first paying customers.