by zhangruinan on 6/30/22, 11:07 AM with 111 comments
by daenz on 7/1/22, 1:52 AM
I know this probably isn't what you want to hear, and you've probably heard this advice before. I was like that too, and I ignored it. But it really does seem to work.
by tppiotrowski on 7/1/22, 1:48 AM
My general takeaway is that popular Reddit posts now fuel a portion of traditional journalism.
by legitster on 6/30/22, 4:31 PM
Run highly targeted advertisements, and specifically include in the advertisement that you are looking for beta test users to talk to - and what kind of users you are looking for.
The most success we had was with LinkedIn Lead Gen forms. We got meetings with about 50 people at $25-$50 a pop. Be very personal and transparent - there are lots of somewhat bored professionals out there who would love nothing more than try out your app and give you feedback.
Another option is to sponsor a professional mixer event in your area. Depending on the event, you might be able to get a 5 minute speaking spot for less than a few hundred bucks.
by frogger8 on 6/30/22, 11:21 AM
by muzani on 7/1/22, 8:48 AM
I got over 1000 users with just some sharing to a small FB group; this was mostly from them sharing the app to their friends as well. We did some paid marketing to the same group and got 3000+ users, about 3% of whom were willing to pay.
If your biggest competitor is already well funded then you might want a niche that's below their radar.
For example, I didn't like Asana because it was too slow and had too many team features I didn't need - I just wanted some checklists that were fast and used keyboard shortcuts. I ended up using Sublime Text plugins do this. Later, Workflowy fit the bill perfectly.
by sureklix on 7/1/22, 12:54 PM
(i) In your case you need to somehow find this high density potential early user in-person gatherings. You can for instance hang out in a non-generic co-working space where you know it is the choice for digital nomads etc. in your city.
(ii) This is somewhat under-rated but you really can crawl the network of people you know ad infinitum. You only need few people you know who are productivity obsessed to start with. And then always ask them "who should I chat for 15 mins. to get feedback on this etc. (I would suggest crafting this ask really well so that it doesn't come off as demanding. Try to genuinely give value at every interaction, that's how I enjoyed the process as a hardcore introvert.). I spoke to about 5-10 people every week and ended up with a decent community of early users in <3 months.
by onion2k on 7/1/22, 7:34 AM
More generally, if anyone has an idea for a side project or a startup that they're thinking about at the moment, and they don't have an answer to the question of "What's the route to market for this?" then you should seriously consider answering that before writing a single line of code or designing a single screen. Thousands of amazing startups run out of money and shut down because they couldn't answer this question every year. It's important to figure it out as early as possible. It's the source of all your customers, your feedback from real users, and the life blood of your business - revenue.
by makeee on 7/1/22, 6:15 AM
You're going to need to get 1000+ people to hit your site to get 100 beta users so just try to get some exposure in any relevant community you can. Asking for advice is a great way to share your product without coming off as too spammy, so I'd update your post with a link to your product ASAP!
by Ivan_V on 7/1/22, 8:31 AM
The first one is The Mom Test[0] which has already been mentioned here. But it's more about customer interviews which you usually do before you even start doing something.
And the second one is Traction[1] written by Gabriel Weinberg founder of DuckDuckGo and Justin Mares. This book is highly relevant for a situation where you already have something and need to find your first customers. The great thing about this book is that it gives you a framework and a finite list of strategies that you can prioritise and execute one by one until you get traction.
0: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyon...
1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-...
by anyfactor on 7/1/22, 7:16 AM
1. HN or Reddit front page.
2. When I left a comment, no matter how stupid it was OP respnded positively.
3. I looked them up and followed on Twitter.
4. From time to time I will ask them more stupid things (aka advanced feature requests on beta products). Yet, they are consistently kind to me.
5. Because they are good people, I will plug their products whenever I can.
---
On point 1.
Understand the culture of where you are posting. I saw in a twitter thread where the founder spent several months building a product, even wrote their own programming language for it but when they posted on HN it barely got any votes. Then another HN user just posted the language aspect of the product and it made it to the FP. There is some definite patterns of success in places like HN and reddit.
Making it to FP isn't enough you have to have a discussion surrounding it.
by rozenmd on 6/30/22, 5:36 PM
- Writing content for your (potential) audience
- Hanging out and talking about the topic on reddit/Discord/Slack/HN/Twitter
- Setting my hotspot name to my project's domain name whenever I'm around techies or on long train trips
- Find any and all directories that might list products like yours
- Meetups
- Online ads
- Side projects as marketing (little tools that your audience might use, for free)
- Linkedin, talk to people you've worked with before
by pedalpete on 6/30/22, 4:11 PM
If it isn't right for the HN audience, you should know who your audience are, and how to find them.
