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

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall range of experiences

  • Founders report everything from “dumb luck and a good product” to years of grind to get first 100 users.
  • Some hit 100+ off a single HN/Reddit/App Store launch; others struggle to reach a few dozen despite lots of content and outreach.
  • Several say there is no formula—only experimentation and channel–product fit.

Finding and reaching early users

  • Repeated advice: identify a very specific ideal customer profile and go where they already congregate (subreddits, forums, LinkedIn groups, niche communities, Slack/Discord, professional associations).
  • Heavy emphasis on 1:1 outreach: cold email, cold calling, DMs, walking into offices, using existing professional networks and friends, and hand-holding early onboarding.
  • Some advocate interviewing 10–30 potential customers first (Mom Test style) and building from their real pains.

Free tiers, pricing, and conversion

  • Strong debate on free/freemium:
    • Pro: free lowers friction, especially for developers; success stories from DB/infra tools and freemium dev SaaS.
    • Con: fears it trains users not to pay; risk of competing on price and never converting.
  • Several use “free but limited” (time, data retention, branding) or generous trials; others lead with premium pricing but offer steep discounts/early adopter deals.

Channels that worked (or failed)

  • Worked for some:
    • HN Show/Ask posts, Reddit niche subs, app store listings, SEO (especially long-tail/programmatic pages), content marketing, YouTube, LinkedIn posts, TikTok demos, newsletters/Substack, marketplaces (e.g., Xero, Slack, integration directories), open source funnels, partner distributions, “engineering-as-marketing” tools.
  • Mixed/weak results: Product Hunt, generic Reddit subs (mods and hostility), broad paid ads early on, postcard campaigns, AI tool directories.
  • Many stress measuring each channel (unique links, discounts, QR codes).

Product, brand, and trust

  • Common pattern: build for yourself → test with small network (5–20 people) → expand via communities and referrals.
  • Word-of-mouth and virality (referrals, built-in sharing, embedded branding) seen as powerful but hard to engineer.
  • Debate over visual polish (AI art vs bespoke vs simple screenshots); some think early users don’t care, others argue presentation matters a lot before reputation exists.

Meta and skepticism

  • Cynicism about fake growth (bot farms, “growth hacking” bordering on fraud).
  • Suspicion of self-promotional posts and AI-generated comments/blogs; concern that marketing discourse itself is becoming performative and automated.
  • Several insist that a “great product” without a repeatable acquisition channel is a hobby, not a business.