How we got our first 100 builders on Startives — no ads, no budget, no audience. Just embarrassing amounts of manual effort.
I want to tell you the unglamorous version.
Not the "we launched and it exploded" version.
Not the "our strategy was genius" version.
The actual version.
Where I was copy-pasting the same message
into 40 different WhatsApp groups at 1 AM
and calling it a "growth strategy."
FIRST. SOME CONTEXT.
Startives is a community platform
for founders, developers, designers,
and builders who want to build together.
Co-founder matching.
Project showcasing.
Live builder map.
Builder Stories.
Micro-exit marketplace.
The vision was clear from day one.
The path to first 100 users?
Absolutely not clear.
I had no audience.
No Twitter following worth mentioning.
No newsletter.
No VC backing for paid ads.
No "I sold my last startup for $2M"
credibility to coast on.
Just a product I believed in
and a lot of free time at night.
Here's exactly what worked.
And what didn't.
And what I'd never admit in a keynote
but I'm telling you here because
this is Indie Hackers and
we don't do the fake version here.
THING #1 THAT WORKED:
WhatsApp groups. Embarrassingly manual.
I am in a lot of WhatsApp groups.
College alumni groups.
Developer communities.
Startup founder circles.
A group called "The Young Founders"
that I somehow ended up admin of.
My first "growth strategy" was this:
Open group.
Type message.
Send.
Open next group.
Type same message.
Send.
Repeat 40 times.
The message wasn't a pitch.
It was a question.
"I'm building a platform for founders
to find co-founders and build together.
If you've ever struggled to find the
right person to build with —
would you try it and give me
brutal feedback?"
Not "check out my startup."
Not "we just launched."
A question. With vulnerability baked in.
"Brutal feedback" signals you're not
just looking for validation.
Result: 23 signups in the first 48 hours.
23 real people who actually signed up,
poked around, and sent me voice notes
telling me what was broken.
That feedback was worth more than
any analytics dashboard.
Total cost: ₹0
Total time: 3 hours of copy-pasting
Dignity lost: Some. Worth it.
THING #2 THAT WORKED:
Showing up in Reddit threads that
already existed.
I didn't post "check out my startup" on Reddit.
That never works.
Everyone knows that never works.
Yet everyone still does it.
Instead I spent a week just reading.
r/IndieHackers
r/SideProject
r/EntrepreneurRideAlong
r/developersIndia
r/learnprogramming
I was looking for one specific type of post:
"How do I find a co-founder?"
"Looking for someone to build with"
"Is there a good platform for finding
technical co-founders?"
These posts exist every single day.
Multiple times a day.
People asking exactly the question
that Startives answers.
So I answered them.
Genuinely. Thoroughly.
I'd write 200-word responses about
the actual challenge of finding
the right co-founder.
What to look for. What to avoid.
What signals matter.
And then at the very end —
one line.
"I'm actually building a platform
specifically for this — startives.com
— still early but might be useful."
Not a pitch. A footnote.
The response got upvoted because
it was genuinely helpful.
The footnote got clicked because
it was relevant and not pushy.
Result: 31 signups from Reddit
over the first 3 weeks.
Zero of them felt like "got tricked
into signing up."
All of them came because the context
was exactly right.
Total cost: ₹0
Total time: 1 hour per day of reading + responding
Karma used: Hopefully earned more than spent.
THING #3 THAT WORKED:
Telling the building story before
the product was ready.
This one felt risky.
I started posting about Startives on
Twitter and LinkedIn before it launched.
Not "coming soon" teaser posts.
Actual behind-the-scenes posts.
"Here's why we're building co-founder
matching differently from every other
platform that's tried this."
"Day 14 of building Startives —
the AI matching feature broke in a way
I didn't expect. Here's what I learned."
"We almost named it something else.
Here's the conversation that led to Startives."
People started following the story
before they had anything to follow.
Because humans are wired for narrative.
We don't follow products.
We follow journeys.
When the platform finally went live —
I had a group of people who already
felt invested in it.
Not because I asked them to care.
Because I let them watch it being built.
Result: 28 signups on launch day
from people who'd been watching the journey.
None of them needed to be convinced.
They'd already convinced themselves
over the previous 3 weeks.
Total cost: ₹0
Total time: 30 minutes of writing per day
Vulnerability required: High. Worth it.
THING #4 THAT WORKED:
Personally onboarding every single
one of the first 50 users.
This doesn't scale.
