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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: 0.204s | 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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diordiderot ◴[13 May 25 20:54 UTC] No.43977616[source]▶
CloudCamping's UI is beautiful.

Did you use a UI framework or css library?

How do you handle payments while only taking 1%? Stipe charges at least 1.5%.

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joeguilmette ◴[14 May 25 01:13 UTC] No.43979683[source]▶
my guess: pass the processing fees onto the either the consumer or provider.
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1. rwieruch ◴[14 May 25 07:47 UTC] No.43981986[source]▶
Yes, the campground owner pays the processing fees. Stripe allows us to get 1% of the cake with their API.