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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: 0.218s | 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)

1. outcoldman ◴[13 May 25 14:29 UTC] No.43973384[source]▶
I mean, this is the whole state of the industry.

If you wrote something nice (you believe it could be valuable to user) - and tried to show it here in Show HN - you will get close to 0 upvotes.

If you build something excellent (unique, wow factor, etc) - you will get the votes. But this is going to be an exception.

The question is, how the OP got 228 points (at the time) on this "Ask HN" topic? Obviously the OP is working on SEO, and probably has ability to upvote their topics (fake users, large follow base on X, Mastodon or Emails)?

And to answer your question. The best place to get your first 50/100 users is to show them at the place where your users hang out. Reddit? Obviously it is getting harder, because a lot of subreddits don't allow self-promotions. So ads, if you are lucky enough and your users don't block ads. And the best place is to actually use the Marketplaces/AppStore where your users are going to search for a solution. App Store in case of Apple, Google Store in case of Android.

I have found the best way is to actually keep your own newsletter, and respect the users, don't post there too much, only post, when you see you can offer something valuable. I have about 2000 users in my newsletter, and that helps to get first 100 users of my new products/apps.