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

560 points amanchanda | 1 comments | 13 May 25 08:41 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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rwieruch ◴[13 May 25 09:42 UTC] No.43971211[source]▶
Not sure if my "products" compare to yours, but I’ve seen some success with a few of them over the years, maybe there are some takeaways (or pitfalls to avoid) for you:

CloudCamping (PMS): 250+ Businesses, 2023

- Positioned as more modern, more accessible, and more affordable than the competition

- Limited competition due to the complexity of the product

- Personally visited campgrounds to demo the product

- Sent physical postcards (old school!) to campgrounds with product updates and announcements

- Due to limited competition, it is now ranking very high in the German marked on SEO

The Road to React & The Road to Next: 1000+ Users, 2024

- Gave away The Road to React for free in exchange for an email, grew the mailing list this way

- Benefited from early timing (luck!), it was the first book on the topic

- Initial version wasn’t polished, but I kept iterating and improving it each year

- In 2025, released the paid course The Road to Next to my audience, now over 1,000 students enrolled

SoundCloud (DJ/Producing as “Schlenker mit Turnbeutel”)

- Active from 2010–2015 as a hobby, grew to 10,000+ followers (a lot for the time)

- SoundCloud allowed 1,000 direct messages per track

- Carefully selected 1,000 high-engagement listeners in my music niche and personally messaged them to check out new tracks

So yeah, a mix of timing/luck, outreach that does not scale, being better than the competition I'd say.

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nielsole ◴[13 May 25 13:02 UTC] No.43972474[source]▶
I like the simplicity of pricing on CloudCamping.

* It includes price differentiation. Grounds that want to save the last penny can do so by handling payments themselves. I guess camping grounds are very price sensitive.

* It grows with size of the value provided

* Grounds can start using the tool without paying anything. Thus low barrier of entry

* It seems unlikely anyone can win over existing customers based on undercutting your price.

* 1% of revenue of a business sector can make up a nice indie business.

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1. rwieruch ◴[13 May 25 13:32 UTC] No.43972780[source]▶
Thanks for your feedback and for validating the pricing model! We see it the same way.

Most property management systems charge campground owners several thousand dollars upfront, before they can even try the software. That’s where our approach stands out: we offer a low barrier to entry paired with a modern user experience. Many competitors started over 15 years ago, and you can tell by how outdated their products feel.

Taking just a 1% cut can pay off if it helps capture more market share, this was my thinking too. We’re not quite there yet, as not all of the 250 campgrounds on our platform have adopted online payments. Still, it’s both exciting and a bit terrifying to see some of them already processing over $250,000 in annual bookings through our system.

I’ve had a few sleepless nights, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend building a marketplace product to everyone. Once real money flows through your platform at that scale, things get intense fast.