6 ms·

How to get your first 100 users as a SaaS startup founder?

40 points by nathanganser 6y ago

nathanganser 6y ago
My first ever submission on HN :) I'm part of Pioneer.app, a startup accelerator, and many founders ask about this. They have their first MVP but literally 0 visitors to their website. Hope this can help! I'd really love it if other founders could suggest additional actions that early founders can take to get them over the 100 user mark! I'll add them to the article (with your permission).
ericb 6y ago
I'm working on a B2B SaaS solution that lets you reuse your Postman and Selenium tests for load testing. I get stuck on the first 5 or 10, more than 100. How do you convince an enterprise to trust you when you are tiny and new?
- josho 6y ago
  I don’t think you sell to the enterprise at this stage. You sell to a manager of a department, and keep the deal size small enough that approvals are contained at that level. Then expand the account later when you’ve gained traction and can go through an enterprise sales process.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Exactly. Unless you already have an established connection to a potential enterprise customer with the influence to get you in, you're probably not going to be playing at that level for at least several years. Fortunately, you also probably don't want to be, because it would mean investing many resources in a months-long sales process with no guarantee of getting anything out of it at the end. Unless you have huge amounts of funding to burn through, your money is probably better spent on activities that generate revenue more quickly and build up a sustainable cash flow in the early days.
- bberenberg 6y ago
  I tried to build something like this but targeted at specifically Jira. We already had contacts at huge enterprises that were on board with using it. What we found was that: 1. Very few companies have budget for load testing unless they're having load related problems in that very moment (pain driven purchasing) 2. Getting the UX good enough that users could deploy the solution without significant support overhead for us was very hard. Best of luck with your attempt!
- nathanganser 6y ago
  In the B2B world, 5 users is probably worth 500 B2C users :) Great job on getting those already! What was your approach?
Silhouette 6y ago
Some interesting links for new entrepreneurs who weren't already aware of them. Definitely not a fan of buying and spamming an email list.
- nathanganser 6y ago
  Agreed, buying a 100k email list and sending a generic email about a great new IOS application is silly. But that's not what I mean by buying and sending emails! The other way works like this: 1. Buy a super targeted email list (lets say early businesses that generate revenue through ads, if you're an ad network company) 2. Have a quick look at their website to double check they actually might be interested and gather some information to add to the email. 3. Use a tool like Gmass to send them a personal email like: "Hey {name}, {personal message} I'd love to show you a short demo.. book a slot here..we help ad-based business like yourself to... blabla" I'd personally be ok to get such an email - what do you think?
bobbyz 6y ago
The person who wrote this got my email from the pioneer virtual hackathon slack channel and sent me this unsolicited email: Heya! What a Hackathon :P I arrived on my own, found a team and went off hacking! Tbh, we were slightly too ambitious and 24h really isn't that much :) So, while we didn't make it to the finalists, it was tons of fun and I really enjoyed meeting new people! And that's why I'm reaching out, I guess you also met cool people with whom you'd like to stay in touch.. but you know the story: You've exchanged emails, added them on Twitter, but.. unless your a social monster, it will be difficult to stay in touch.. just because we're busy and forgetful I know about that because that's the problem my real startup (We're a Pioneer startup) is solving. We've built an algorithm that analyses your email interactions to figure out who you're losing touch with, that way you can always keep an eye on your gmail contacts and make sure to follow up with the people that matter. You can try it out now if you want, happy to chat if you've got questions!! Have a good one! (I'll get some rest now :P) Cheers, Not sure if they’re the person you want to go to for acquisition advice.
- nartam11 6y ago
  What type of person would you trust with acquisition advice? This is a topic I've struggled with how do you inform target users about your product without being dismisssed
  - bobbyz 6y ago
    Someone who has managed to acquire customers in a way that does not make me lose all respect for them.
    - bobbyz 6y ago
      His next blog post should be “how to ruin your reputation in less than 50 lines of python”
    - jlbnjmn 6y ago
      Do you have any examples of outreach methods that you appreciate? Obviously when something works it's not likely it will be noticed, but I'm curious if anything broke through without offending? Also, do you pay for SaaS or are you not at all that demographic? I personally detest every email marketing attempt that is not a curated newsletter I intentionally signed up for. I also don't browse ad funded social media, so that's not reaching me. And I use ad blockers. So I guess my question is, how can someone with something that you or I would want to pay for let us know that it's available? In a way that leaves us saying "thanks for telling me"?
ta17711771 6y ago
> You've got to start somewhere right. Am I starting somewhere wrong?
winrid 6y ago
Depending on your product, you can setup premade demos and try to get and opportunity to show it to the potential customer.
- nathanganser 6y ago
  Loom.io is great for this!
archibaldJ 6y ago
> Advertising > It will cost you too much. Just don't think about it. In the early days, ads are not the way to go. This is downright self-mutilating! If you are not considering things like targeted advertising as one of your GTM I doubt you are building a serious product here. It just makes no sense to me if you are willing to miss all the valuable insights you can gain from advertising your product to an actual audience in the real world (vs in a bubble/hype community, etc) just because you want to save some bucks. To find your PMF you need to try everything. Also, I won't call getting your first 100 users a "growth hack", esp when they are not even paying customers.
- nathanganser 6y ago
  Interesting! I'm really basing this upon my own experience with ads. Were you able to get ROI positive ads? Would love to hear your experience! The closest we got to it was while targeting super niche keywords on Google Ads. I found personalized cold emailing to be much more effective :)

