How did you acquire your early beta users before launching?
Iskandar Chacra
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Replies
Chris Rickard@chrisrickard
I ran a software development agency for 10 years (acquired in 202) and before that was a developer for 10 years.
My product using AI to help create and improve software requirements, and I was my initial customer as I would have loved this in my agency :)
My early users were my old clients and developer friends - and I think it helps to build in the field you're already in, as your professional and possibly personal network can be a great source of feedback and testing.
Having said that, I do agree with "The Mom Test" - that friends aren't always the best representative of actual users - but still it helps.
I then reached out to maybe 80 or 100 software agencies and consultancies in my city, and booked in time to give them a demo - and a free account to try it out.
This worked well, and I learnt a lot.
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@chrisrickard Awesome Chris, thanks for sharing your experience and what you're working on! If you don't mind me asking, did you give the 80 - 100 agencies a free forever account? I'd love to learn more about the terms of the deals you made with them.
Thanks again this is really helpful!
@iskandarchacra The agencies I reached out to was a demo, and a free account for a few months, not free forever.
I got good feedback, but most of them didn't stick around - and I learnt from this, and discovered that my product Userdoc is more beneficial fro larger agencies/consultancies, and also product companies. So we changed out marketing a little, and have more success with that.
@chrisrickard Thanks for taking the time to reply with your experience. This is really helpful. I'll be watching out for Userdoc's launch, good luck!
Just launched on TestFlight . And then people that check our website like our value prop and start trying it. Engage on linkedin, twitter and PH
@sentry_co Hi André thanks for sharing! That's really interesting! Did you launch before building an audience? How did you raise awareness on your app and bring traffic to your website when you first launched?
@iskandarchacra If you have a strong differentiator, and there is demand for what you make. Then awareness is not your problem. Plugging holes fast enough in your leaky bucket is. https://davidcummings.org/2016/1...
@sentry_co Thanks for sharing this perspective. It was a very insightful read and eye opening to the many challenges we need to overcome as founders.
Skylead
We found communties that talk about what we do or very close to it. Then we found the people on Linkedin and stared outreaching there.
We offered a beta price that they will have for life, and we got around 50 beta users like that.
@relja_denic Awesome Relja, thanks for sharing! If you don't mind me asking, how many people did you reach out to to get 50 beta users?
Launching soon!
We've got a mailing list and a previous SaaS product so we are hoping that there is some traction. But its finding out where those prospective users are - really honing in on what the value add / solution your product solves and reaching out to them individually at scale.
Launching soon!
@iskandarchacra It would depend on your target market. Do they live on Discord - are they primarily on reddit or devs on Github, Twitter, They could be within little Slack / Whatapp communities or even on Facebook primarily. It will take some digging but I would start with looking at where your competitors operate their communities / where their users are online.
Swappit
@iskandarchacra @dzaitzow Excellent advice and the same as what we've done.
Launching soon!
@iskandarchacra @silisolutionist where did you end up finding the community? Ie: what platform primarily?
Stockle
For Stockle its been a combination of Reddit and X. Mostly because that is where the potential users are. For someone else it might be for example instagram, but for us we noticed quickly that it was much harder to find audience there for our product
Stockle
@iskandarchacra Just using posts, though I can see why someone would use DMs also. Thank you! Appreciate it a lot, we've been putting huge amount of effort to UX/UI, so glad that you picked that!
@joonatanvanhala Thanks for sharing Joonatan. Did you reach out to them individually or through posts?
Btw, I'm a huge fan of Stockle's design and I wish you the best on the launch of your new update!