How did you get your first 100 users?
Hi everyone,
I'm looking for early users to give us feedback on our web app https://www.misakey.com/ and I wondered if you have stories to share about how you find your first 100 users?
To share my experience, I'm actually looking in communities where I think our future users can be!
Trending on Indie Hackers
First 100 users for Prospectss = IH + PH
EDIT: Will be trying to + HN for the next 1000 users 😜
Amazing Amin! First 100 users for wyzr.me = Reddit + Own Network + IH
Great! Curious to know how large was your own network? (was this on Twitter?)
Not that large, actually it counted for the smallest part. It was on Linkedin
Good. Even the smallest count!
I got the irst 100 subscribers (Newsletter) for Virtual Mojito on Indie Hackers + LinkedIn + Notion Facebook group
Good job! Did you use Sales Navigator for LinkedIn? I don't know if it's really effective
Nah I don't. Just my followers :)
No budget for Sales Navigator haha
Hey Fabien we got our first 100 users by launching on Product Hunt and writing a post to IH and Reddit.
I would make sure your landing page copy is dummy proof as in your mom or a grade 3 kid can read your landing page and understand exactly what you do in 5 seconds or less
Hi James, thank you for your feedback! We plan to launch on Product Hunt too. Do you think a landing is needed before the launch or a Ship upcoming page is enough?
I have never launched anything yet but from the perspective of a user it always sucks to just have a "Coming soon" page. Its basically the same as"Error 404" and sends the message that your product is not ready yet which could stop people from actually commiting to something. Landing Pages are pretty simple to set up. Let me know if you need help with that :)
Cheers,
Jorim
Hi Jorim! Thank you for your feedback.
I agree that a landing with no information on it, or just a coming soon is not relevant. But do you think that saying that the product is not finished and offered to subscribe to a waitlist is not a relevant practice?
Yes use something like Webflow or Landen or UnicornPlatform to create a simple landing page so you can capture users and maybe even make your first sale!
Yes, Webflow and Landen are really cool to create simple landings! I don't know UnicornPlatform, I'll check this tool.
UnicornPlatform is similar to Landen with a little more ability to customize. Webflow is my personal favorite although has more of a learning curve to it
Hey Fabien, Are you going to have a landing page for your product? If so, I would recommend you to have a landing page before the launch! It will be easier to manage things as you already have some "foundations".
And I wouldn't launch on PH before gathering some users and also feedback to solidify the product
Thank you for the tips, we already have a landing which needs some upgrade!
Still haven't gotten to a 100, but it's a slow process for sure. I'm mostly trying out things that don't scale at the moment (direct messages, tweets, etc.)
Same here.
What has worked for you?
How much time have you spent on it?
For me, I brought on a few new customers from direct messages on Instagram. I also brought on a few new customers from an accelerator I was a part of. A few came through Twitter. I haven't closed anything on Facebook groups yet, but it seems like a good channel if I spend more time and energy on it.
I haven't spent as much time on it as I need to. I keep drifting back to the product and creating content. So I need to hit this with more effort and I will succeed.
I am always curious about how people are finding 30-50 quality leads per day. How many quality leads are you finding and what's your process?
I've joined a few relevant LinkedIn groups and Slack channels and I've been directly contacting people there. This has brought me the first subscribers, but I find it takes a lot of time, which I'm maybe not putting enough of.
Another chunk of users subscribed from Twitter, by me searching for the relevant keywords and directly replying to tweets with my offering. A more efficient way to do this is to use Tweetdeck.
Another thing is that I have two potential targets - freelancers and small agencies. I need the former to build up my platform, but they're not the ones I'm expecting to pay for it - for that, I need the latter. So my situation is that I need to put different types of effort to attract both of those groups. :)
100 ideas for your startup's first 100 users 🔥
Hope it's useful for you: https://board.first100users.com/
Great resources! Bookmarked :)
Thank you, it's inspiring!
Here are things which got me first 30 Paid customer for GroupNinja (SAAS)
Direct outreach to customers:
I find FB groups which have my ideal audience and started reaching out via messenger, one thing to keep in mind is Don't send a link,
I personally reached out with an intro video asking if interested reply with yes.
One thing to keep in mind don't get demotivated with too less reply it is how it is, most of the message will be lost in message requests
Have a social presence I message many people with the name of the product who google it and the way they find it was social and web, I personally need to work on this but sharing free value is a good option.
Provide Value First I don't have much to teach to my ideal audience, as maybe for you too.
So I created a free Chrome extension called "Groupmailextractor" and the sales really took off because of it
Amazing Customer Experience makes sure your customer loves your product one of my customers is the reason for the next 10+ sales. he is one who suggested people answered questions.
This is all that I have used what are the different ways you used I would love to hear?
Was your video a custom one for each person or a demo showing your product?
