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In my newsletter Fake Mayo I share weekly stories (interviews) of how founders got their first customers.
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Clément Jansens launched Mailhub - a transactional email API designed for developers - in mid-2024. By day, he works at HotelSpeaker; by night, he builds indie SaaS projects.
Mailhub simplifies multilingual, consistent transactional emails with Tailwind-ready templates, full delivery tracking, and staging environment support. Initially developed as MailWind in 2022, it evolved into Mailhub after a complete redesign in 2023.
Clément gained his first 100 users in under a week by sharing Mailhub on Hacker News. The post quickly reached the front page, attracting over 2,000 visitors. However, he learned that "100 users" doesn’t mean 100 active users - many were just curious.
His marketing strategy included tweeting from a dedicated X account, blogging, and launching on Product Hunt and Reddit—though results were mixed. Mailhub now has ~500 users, 25K emails sent, and modest but growing revenue.
Competing in a crowded space, Mailhub differentiates with its developer-first design and a freemium model, offering key features like multilingual templates and domain support for free.
Read the full story
https://www.fakemayo.com/p/how-clement-got-his-first-100-saas-users-via-hacker-news
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