Zero to 1000 signups in 1 DAY
Last year, we launched our product Airstrip AI and hit over 1000 signups in just 1 day -- without running any ads or paying for traffic.
It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t luck. It was just a mix of real problem solving, a clear landing page, and launching on the right platform at the right time.
Here’s how we did it 👇
What We Built
Airstrip AI helps agencies (software, design, legal, marketing, etc.) create important documents in minutes — stuff like service agreements, NDAs, contracts, scopes of work.
Our users aren’t legal experts.
They don’t know what to include, what to ask, or how to cover their bases.
So we guide them through it. Step-by-step. Ask them smart questions. Do AI-powered research behind the scenes. Then generate a clean, strong document that actually fits their use case.
It’s a 3-step thing:
- Ask the right questions
- Do the research
- Generate the doc
That’s it.
Launch Day
We launched on Product Hunt. That was the only big push. Posted on Twitter too — but didn’t really get traction there.
What happened:
- 3,000 to 4,000 visitors
- 1,000+ signups
- Ended up as #7 Product of the Day
Most people were just curious — not necessarily ready to pay. More on that later.
The landing page was simple:
- One clear sentence up top
- Three feature cards
- Pricing
- FAQ
- Footer
No animations. No explainer video. No endless scroll. Just clean and clear.
Built with Next.js. Tracked with basic tools. No ads. No email list. No influencer push.
What Worked
The main win was flipping the AI experience.
Most tools just give you a chatbot and expect you to write the perfect prompt. That sucks if you don’t even know what to ask.
So we did the opposite.
We asked the questions instead. Then used the answers to figure out what they needed and wrote the doc for them.
This felt easier, smarter — especially for non-tech, non-legal users.
What Didn’t Work
Lots of signups. But not many stuck around.
Why?
Most of the traffic came from Product Hunt. And a lot of those people are “product tourists” — they try stuff out but don’t really need it.
Also, I didn’t focus on SEO from day one. Which was a big miss.
Now that we’re investing in SEO, we’re starting to see compounding traffic. But I lost valuable time.
What I’d Do Differently
If I could go back:
- Start SEO content the day I start coding
- Go deeper into use cases early, not just launch hype
- Focus more on onboarding and retention, not just signups
Want to Try It?
If you run or work at an agency and want to generate solid legal or business docs in minutes, check it out: useairstrip.com
Let me know if this was useful. Happy to answer questions or go deeper on anything we did — good or bad.
This kind of transparency is pure gold. Too many founders only share the highlight reel, but posts like yours — with the real behind-the-scenes — are what actually move the needle for the rest of us. It’s like getting the cheat codes and the mindset manual. Respect for sharing the tough parts too — that’s where the real growth (and connection) happens. Rooting for your continued success!
Thanks!
Thanks for this, especially what you would do differently.
Your welcome - glad you found it useful!
Got insights from your experience. Thanks for sharing!
Great - curious to know, what's the highest traffic source for your products and how long did it take to reach?
Thanks, that helps!
Glad its useful!
Nobody is perfect on their first try, and you did your best.
Thank you for sharing what went wrong and your insight on how to deal with it beforehand, Shanjai.
That's right - glad you found it useful
very interesting feedback, I plan to launch on PH too my project linkeme.ai and I'm looking for feedback. I work hard now on SEO and customer pipeline. Thanks to share and all the best for your product !!
Thanks!
Thanks for the nice insights and congrats to the launch!
Would be super helpful to know how you tackle SEO now and what are your learnings there so far?
Thanks for sharing. I have built few products before and always struggled to sell it. I am working on one more. Will use your KT as tool
Congrats on the launch
Thanks!
Thanks for the insights! Perfect timing to read this, I am about to launch a product and hadn't thought about SEO!
Perfect timing then, SEO can compound quietly in the background while you focus on launch traction. Try writing the outline of the blog post yourself and then automating it with AI - as Google's search algorithm has changed to not rank fully AI generated posts.
I am building a website with pretty much a homepage haha so it was easier than that. Thanks for the tip!
Loved your writing
Thanks, glad you find it useful!
Thanks for the insights! Nice product – sounds useful. It's just a bit out of my price range ;) I would consider it if there was a more affordable entry level plan, like 5 documents for $10/mo or something like that.
Glad you find it useful. As we have to focus on accuracy of the documents and making sure its compliant, costs of creating a document is higher -- as model costs go down, we will have a starter plan to cater to you!
Nice, thanks!
As someone who is just launching on Product Hunt - and looking to see some user sign ups as my main KPI this was super insightful. My product is called Energos . ai and is a tool for optimizing maintenance and operations. I think one of our key challenges will also be having user sign up and stick around. Thanks for sharing!
Product hunt is great for some apps - for us it didn't work like it did for other apps. You would need to do some research on similar apps launched on Product Hunt and see how they are acquiring customers now. Glad you found it useful!
Makes you wonder if launching anything on product hunt that isn't aimed at audience that visit product hunt (like a lot of B2B) can get you real traction?
Product Hunt has a good domain rating - so it would be a good addition to your website's backlinks and domain rating. But its best to focus on other channels as well together with Product Hunt to get initial traction. But sometimes a percentage of users from product hunt might stick around and will use it - try to track who they are and talking to them, it happened for us -- would be helpful data.
Congrats, big milestones on the first day!
Congrats on the 1K signups, Shanjai 👏👏
huge milestone, and clearly well-earned... Not by money but by need. Love how focused your product is on solving a real, painful problem.
But if you can clearify for me how this service is different for a custom gpt or n8n agent?
Generally, and as you build for long-term traction, consider optimizing for AI-first search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.,
They're becoming major discovery engines. A simple way to start: create direct-answer content and short listicles like “5 docs every agency needs” or “Top AI tools for legal workflows.” or anything your research reached.
And good luck 🤞
Thanks! Our product is a end to end solution, starting from creating a document (which our AI proactively asks for the right questions rather than relying on the user giving the right information) to updating it if they get a new client or need to make changes. Also, once the document is created, it needs to be constantly monitored to remind the user regarding any expiry dates on the document, or deadlines in the document which is a important service that lawyers provide to their clients.
If users were to use a custom GPT or a n8n agent, it will require the user to be actively doing the right thing, where our users don't have much legal knowledge and are not lawyers, so in all our features (document creation, updating, compliance monitoring, reminders) we try to proactive and give the user the right information at the right time -- which is autonomous and saves them lots of time and money.
As you said, yes - we'll need to focus on optimising for AI search platforms, and we are seeing some referrals to our traffic from ChatGPT (5%) recently, which we need to improve on as well.
Thanks for your comment! -- I'll write posts like like those and try creating more of them and optimising for SEO and AI search
Keep going - the first one is probably the hardest!
That's right - thanks.
Are you not afraid that the AI will hallucinate? Do your users 100% trust the AI?
thanks for this question, this is something we’ve dealt with from day one.
The short answer: hallucination can happen. Especially when the AI doesn’t get clear context or when the document is long and complex.
Here’s what we’re doing to reduce that risk:
That said, for long or highly customised documents, small issues still pop up. So we always recommend a legal review before using them live (and most of our users already do that).
It’s not perfect -- but we’re shipping improvements weekly to keep tightening the loop.
Appreciate you detailing your experience with Airstrip AI, it provided some valuable perspective.
Thanks Brat - glad its useful!
Thank you for sharing your experience with Airstrip AI. It was insightful.
Thanks - glad you found it useful!
Wow, amazing traction! Quick question: how did you get your first 100 users?
Solid post and breakdown!
Do you have already any ideas how to improve retention from the product testers from product hunt?
Really enjoyed this breakdown — super clean execution and honest reflection.
The insight about “product tourists” on Product Hunt hits hard. We experienced a similar spike: tons of curious users, very few conversions.
Loved the flipped AI UX too — guiding the user vs. relying on perfect prompts makes total sense, especially for non-tech audiences.
Following your progress — thanks for sharing the full story
This is incredibly inspiring—well done! What you’ve achieved is something most people only dream of. I’m currently building an AI-powered assistant to help SMBs with HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 compliance.
I’d love to hear your advice on what you wish you had done earlier in your journey, and any tips on building something as impactful as what you’ve created.
Really appreciate this breakdown - especially the “ask first, generate later” angle. Flipping the AI flow like that makes a huge difference for non-technical userrs. Also +1 to starting SEO early. One of those things you only learn the hard way Congrats on the traction - curious how retention looks now with more focused users!
Thank you for sharing! This is really helpful for someone like me who’s working on building an early-stage product. Appreciate it!
You need to adjust mobile version of the website. It has a problem with responsiveness.
Hey shanjai, I build websites, automate tasks with AI, create dashboards, and set up tools like Zapier — basically anything to save time or improve workflow.
I’m offering to help for free or a small price — just to get honest feedback or a testimonial as I grow my portfolio.
If there’s anything you need help with,:)
or can you just give me work to do i will do it for free plz.
Interesting tool - If you need an extra guidance on how better promote this product, feel free to join our waitlist: https://wirehaired-protest-b61.notion.site/1e97648c55c880ddb946c598bdeda50f