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

274 points jainvivek | 1 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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_kush ◴[19 Oct 24 05:35 UTC] No.41885854[source]▶
Reddit.

1. I made an app for the colorblind in 2015 and got my first 100 (and more) users from the r/colorblind subreddit.

2. I made a breathing app in 2017 and got my first users from r/breathing, r/breathwork, and r/meditation subreddits.

3. I recently made a productivity app for the mac and got my first users from r/macapps subreddit.

Reddit is incredibly powerful if you are building something niche and are already a part of the community. Also, the results are compounding because some of my posts get good SEO traffic so I still get a handful of users from Reddit every day.

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VikRubenfeld ◴[19 Oct 24 14:19 UTC] No.41887903[source]▶
How do you avoid getting banned for posting a link to your business?
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1. IAmGraydon ◴[19 Oct 24 14:57 UTC] No.41888138[source]▶
You have to be a legitimate contributing member of the subreddit first and present something of value to them instead of just a link.

I too launched a business that got a large amount of customers from Reddit. In my case, it was a niche retail product for musicians who are into synthesizers. I was a longtime contributor to a few related subreddits and launched the product by producing a series of tutorials that featured the product, but didn’t really advertise it. Many thousands of people viewed the tutorials, noticed the product, and quickly figured out where to get it in the video description. People then bought the product and started using it in their own videos, so it spread quickly. This led to thousands of units sold on every continent (except Antarctica, of course).