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Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

559 points amanchanda | 1 comments | 13 May 25 08:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source

I am building a B2C AI SaaS with $50/month price. How would you go about getting with first 100 users and then the next 500 users.

What we are currently doing: 1) Cold outreach to power users - to convert them into affiliates. 2) Cold outreach to individuals who have target ICP communities. 3) SEO for more long term (not for the first 500)

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999900000999 ◴[13 May 25 09:22 UTC] No.43971096[source]▶
Find a way to make it free to start.

This is how Firebase, Supabase and friends work.

Getting 100 people to sign up for a free service is still work, but significantly less.

replies(2): >>43971207 #>>43971402 #
CrulesAll ◴[13 May 25 10:20 UTC] No.43971402[source]▶
Making it 100X harder to get them to pay for it subsequently. "If you’re good at something, never do it for free" - Joseph Joker MBA JD.

If not, then you are in the ad business.

replies(3): >>43971885 #>>43973309 #>>43975103 #
1. sillystu04 ◴[13 May 25 11:55 UTC] No.43971885[source]▶
To play devil's advocate, many successful developer focused companies have gone down this route successfully. Neon, Cloudflare, Firebase, Github and many more have all made free tiers work.

I suspect there's a special dynamic for developers. I'm usually more willing to try out new things on personal projects, but I also don't like paying for things on personal projects. At work I don't care how much things cost, but I'll definitely advocate for tools that worked well on personal projects.