Founders/makers, how did you discover your first 100 early believers?
Sharath Kuruganty
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zkpeep.eth@christiandeciga
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Startup-Investor Fit
Thinking back to my first real successful app (the worlds first dating CRM) - we ran Facebook ads. It was easy to target people who were; single, in certain cities, with specific interests. I know not everyone has marketing budgets but when you do, it can work, as opposed to posting organically on social and in communities hoping someone fits your target persona.
I am going to kick off my product reach via cold calling & reaching out to potential customers, wish me luck! #Hustle
By reaching out to people who upvoted similar products on Product Hunt
Bakup.io
@marie_martens This is a good one :D
For me, it was a single Quora answer.
Between
@lastyprsfe Haha wow, that sounds interesting. Are you able to elaborate?
Neuton AutoML
@lastyprsfe I'm curious what was the question?
@lastyprsfe interested, can you provide more information?
So, basically. Our product was an on-site gadget repair service and the market we operate in is a shady service. People don't trust anyone when it comes to gadget repair.
There's issue of counterfeit part, removing parts and all other ill practices.
One day while casually browsing Quora, I came across this question which has a ton of followers and asked the question on 'where to get the laptop repaired without getting duped'?
I answered it in detail letting users know how they can check it out for themselves. We got first 10 customers, I asked them to review on Google.
A mix of Quora answer and Google review and some referrals got us first 100 customers in 28 days.
@lastyprsfe This is amazing man see the right community and audience you got and you got your customers...
LLC Toolkit
I agree with @surender_singh, offering freemium product helps to break the ice.
also reddit/twitter helps to build early relationships and address the need of your audience.
Also recent trend is community > audience
Littledata
@surender_singh @eugenehp would love to know more as I just launched a product. How would you get started on Twitter.
LLC Toolkit
@surender_singh @blakewisz From what I glimpsed in your QR product, it looks like an alternative solution to LinkTree just with QR codes.
So I'd go to Twitter and start asking people that use your closest competitor for what they like/don't like and what kind of things are they missing from the product.
Also from the product's prospective, if you're building Twitter presence, I'd definitely add Twitter signup on your website and created Twitter account for your business too.
There's obviously more, but this should give you an idea.
Littledata
@surender_singh @eugenehp wow, these are really good places to start though. Mega thanks for feedback and taking the time to review. Definitely an alternative I hope to continue to build out based on user feedback and needs.
Sai Kambampati
Been tweeting for a long time sharing my work and progress from a beginner developer to starting a new product. By learning and building in public, people were able to build confidence in me and my work.
Product Hunt Launch Checklist
1. Do a powerful pre-launch by social media, #buildinginpublic and DM potential users.
2. Do cold emails by scrapping lists.
3. Get active in niche communities.
4. Reach out to your network.
5. Engage and collect feedback from early users.
6. Ship user-requested features to get them involved in it.
7. Offer freemium product so maximum people can sign up.
8. Launch on Product Hunt etc. I have collected 200+ tips and categorized them into this huge Product Hunt Launch Checklist. 📚
9. Start blogging.
RealMail
Launching soon!
@falak_sher we have done all of that too, except step 8 yet. ..plus use Ship by Product Hunt to appear before launch in Upcoming section of PH to get subscribers. In fact, we are right now there.
Product Hunt Launch Checklist
RealMail
Launching soon!
@adam_maceachern1 We have test and changed constantly to find the best: Copies of slogan in upcoming page, messages, image, etc And right now.. I think we didn't find yet the best option.. but we are open to feedback too 😉
About your upcoming page, I can't find it in Upcoming page. I don't know why and if it's an error can reduce your success.
And.. perhaps request for credit card data only to start.. generate a lot of friction.. if you aren't a well-recognized entity yet. But it's only an idea. 🙂
Spade Chrome Extension
@falak_sher We didn't do any of this, we thought that getting our product out as early as possible would be the best way. Maybe that was a mistake.
RealMail
Launching soon!
@falak_sher yes!
Mockey AI
For Letterflix.com, we (me and @ansarimofid) found the early 100 believer over a period of one year through organic traffic (by optimising the SEO). Out of our first 100 users, the very first 10 were from friends and friends of friends.
Now, recreating the organic traffic lead growth for Blinkstore.in.
Connector Catalog by Whaly
By taking an active part in several communities (like slack groups, indie forums, etc.) and helping people on topics we (with my 2 co-founders) had expertise. In our case, it was data. So anything related to data stack questions, integrations, bi tools choice, etc. we tried helping people.
Started with cold calling potential customers. Gradually refined that pitch. Made the product Freemium and let people play with it. Started building an audience on social media. Lots of hustle and grind.
Bakup.io
@surender_singh How did you grow your social media audience, a blog?
@luke_embrey Still working on social media audience building. I have started sharing my experiences as a founder. I don't plug in our product everyewhere. Now starting a blog. You can follow me on Twitter @SurenderBp ;)
Spade Chrome Extension
@surender_singh Wow! Thanks for the tips.
Bakup.io
@surender_singh Followed ;)
Through #buildinginpublic via Twitter, word of mouth.
We personally onboarded our early users one by one so we understand them more and are able to find other people with similar interests/profile
@michelle_marcelline interesting! checking #buildinginpublic out!
Neuton AutoML
We used a direct marketing approach - made new connections in LinkedIn, invited them to a webinar, offered to start with a free plan, and followed up with emails/calls afterwards to gather feedback.
Sleek Pay
@daniel_baum I struggled for sometime with these too. Reddit, its tough to be regular contributor, and it is important to identify the right community, for there are many dead communities. I have found the Indie Worldwide community run by @anthonycastrio as among those more vibrant ones, along with PH one. I am still looking for potential offline/online retail related communities. Not many that I can identify
Sleek Pay
@anthonycastrio @srama79 Thanks for sharing! What's the actual Reddit community called - /indieworldwide didn't seem to work. /Churning is for credit cards but by far the most active community i'm involved in
Tara.AI
Friends, family, personal networks. Word of mouth from them. Finding a particular community that resonates with what you're building - they'll become your advocates :)
Marble: Insurance Savings & Automations
It's tricky because you have to define (for yourself or for your team) what a "believer" is. It can be easy to fool yourself into believing a "believer" is the same thing as a customer just window shopping or an investor with a passing interest. A "believer" to my mind, is a bit deeper. We've solved this by building deeper channels that some of users can pursue with us (e.g. volunteering to be an ambassador) and then seeing what the conversion and pull through is there.
Bucket
Finding our first 100 believers came easily through friends & network, but they were believers of us more than our product. To find what we called our "stranger market", we focused on using TikTok. This drove a little over 1,000 new users and after we had them as users, we focused on engaging them on Instagram, in a Discord, and on phone calls. This turned our first 100+ believers into community that has been made a part of our team.
By using the product a lot with friends, who told their friends, and these friends ended up becoming the first believers.
Rather than building in public, we built with our believers solely, and we used Discord as a platform for that.
I'm trying to do so right now by spreading fun stuff on social media:
https://twitter.com/type_j_gener...
Easypop
Still working on it...