How to get your first 100 users?
Sahil Patel
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Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) recommends these 4 strategies to get your first 100 users
1. Use your network. Email people you already and ask them to be your customers. You can call in all the favours with anyone you can think of, someone you took a random class with, someone you were friends with in high school. You should, if it's a paid product, you should charge. This is important. Remember, people are going to be inclined to do you favours. They're going to be too nice in what they tell you.
2. Research people who might use your product and email them asking them to try it. “Conversion rates are low—maybe 2-3%—so you’ll have to reach out to more people. But you can send targeted emails saying ‘Hey, I just made this new product. I’d really appreciate if you would try it out.’ Most people want to be helpful.”
3. You can post on social media outreach, posting to HN, forums, PR, etc. The important thing to look for here is a traffic source that is sustainable rather than one big pop that then promptly goes away.” Airbnb is an example of a company that made PR work as an ongoing process—They would like mail journalists giant like boxes of cereal so they got on their desk, and they were able to get it to keep going, but that's hard.
4. Buy ads and point them to your website. “This is the ‘laziest’ and least impressive thing you can do… This is not what I’d recommend. I don't know of any startup that's gotten big starting this way. I include it because it's the idea that most people try.
We've tried these strategies (except paid ads) and they're working well.
Have you tried any of these?
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Raju Sivaram@raju_sivarama_gadiraju
aasaan
Great strategies!
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