I think the Facebook videos are a great idea - FB won't let me advertise my SaaS so I can't boost anything (it's in the financing industry and they think I'm offering credit, which I'm not and can't cross that idiotic hurdle).
no, I did not make custom for each it's not worth it, but still, since I am not messaging random people it was personal I know which group they are so their problems and how my product can help them
Thanks! I'll give it a shot. I think having a personal message will help too instead of a template. I'll try reaching out directly to group members that match my target audience.
great hope you get your first customers soon
Salut Fabien! Mind expanding on what you've done so far so I can try and make couple suggestions? I can also be reached at victor at makesales dot io
Hello Watus, we just started to looking for users. We plan a Product Hunt launch at the end of september. So we're actually looking for early-users before the launch in communities we found relevant.
I got the first 100 users on my outdoor lifestyle newsletter by texting everyone I knew
I got the first 100 users for my newest project with facebook ads. Been able to acquire readers for around $0.50 per
What's your Facebook ads project? My tool is great at making video ads https://storycreatorapp.com would you be interested in chatting?
I'd love to learn about what you are doing for future reference and because it's cool but not for my current project.
I'm collecting subscribers for a city focused email list
We got our first 100 users by direct outreach on Twitter!
I searched for relevant hashtags and suggested our app to users who were searching for something like our app or struggling with problems we solve :)
This is awesome. I am interested in learning more.
How many messages would you send per day?
What did the messages look like?
What was your closing process?
We launched on product hunt yesterday. https://twitter.com/CrowdHailer/status/1296012746614505472
From 190 upvotes over the day over 100 signed up to the waitlist and will be our first customers.
We only spent a couple of days preparing for the launch and most of our promotion was tweeting to our existing followers.
For Incubator List, same with most of others: IH, PH and Hacker News. Then ask your earliest users to spread the word about your product.
Hi Fabien,
I think your landing page needs work. Encryption cannot be sold directly; its a feature on the product you are actually selling - which I think is a chat tool. You need to explain how your chat tool works and then emphasis that unlike other chat your privacy is absolutely guaranteed. I would also include a competition page which lists https://getstream.io/blog/most-secure-messaging-apps and explains how your security is better than theirs.
Hi disrael,
Thank you for your feedback. I'm agree, the next improvement of the landing is about detailed chat features.
I've stored on my Bookmarks (I'm a bookmark maniac) some great content. I believe it can help you guys out to identify a new opportunity or to get creative:
Hope it helps! :)
Hi Arnaud,
Thanks for the tips!
Hi,
I got my first 100 users for Open Lowcode by having my dayjob company use the project.
first feedback from Misakey: if you share a file, even for a limited time, what prevents other participants from downloading it and keeping it forever ? The encryption key mechanism is not so clear, maybe there should be a detailed page to describe that.
Hi Openlowcode,
Thank you for your feedback!
Currently, we want people in a conversation to be able to download the documents and potentially keep them on their computers forever. If the goal for some users is to transfer files to clients that seem important to us. But you're right, being able to make files non-downloadable is a really cool feature!
We're writing a white paper to explain our encryption system, I hope that will give more information about our security.
I haven't yet, but if anyone is a designer, developer, or works for an agency and wants a better way to do client feedback for design & copy, check out feedbackable.io! Early days, but we're coming in hot!
For Kaffae(read extension), I got early users from Reddit. A few from Betapage were very opened for giving feedback. Then Product Hunt killed it. It brought +100.
Since your app focuses on security, I feel like there are many niche groups from Reddit to Discord (crypto folks?)
I have experience running facebook ads so generating leads isn't too difficult but that is because we are consumer focused. Seems like you are b2b so free demos to people in the company would be optimal.
Ok I misread this. I thought it said paid users. I am now qualified to share how I got 2k users.
The first 1k came over the course of several months. I would basically just talk about it non stop to friends and to the internet.
I joined Pioneer.app which gave me some exposure. I would rant about it here on IH. I would write articles on Reddit every once and a while that would drive traffic.
I did this somewhat consistently for a few months.
Then in 1 week I doubled that by launching on Hacker News and getting #1.
The first 100 users of Dorik were mostly from IndieHackers. Next 1000 from Twitter + ProductHunt.
Users or paid users?
Registered users. 270 paid. :)
HN, DN, and of course IH!
Product hunt for Pophurdle.com will hopefully bring in the next batch of a couple hundred!
What's DN? is it DarkNet? o_O
DesignerNews lol!
Didn't know DesignerNews, thanks for the discovery
For Rumin, each time I posted/commented on HN / PH got me 5-10 users. A handful at a time adds up.
Hey, I like mindmap. Will give it a try on rumin later. I think you should try out reaching out on existing mindmap users as I'm a paying user of mindmeister's:)
We posted on r/Marketing, and made the product completely free. Had a few hundred sign-ups and begun getting usage of the platform. Eventually 6 months later we went paid – most of those free users left, but at least we had some usage and a small amount of name recognition as a result.
What did you do to convert the free users? Did you email all the folks who signed up then asked them to upgrade?
Exactly. And only about 6 became paid, but there were sufficient back links and a bit of name recognition for that to slowly grow
https://melbado.com/ is also a free and easy possibility to get additional exposure and feedback.
I didn't, so sign up at https://indiemy.com :D
We got our first 400 users for pory.io by launching on Product Hunt 🚀
Nice! did you prepare the launch (like looking for beta testers)?
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