I know it doesn't scale.
That's exactly why it worked.
Every person who signed up in the
first two weeks got a personal message
from me within 24 hours.
Not an automated welcome email.
An actual message.
"Hey [name] — I saw you just joined Startives.
I'm Arnab, building this thing.
What brought you here?
What are you working on?
What would make this actually useful for you?"
Some people didn't reply.
But the ones who did?
They became the foundation of the community.
They gave me feedback that shaped
features I hadn't built yet.
They referred 2-3 friends each
because they felt like they were
part of something being built
rather than just a user of something finished.
One person I messaged ended up
becoming one of our most active community members.
They've since brought in 11 other builders.
If I'd sent an automated email,
that relationship never happens.
Total cost: ₹0
Total time: 20 minutes per user × 50 users
= ~17 hours over 2 weeks
ROI: Immeasurable
THING #5 THAT WORKED:
One college tech community at a time.
I reached out to tech club heads
at 8 colleges directly.
Not a mass email.
Individual messages.
"Hey — I run a community called Startives
for student founders and builders.
I think your members would find it useful
because [specific reason related to their club].
Would you be open to sharing it?"
6 out of 8 said yes.
Combined they shared it with
roughly 2,000 students.
Of those, 18 signed up.
Not a huge conversion rate.
But 18 real users who are exactly
the audience we're building for —
student founders, bootcamp grads,
people building their first thing.
And 6 relationships with college
tech community leaders that will
compound over time.
Total cost: ₹0
Total time: 2 hours of research + outreach
Rejection rate: 25% — completely fine.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK.
(The honest part)
Product Hunt soft launch.
I listed Startives early
without properly building
a hunter audience first.
Got 47 upvotes.
Zero traction.
Zero signups worth mentioning.
Lesson: Product Hunt rewards
the audience you build before launch
not the product you build before launch.
We're doing it properly next time.
30-day pre-launch campaign.
Real hunters. Real community warmup.
Cold Twitter DMs to "influential" founders.
Sent 25 DMs to founders with
10K+ followers asking if they'd
try Startives and share feedback.
3 replied.
1 actually tried it.
0 shared it.
Not because they were rude.
Because I was a stranger asking
for a favor with no context.
Lesson: Build in public first.
Let people find you.
Then DMs feel like continuation
of a conversation, not a cold start.
"Startup groups" on LinkedIn.
Posted in 5 large LinkedIn groups
with combined 200K+ members.
Total engagement: 4 likes.
Total signups: 1 (possibly me testing).
Lesson: Large generic communities
have low signal to noise ratio.
Small specific communities
with high trust convert infinitely better.
THE ACTUAL NUMBERS BREAKDOWN.
Here's exactly where the first 100 came from:
WhatsApp communities → 23 signups
Reddit (organic answers) → 31 signups
Build-in-public content → 28 signups
Personal onboarding refs → 11 signups
College tech clubs → 18 signups
Random organic / direct → 9 signups
─────────────────────────────────────
Total → 120 signups
Active (log in weekly) → 67 builders
─────────────────────────────────────
Paid ads spent: ₹0
Total budget used: ₹0
Time invested: ~3 weeks of evenings
THE ONE THING THAT MADE
ALL OF IT WORK.
Every channel worked because of one thing.
Not the message.
Not the platform.
Not the product.
The honesty.
"We're early. It's rough in places.
But here's exactly what we're building
and why. Come be part of it."
That framing — vulnerable, specific,
non-salesy — converted better
than any polished launch copy I wrote.
People don't join communities
because the landing page is perfect.
They join because they feel
like they found their people.
Every message I sent in those first weeks
was trying to answer one question
for the reader:
"Is this a place where people like me
are building things like mine?"
When the answer was yes —
they signed up.
That's the whole strategy.
WHERE WE ARE NOW.
Still early.
Still building.
Still personally reading every
piece of feedback.
But the community is real.
The projects being built are real.
The connections forming are real.
And we did it without spending a rupee
on acquisition.
Which means when we do spend —
we'll know exactly what we're amplifying.
If you're in the 0 to 100 user stage
right now —
I'd genuinely love to know:
what's the most unexpected channel
that brought you real users?
Not the channel that sounded good
in a strategy doc.
The actual one that worked.
Drop it below.
— Sumit, building Startives
startives.com
(If this was useful — I'm documenting
the whole journey publicly.
Follow along if you want the
unfiltered version.)
