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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: 0.287s | 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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nicooo ◴[13 May 25 13:03 UTC] No.43972479[source]▶
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/

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arewethereyeta ◴[13 May 25 15:16 UTC] No.43973880[source]▶
This seems like that sort of marketing where the OP creates a question for himself to answer from another account.
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1. grepfru_it ◴[13 May 25 16:54 UTC] No.43975014[source]▶
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!