How did you grow/find your first group of users to a MVP product you just launched?

Question

I'm a junior product marketer looking for advice. My team and I just launched a service called RoundUp, which is a free Chrome extension made for HR professionals. It's like a memopad that pops open inside Google Meet, where they can fill out candidate reviews once the interview is over - and it automatically links to a Dashboard, where HR folks can see everything in one place. 

It's got very basic features (so a MVP) and of course there are many things we need to get to. 

I'm new to doing product marketing and would love some advice from those who's gone through this phase of trying to grow the userbase from a grassroots perspective. 

What was the best way to get users on your site/product/service at the beginning? Were people willing to give you feedback and advice? (How did you find them?)

Would love to hear your stories/kind advice!

Muntasir Rashid · Accepted Answer

We launched our MVP 6 month ago and here is what we have done so far:

- Community launch on PH, BetaList, Reddit and 20+ sites. One launch every other weekdays.
- Lifetime deal launch with an affiliate partner.
- Content marketing on Linkedin, Twitter, Indiehackers and Facebook groups.

These costs us $0 in marketing cost but have generated 45k unique visitors, 4k signups, 1333 customers, $146k revenue and few media mentions.

The trick is launching over and over every day and build a good web presence.

Paul Boudet · Answer

I wrote this last year - this could be helpful: https://medium.com/antlerglobal/how-we-got-our-first-1-000-beta-signups-deed9e36ffb7

Siddhesh Lokare · Answer

2 very very simple hacks I used to make this happen :

1. I created a webpage where I jotted down the entire journey of how we found our idea and created a product. I circulated that page in 3 languages ( English and 2 native so that everyone can read it) within my best buds, family and IG followers. Network effect happened and everyone started congratulated me and I uploaded stories of the same. This helped us generate initial users.

2. I visited groups/communities of developers and designers on Wylo, Discord, Telegram for getting their reviews without being too spammy about it. They not only gave me constructive feedbacks but also helped me reach out to more of such similar groups. Yes, by doing that I ended up getting useful suggestions and free visits.

Let me know if this helps in any way! Cheers mate!

Alexey Shashkov · Answer

This is a good question, Jenny. 👍🙂

We're making a SaaS that allows building websites on Notion. And we've found our first group of users to an MVP on Twitter, Facebook, and Product Hunt.

Jenny Kim · Answer

@raymond_sam Amazing, thanks for this Raymond!

Kelvin T. · Answer

@muntasir_rashid I love what you guys have done at PostPace and congrats on your growth trajectory.

Devanand Premkumar · Answer

@muntasir_rashid Persistence pays off. Super excited to hear about this useful and yet practical way to reach your initial customers.

Raymond Sam · Answer

Hey Jenny!

I'm maybe two months ahead of you, launched my MVP late Feb and got a good first batch of users.

We're actually looking at similar target users, I'm going after People and Culture folks, so kind of HR.

I got my first users off of an organic Linkedin post announcing what I was building. I think reaching out to your target profile manually and asking for feedback (read the mom test). Now they're requesting features and giving feedback unprompted!

Linkedin is likely where HR pros are going to hang out, I haven't found a better large channel yet.  But reaching out manually and leveraging your network I think is the best way to do this in a unscaled/cheap way.

Vivienne George · Answer

@muntasir_rashid This! really helpful.

Jenny Kim · Answer

@shashcoffe Nice, thanks for sharing Alexey

Muntasir Rashid · Answer

@ketaku Thank you 🙏

karanveer · Answer

@paul_henri_boudet hey paul, this was a nice read. Thank you :)

Fabian Maume · Answer

For HR those communities could be nice to leverage:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GrowthHackingRecruiters/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BadAss.Recruiters.Sourcers

Otherwise I would strongly advise to run some outreach on linkedin. Phantombuster can help you do the outreach at scale: https://fabian-maume.medium.com/how-to-followup-with-linkedin-automated-outreach-d80c251f0a5e

John Mirochnik · Answer

In my case most of the traffic came from specific (my app, Company 360 is for investment research) groups on Facebook and direct searches on AppStore. My conclusion is that most people already know what they are looking for (product) and making your product easily searchable is key. Direct AppStore searches are responsible for 70% of my customers.

Alexey Shashkov · Answer

@jenny_at_wanted My pleasure. Thx for you good question, Jenny (=

How did you grow/find your first group of users to a MVP product you just launched?

Replies