What's New: Landing your first 10 users

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

You need 2 important things to bring in your first users:

• An offer, and access to potential customers. At this stage, don't worry about building. Focus on selling what you will eventually build.
• If you're looking to secure funding, don't underestimate the power of strategic partnerships. This can help with exposure and shared resources.
• $45K MRR after ditching the marketplace. Building 3 game changing products turned out to be the biggest source of growth for Ajay Patel.

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Landing Your First 10 Users 🎉

by Akshay Raveendran

To land your first 10 users, you need a strong offer, and access to potential customers.

Wait...what about the product?

Hold off on the product for now. Before building anything, you need to craft an amazing offer.

An offer is a promise you sell to customers about solving their problems. In most cases, you don’t even need to build a product to sell your promise. To be clear, I’m not saying that you should lie. If you won’t be able to solve the problem, don’t promise that you can.

Our goal right now isn’t to figure out how you can build it, it’s to figure out whether you can sell it.

I love offers more than products because offers help de-risk two of the three fundamental challenges all startups face:

1. Market risk: Does anyone actually want or need this?
2. Channel risk: Can you acquire customers through marketing channels?

Product risk is the third, if you were wondering. I’ve seen significantly more startups fail due to market and channel issues than product issues.

Now that you’ve got your offer, let’s talk to potential customers.

Show your offer to the right people

Many founders will ask themselves “Who do I think has this problem?” Then, they relentlessly hunt those people down. This is an okay start, but we can do better.

Instead, ask "Who has the problem, knows they have the problem, and is currently doing something about it?”

The latter part of that is key. You want to find people who are already trying to solve this problem on their own. Why? Because these people have already decided that it's a problem worth their time and money to solve.

Strategies for getting your first 10 users

1. Customer interviews: One of the easiest ways to get a customer is to circle back with the people you talked to about the problem in step one. You’ve got their contact information, and you’ve built a relationship with them already. Also, if they aren’t interested in buying, you can immediately ask questions that help you learn why.

2. Cold outreach: With LinkedIn and Hunter.io, you can find just about anyone’s contact information and shoot them a cold email. The key is making sure the people you’re emailing have the problem, know they have the problem, and are trying to solve the problem that your offer addresses.

3. Partnerships: Partnering with influencers, businesses, or other authorities in your niche is a great way to get access to buyers.

4. Ads: If you have a defined customer segment, run targeted ads on Facebook, Google, etc.

5. Online communities: Engage with potential customers in online communities.

6. Content marketing: Create optimized content for SEO or Quora to catch buyers through search intent.

7. Build an audience first: Build an audience by creating a mastermind, online community, or blog, and leverage it when you’re ready to sell.

For more on this, check out my e-book!

Discuss this story.

In the News 📰

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🧵 Threads adds view counts on posts.

💰 Discover Fina Money, your personalized finance tracking solution. #ad

👸 The women in AI making a difference.

🛠️ Finding the best customer onboarding tools for your team.

🤖 ChatGPT's new face is a black hole.

📣 Powerful referral strategies to supercharge your sales.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

Avenues to Securing Funding 💵

by Thomas Griffin

These time-tested strategies can help you secure funding to grow your business!

Get the hang of bootstrapping

This may seem counterintuitive, but in order to secure funding, you need to first get from zero to one. Before investors will consider funding your startup, they'll want to see tangible progress and a solid foundation.

Bootstrapping is a powerful signal to potential investors that you can manage operations on a lean budget.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding platforms allow you to tap into a vast network.

Come up with a compelling pitch that showcases the unique value proposition of your business. If your venture aligns with a social cause or taps into a broader movement, you may find a wellspring of support from passionate individuals eager to contribute to your success.

Seek angel investors

To attract angel investors, you'll need a meticulously crafted pitch that outlines your vision and demonstrates a deep understanding of your target market, competitive landscape, and growth strategies.

Many angel investors are seasoned founders themselves, so be prepared to engage in substantive discussions about your business model, management approach, and long-term goals.

Forge strategic partnerships

Collaboration can be a powerful catalyst for growth and funding. By forging strategic partnerships or co-branding agreements with complementary businesses, you can gain access to new customer bases, cross-promotional opportunities, and shared resources.

