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

I’ve had success twice using targeted social media outreach — specifically by joining relevant subreddit discussions and commenting on YouTube videos where my target audience was already active.

Instead of simply promoting your service right away (it often feels spammy), I recommend genuinely engaging in conversations until the right opportunity comes up.

I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://sparkflow.ai/

This is inception level promotion, I’m not even mad at ya lol

Heh how meta.

Makes sense though. I’ve been thinking of creating a very similar tool; delighted that it might already exist!

Do you have numbers?

i.e. what the "success" was like in each of the outreaches?

Is this comment part of the grift?

I went to sign up and got sent to a typeform telling me thanks for my email address. Did I fall for the hustle?

Interesting product! One problem: I want to get a handle on the quality of online conversations you flag. Do you know that on the free tier, the top 5 you flag are the best of your filter?

I don't think it's a grift in the negative sense but this is absolutely a marketing comment. They're doing exactly what they say to do in the comment. They're on HN where at least some of their target market is. They have a product that is relevant (right down to the headline/CTA). They didn't just post the link but put it at the end of an informational comment.

10/10 meta-promotion IMO

Now we need a corporate chat bot that talks about pain points on social media.

Maybe, maybe amanchanda is too.

I signed up for the waitlist, please approve me

This seems like that sort of marketing where the OP creates a question for himself to answer from another account.

They also likely were involved in the the original question getting posted so they could provide that answer which is what makes it an entirely fabricated grift

Thank you for the trust. I am finalizing the last features before opening to first users. I will reach out to you soon!

Yes, I will do an initial search for 1000s of conversations and give you the top 5. Each day I repeat the process.

I was not involved in the original comment. But maybe I should expand my product to build this ;)

Thank you for your trust. I want to finalize a few more things before roll it out to first users. I will get back to you!

I was not involved in the original comment and not planning to publicly talk about my service until it's live, but the opportunity was too perfect to miss.

I never pulled numbers but since I got most of my first 100 users through this without paying any money, the ROI is positive :) Time was an investment though, and that's why I hope my service will help here.

Sigh. This is yCombinator’s startup school or whatever it’s called where they teach you to launch a product and solicit engagement and feedback. This template is boilerplate for the last 3 or 4 I’ve seen. Then it gets posted to hacker news to solicit feedback from “real users”. Without fail the creators happen to haha stumble in and happily take your feedback. Absolutely nothing changes and you will return to the same product page as an old bookmark 2 years from now and realize nothing on the page has changed.

Instead, notice when this happens and then take away your own experience and use it to build your own product. Good luck!

You need evidence to reasonably say they were "likely involved" and I don't think "it's conceivable that it happened that way" really counts as evidence.

> I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://sparkflow.ai/

That implies that the product is ready, which it does not seem to be? The product does seem interesting, what do you do to differentiate yourself from different offerings that do basically the same? E.g. you mention Discord on the website - are you finding all the relevant discord channels for me, or do I have to join them myself, and you just monitor my account?

Debatable I suppose but I don't feel I do. That's what likely means - I feel I have enough suspicion, the coincidence is too strong, the stars too much in alignment...

Hard to recreate but at the time I commented it was also the top comment with only a few others and it was on the front page. I've been a HN'er for a while and this is a rare situation to say the least if it's not a setup. I'm not willing to die on the hill and would gladly admit I'm wrong, I just see it as very suspicious forum spam as the most likely scenario

Hi. I should have phrased it differently as I'm not totally ready yet (as you rightly pointed out).

Yes, I find the discussions, let you engage with them trough the app, and monitor replies.

Do you mind sharing the competition you're referring to? I've not found any similar solution so far. Thanks

Not sure if I'm allowed to link to stuff, but you can find a bunch of alternatives to offerings like these (the most basic being google alerts), both free and paid, if you look for them - especially on sites that exist to list alternatives.

Some let you link accounts, some give you lists of platforms they scan. I've specifically mentioned Discord because there's no easy way to discover communities without being invited, so if you can actually discover relevant Discord communities and monitor discussions (beyond the few sites that aggregate some popular communities), then you have a USP, since most products don't do that, at least in any capacity that people think is worth paying for.

I can vouch for this. I don't know nicooo :)