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

560 points amanchanda | 2 comments | 13 May 25 08:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.456s | 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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jrvarela56 ◴[13 May 25 09:28 UTC] No.43971134[source]▶
First 100 users, meet them one by one wherever you can (forums, friends, ex-coworkers) and call them to talk to them and help them out with onboarding if needed. Straight up cold outreach and warm intros. Next 500 will most likely come from referrals if these first 100 users are happy.

Apply this logic to the jump from 20 to 100 if it makes the task less daunting for you.

replies(1): >>43971223 #
amanchanda ◴[13 May 25 09:45 UTC] No.43971223[source]▶
Ok. Makes sense. So basically, what we are doing, you want us to scale that. Correct?
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jrvarela56 ◴[13 May 25 17:56 UTC] No.43975770[source]▶
Your current approach has specific techniques I would remove altogether to focus on the core interaction between you and the user: talk to so many of them so often that you truly understand their problem and how they shop for a solution.

Once you understand that and make them happy, you’ll come up with ideas to experiment how to get more users.

replies(1): >>43995734 #
1. amanchanda ◴[15 May 25 14:55 UTC] No.43995734[source]▶
So, I am one of the users myself. I built it because I needed it. I ran it by few users in my network. We are constantly getting feedback from our early beta users, which are around 200. Not all of them are active.

My main problem is TOFU, which I need to solve for.

replies(1): >>43997140 #
2. jrvarela56 ◴[15 May 25 17:15 UTC] No.43997140[source]▶
Checkout stuff by Reforge (reforge.com) to learn about how to prioritize this kind of stuff.