How we got 1500 users in 2 weeks

Hey everyone,

Founding growth marketer of Spine here (https://getspine.ai?utm_source=indiehackers). We just acquired 1500 users in 2 weeks.

I wanted to share our strategy with everyone in case they find it useful since a lot here are solopreneurs and don't know how to get off the ground.

Here it is:

1. Gamified a waitlist for 1 month
   This was a big decision for us to make as to whether we wanted to launch the product (which wasn't ready) publicly OR if we wanted to wait and build a waitlist. I decided a waitlist was our best bet since we could avoid high bounce rates and gamify the waitlist. We built a dedicated landing page + set up a referral system - those who referred would move up the waitlist. But the waitlist is pointless without the second piece below.

2. Leveraged influencer partnerships to boost social content
   We needed a way to distribute and have people sign up for our waitlist. Sadly our socials are all small without a big following. So our methodology was to produce two high-end videos, post them on our best accounts, and then have influencers amplify the posts. Yes, we paid to amplify, but the flywheel began to turn itself once we had a base of users funneling in and leveraging the referral system. Overall we ended up with 8,000 in our waitlist.

3. LinkedIn & X founder posts
   We were lucky that the algorithm took some of our founder stories/posts and boosted them to a large audience on LinkedIn.

4. Thread hijacking on Reddit + X
   One of our best strategies. We would find Reddit & X posts that were relevant to our product and would drop a link to our product subtly. Over time this compounds.

5. Y-Combinator Outlets
   I can’t not acknowledge our access to HackerNews & reposting from Y-Combinator. Shockingly, Y-Combinator reposts or posting on YC didn’t actually help a lot. HackerNews was the major boost - about half of our users came from 1 single HackerNews post. We’re fortunate to have them, make sure you use your unique channels to your advantage.

Check us out if you’re interested in leveraging AI agents that will work automatically for you on a schedule while you sleep or do other important tasks! https://getspine.ai?utm_source=indiehackers

Cheers,