Unlike traditional investors, strategic partners may not require significant equity in exchange for their support. Instead, they may be motivated by the potential for mutual growth, access to your expertise and products, or the synergies created by combining forces.

Startup competitions and funding programs

While not a guaranteed source of substantial funding, startup competitions and funding programs can provide a valuable boost to your financial runway. These initiatives often offer cash prizes, mentorship opportunities, and exposure to potential investors or partners.

Research competitions and programs aligned with your industry or business focus, and diligently prepare your submissions. Even if you don't secure the top prize, the exposure and feedback gained can be invaluable as you refine your pitch and amplify your startup's visibility!

Discuss this story.

🔥 Landing Page Hot Tips

by Rob Hope

Strengthen your landing page with these design, development, and conversion tips!

Remove obstacles in the way of demoing your product. Take Carrd, for example. The company allows a full website build before asking for an email address.

If you are confident your SaaS offering will satisfy your potential customer, why not get visitors to experience it as soon as possible?

Subscribe to Rob's One Page Love newsletter for his favorite UI, design, and development finds.

Ditching the Marketplace Skyrocketed Growth 🚀

by James Fleischmann

Ajay Patel started with a cofounder and an idea. Now, his team of 20 has hit $45K MRR.

The idea

Back in 2011, it was just two of us: Me and Vrushank Brahmakshatriya. We were both working at a software company, and realized that, while most products required a backend admin panel, there weren't many solutions available.

It was really time-consuming and repetitive for us to create a UI for each project, so we had an idea: What if we created an admin panel and UI kits ourselves?

We started by launching one product on Envato's ThemeForest. That's where we validated the idea, and we still bring in $15-$20K MRR from marketplaces.

But launching our own platform, ThemeSelection, turned out to be a pivotal decision. It gave us complete control over user experience, pricing, and marketing strategies. Direct engagement with our customer base was key.

ThemeSelection

We have a team of 20 members. We provide fully-coded Admin Dashboard Templates and UI Kits for designers, developers, and agencies to kickstart their projects easily, while saving money, time, effort, and resources.

All of our products are sold on a one-time basis. Each purchase includes one year of complimentary access to all updates and premium support services. This access can be extended yearly.

It's similar to a perpetual license, granting users lifetime usage rights upon purchase. We've kept our license structure very flexible, since every customer has different needs. While our competitors offer two types of licenses, we offer four.

Customers seem to appreciate this flexibility, which means more conversions.

Game changers

In 2022, we released three products that proved to be game changers for us. They were comprehensive design systems that addressed a wide array of user design preferences.

Also, because we noticed that customers were working with multiple techs, and were therefore interested in purchasing multiple products, we came up with the idea of the Big Bundle.

Basically, our customers can get all of our premium products for roughly the price of two products. It's good for the customer, and it brings in 40-45% of our total earnings.

There are two key steps to building a game changer:

1. Identify and address the most common requirements of your users. You can do this by looking at usage patterns.

2. Widen your appeal by ensuring that your products are accessible to customers of all sizes via flexible pricing options or bundled packages.

The growth

For overall growth, we focus on SEO to maximize organic traffic for our products.

Using tools like Semrush and Ubersuggest, our team determines the keywords to target by identifying search terms that are relevant to both our audience and our product solutions. Then, we publish helpful, informative blog posts to attract traffic and establish a customer base.

We also create free tools for designers and developers, like Free UI kits and a Bootstrap 5 CheatSheet. These are win-wins that generate a lot of relevant, high-quality traffic.

Other than SEO, we put a lot of time into developer- and designer-oriented communities and platforms, like DevTo, Medium, and HackerNoon. Creating content and engaging in these communities has significantly boosted our brand recognition.

Pro tips

• Focus on quality and customer satisfaction. We want to scale, but not at the cost of what makes us stand out.

• We always start with market research. We're out there attending the latest design conferences, engaging with the community, and keeping the feedback loop buzzing to ensure that we're ahead of the curve.

• We take an average of 6-12 months to build each product.

Discuss this story.

The Tweetmaster's Pick 🐦

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Akshay Raveendran, Darko, Thomas Griffin, Rob Hope, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing