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Ask HN: Founders, what was the major sourcing channel for your first 100 users?

274 points jainvivek | 4 comments | 16 Oct 24 18:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

Please also share target audience to correlate better.
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buf ◴[19 Oct 24 04:56 UTC] No.41885732[source]▶
I'm a founder of 3 small saas companies that I run by myself, generating about $1M ARR.

1. First one I started 10 years ago. I built a bot that auto DMed people in various internet forums. My first 100 users came from that. The product is highly shareable, so it quickly grew. Now it's 1.6M users (most of them free).

2. Second started 3.5 years ago. My first 100 users came from simply emailing the newsletter list from my first company. This product has no free plan, so it became profitable instantly.

3. Third started 1 month ago. And it's been a struggle. I got 10k free users just by emailing my list, but 0 paying users. So I tried ads and had similar results from the ads. Now I'm taking a step back and understanding why they aren't paying, which involves just emailing them.

Summary: once you have an email list and viral social loops built-in, marketing gets easier.

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namanyayg ◴[19 Oct 24 08:06 UTC] No.41886401[source]▶
Awesome! Followed you on X. Can you elaborate more on what you mean by "viral social loops"?
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buf ◴[19 Oct 24 08:34 UTC] No.41886510[source]▶
Any b2c product I build has huge incentive to share the product, creating more users.

In the product itself, social is part of the value. So the more they interact, the more value they get. Similar to any social network you see today.

I do this a number of ways, none original. Reactions, upvotes, achievements, streaks, creating summary videos (like Spotify year in review), public recommendations, etc

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1. buf ◴[19 Oct 24 08:41 UTC] No.41886535[source]▶
If you want some great reading material on this, I recommend Reforge's viral loops info. I believe it's free.
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2. fuzztester ◴[19 Oct 24 17:03 UTC] No.41888978[source]▶
I checked, there is a membership to access the full content.

I see what you did there.

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3. buf ◴[19 Oct 24 17:15 UTC] No.41889066[source]▶
I thought they were still doing one free lesson. It's been a while since I was on Reforge though.
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4. fuzztester ◴[19 Oct 24 18:38 UTC] No.41889681{3}[source]▶
ha ha, i was just kidding :)