Where do you go for alpha users?

Question

Is there anywhere in particular you like to post your application that is good for finding early stage users?
(Maybe like ProductHunt but pre-release)

Fabian Maume · Accepted Answer

Indie Hackers Community can be a nice place to get alpha users. Personally I prefer to use LinkedIn and cherry pick some people to outreach. Another way is too look at video about your industry on yourtube. On the channel detail page you can get the email of the youtuber to contact them.

Archie Hicklin · Answer

Betalist! BetaList @marckohlbrugge

Xavier Coiffard · Answer

When I want to soft launch a product I usually use:

- Twitter, if you have an audience there it's pretty efficient
- Online chats, pick a specific channel and ask for feedback. You won't get a lot of traffic but it's enough for alpha testing
- Some specific or targeted sub-reddit
- IndieHacker, it's a pretty big community but they're super friendly!

I curated a list of 400 places where to post your startup at different stage of growth
→ https://spreadtheworld.net

Jason Curry · Answer

https://betalist.com is good. I got about 150 email signups in 24-48 hours for https://betalist.com/startups/continuum Also, FB, Slack and Discord groups related to my target market. I am seeing things I did not know about in the comments below, so glad I found this discussion!

Miriam Dorsett · Answer

Thanks, this is a great discussion. Saving these resources for future reference!

Tatiana Kukova, PhD · Answer

Indie Hackers and Hacker News (from YCombinator)

John Flynn · Answer

I’d second the direct outreach approach e.g. LinkedIn. Can be very useful especially for b2b or trying to identify a smaller number of core early adopters

Jason Curry · Answer

@jasonacurry @tiistars Good question. Perhaps more people click to go through to the website itself. To like one needs a Twitter account. Also, when you click / tap on the heart to like, it changes to liked but then also shows a message to login with Twitter. Not sure if everyone realizes that the like does not stay if you do not login with twitter. Regardless, I am grateful I got the emails!

Yocheved B · Answer

Great ideas listed. There’s also www.launchingnext.com

Dakota L. · Answer

@angezanetti nice site. I'll definitely give it a flip through 👍

Dhruv Bhatia · Answer

What I've observed is that the various online communities have a certain niche of followers and so I would launch it on all (with a small gap between launches) - BetaList, HackerNews, producthunt, Twitter

Gerald Crescione · Answer

Did a lot of direct outreach approach on linked in with extremely precise profiles and started by proposing a 1o1 chat to get live feedback. It works and naturally converts the interviewees into qualified alpha users.

Jason Curry · Answer

@jasonacurry @tiistars cool, good luck!

Artem Romashihin · Answer

@jasonacurry Really? I saw in projects just a few likes. How is it possible?

Varun Nair · Answer

We are building a community platform exclusively for pre-early stage to growth stage startups, track progress and keep your users close to your products/projects with exclusive access or feature updates, communicate with users, Founders only!

Where do you go for alpha users?

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