You can't build if you don't know who you are building for, so that should be your starting point.
by dewey on 7/1/22, 7:02 AM
It talks about how to find a group of people for your product early on and how to iterate from there instead of building it in the dark and then hoping that people will come once it's done and polished.
by reflect on 6/30/22, 4:35 PM
Asking how others are currently solving the problem your tool does is a good entryway. You can follow their answer with a suggestion to try your product if it sounds like it could be useful.
For more of a shotgun approach you can post on betalist, reddit /startups Share Your Startup thread, ShowHN, etc.
by semireg on 7/1/22, 3:23 AM
by smcn on 7/1/22, 2:53 AM
From what I've seen, productivity tools go down fairly well over there, so it may potentially be worth checking out.
I will point out that users don't seem to enjoy people who are _only_ there to sell to them, I'd recommend at least participating a little before you post. However, your mileage may vary.
0: https://www.indiehackers.com/
1: https://feetr.io (yes, of course I'm going to shill it)
by SkilledUp on 7/1/22, 7:40 AM
It took me 176 days to sign up 100 people to https://skilledup.life as Volunteers, which will help them to gain real Experience to improve their career prospects.
I started SkilledUp Life all by myself and went live on 1st Aug 2020. Then hired Mithun in Nov, when I really struggled to get traction.
I was only spending few hours per day on SkilledUp Life back then. Even with a full time employee, we could not get the numbers. Then we started to use our own Volunteers and started to build a team.
We had a simple goal of convincing 1000 people to sign up in the first 12 months. We achieved this task with great difficulty with 24 hours to go. We could not have achieved this without our volunteers. From month 10 to 12, we had a team of about 7 to 8 Volunteers if I recall, from Brazil to Philippines.
Today, we have 7,555 Volunteers from 85 countries. You can subscribe to https://skilledup.life for £30/month. Once subscribed, all talent is free.
You can then build a user acquisition team that could approach your target customers/users one to one to get the 100. Whilst they are working on this, you can add more volunteers to improve your website, write content, SEO, social media marketing, etc.
Your founder journey no longer needs to be as hard as mine was. All the best.
by linux_devil on 7/1/22, 6:09 AM
by bdg on 7/1/22, 10:46 AM
I am a bit lucky to have some product skills to identify the mental biases and traps that I fall into, and some friends help pull me back too. Other commenters have pointed out some of those problems:
- Look for positive signal from real flesh-and-blood customers who will give you real money. I printed out my content and had lunch with former colleagues to pick their brains on the topic. I kept doing small tests to check one single area of the final concept.
- Downscale. Downscale. Downscale. You might conjure up 100s of reasons why you can't dare approach the market with a faint shadow of your final vision but you need to do it to test that you aren't making a huge mistake. They will not love it. You will not make money. But you also will not waste time doubling down on a fantasy. Gumroad is good for this but I'm doing it on Shopify just by reducing my product to 10% of the content and printing 1% of the order quantity I need to make a real profit (so I will lose a few hundred, but I will validate if I should spend a few thousand)
- Figure out how to market. You want to do this because this is a form of your "sales funnel" and how you will actually identify who you want to attract, how to do it, where to go, etc. I'm highly unskilled in this topic but I'm using a book called "The 1‑Page Marketing Plan" which helped me structure a lot of things that I had observed in life and start to build a proper plan in steps that was logical and connected. It's not the best book ever, but it is good enough to get oriented and do something logical.
by stack_framer on 7/1/22, 12:19 PM
I certainly hope others will want to use it and pay for it, but it's liberating not focusing too much on what other people want (or claim they want).
by Frajedo on 7/1/22, 5:24 AM
I’d therefore recommend thinking where your users are on the web / what they are searching for and try to join active discussions where your product might be relevant.
PS: I just realized I’m trying to do exactly that in HN right now :D
by imnotreallynew on 7/1/22, 12:52 PM
It’s worked quite well.
by Gaessaki on 7/1/22, 11:48 AM
In my case, most of the early adoption for my products have been through in-person interactions. Both B2B and B2C. I’m not sure what your product is, but to take a gander, I’d probably just ask friends who worked in startup or corporate jobs if I could stop by their office and show off what I was working on. Then I’d probably offer a trial to anyone who showed interest while I was there and offer to extend their trial if they find friends or colleagues who were interested in trying it out themselves. If you have a bit a flywheel effect through that, then you know you’re on to something.
by CharlesMerriam2 on 7/1/22, 4:47 AM
by sideproject on 7/1/22, 8:27 PM
- I post my projects on SideProjectors - https://www.sideprojectors.com - it's a marketplace for selling side projects, but you can also showcase yours as well.
- I use Newsy - https://newsy.co - and create content aggregators about my topics related to my projects - it gains SEOs and traffic and also finds users to sign up to newsletters and updates. Then I reach out to them.
- I use Tash - https://tash.app - and use my Twitter account to get followers and also get leads.
by wodow on 7/1/22, 10:52 AM
It's their only other post on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zhangruinan
They discuss it at https://medium.superus.space/my-ideal-solution-to-informatio...
by ijidak on 7/1/22, 5:23 AM
First off you need to put it in your profile if it's ready for public view.
Don't wait too long to put up a website.
Describe the features and add a early sign up form to collect email addresses.
Once I have more information, I can give more specific advice.
by bumper_crop on 7/1/22, 1:12 AM
by getflookup on 7/1/22, 11:08 AM
That helped me get users from those (many individuals) who regularly browse such websites. In fact, there are others who develop for the mobile apps stores who have reported similar stories; the market looks "ready-made".
In my case, this was enough to give Flookup the initial boost it needed.
by personjerry on 7/1/22, 3:31 AM
by aristofun on 7/1/22, 11:03 AM
Finding your first users should be your #1 priority.
You should not have time for anything else but this.
Otherwise it looks like a hobby and why do you care finding users in the first place?
by gnicholas on 7/1/22, 2:08 AM
by kimchidude on 7/1/22, 11:27 AM
by dontbenebby on 7/1/22, 6:26 PM
by _thinx on 7/2/22, 7:08 AM
by sergethompson on 7/1/22, 6:25 AM
by alexalx666 on 7/1/22, 11:30 AM
by ignoramous on 7/1/22, 1:21 PM
ProductHunt, Hacker News, Sub Reddits are great avenues to find those groups. Another avenue is conferences.
> The definition of a market niche. This is one of the most important lessons I learned from reading "Crossing the Chasm." It has a somewhat complicated definition of a niche, but since then I've had a lot of luck just taking the gist, roughly: If you can name a conference attended by a particular group of people, that group is a market niche. If there isn't such a conference, it's almost certainly not a niche. For example, let's say you were making a web site to help people find a lawyer. "People looking for lawyers" is a market segment, right? Wrong. There's no "I'm looking for a lawyer" conference. Lawyers are probably a market segment (although arguably, not all types of lawyers go to the same conferences). But everybody needs a lawyer eventually, and that's not a niche, that's everybody. "Startups who need lawyers" (lots of startups need lawyers and go to the same conferences, eg. StartupWeekend) are a market segment, as are building contractors and organized crime lords. Maybe you can help them find lawyers.
That said, you must definitely not build in a vacuum unless you have a very good intuition for what people want.
> Your competition is whatever customers would do if you didn't exist. Let's say you're making software for producing cool graphs of statistical data. There's already really powerful software that does this, but nobody in your market segment uses it for some reason; maybe it's too hard to use or too expensive. That software is your competitor, right? Wrong! That software is irrelevant. Your customers don't want it, so even if it's competing with you, it's already lost. Your customers are probably using either Microsoft Excel's horrible chart features, or giving up and just not making charts at all. So your competitors are Microsoft and apathy, respectively. Apathy is probably going to be the tougher one. To find your list of competitors, just ask yourself what options your customers think they're choosing between. Ignore everything else.
From: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20111116
Most tech related products these days use Open Source as a means of marketing and generating demand. Innovators and early adopters come flocking to it, at which point their focus should shift to making their position count via carving out a market leadership position (with strong base already established in a narrow enough niche: think Cloudflare and DDoS; Amazon and books; AWS and Compute+Storage; Facebook and colleges; and so on). Also, consumer (marketing) and enterprise (sales) software require very different mode of customer acquisition, unless you can blend both those in (which is easier said than done [1])
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
[1] https://archive.is/R7jqw (how our free plan stays free, tailscale.com)
See also: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done (know your customers jobs-to-be-done)
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29691811