40 points by nathanganser 6y ago

My first ever submission on HN :) I'm part of Pioneer.app, a startup accelerator, and many founders ask about this. They have their first MVP but literally 0 visitors to their website. Hope this can help! I'd really love it if other founders could suggest additional actions that early founders can take to get them over the 100 user mark! I'll add them to the article (with your permission).

ericb 6y ago

I'm working on a B2B SaaS solution that lets you reuse your Postman and Selenium tests for load testing. I get stuck on the first 5 or 10, more than 100. How do you convince an enterprise to trust you when you are tiny and new?

josho 6y ago
I don’t think you sell to the enterprise at this stage. You sell to a manager of a department, and keep the deal size small enough that approvals are contained at that level. Then expand the account later when you’ve gained traction and can go through an enterprise sales process.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Exactly. Unless you already have an established connection to a potential enterprise customer with the influence to get you in, you're probably not going to be playing at that level for at least several years. Fortunately, you also probably don't want to be, because it would mean investing many resources in a months-long sales process with no guarantee of getting anything out of it at the end. Unless you have huge amounts of funding to burn through, your money is probably better spent on activities that generate revenue more quickly and build up a sustainable cash flow in the early days.
bberenberg 6y ago
I tried to build something like this but targeted at specifically Jira. We already had contacts at huge enterprises that were on board with using it. What we found was that: 1. Very few companies have budget for load testing unless they're having load related problems in that very moment (pain driven purchasing) 2. Getting the UX good enough that users could deploy the solution without significant support overhead for us was very hard. Best of luck with your attempt!
nathanganser 6y ago
In the B2B world, 5 users is probably worth 500 B2C users :) Great job on getting those already! What was your approach?

Silhouette 6y ago

Some interesting links for new entrepreneurs who weren't already aware of them. Definitely not a fan of buying and spamming an email list.

nathanganser 6y ago
Agreed, buying a 100k email list and sending a generic email about a great new IOS application is silly. But that's not what I mean by buying and sending emails! The other way works like this: 1. Buy a super targeted email list (lets say early businesses that generate revenue through ads, if you're an ad network company) 2. Have a quick look at their website to double check they actually might be interested and gather some information to add to the email. 3. Use a tool like Gmass to send them a personal email like: "Hey {name}, {personal message} I'd love to show you a short demo.. book a slot here..we help ad-based business like yourself to... blabla" I'd personally be ok to get such an email - what do you think?

bobbyz 6y ago

The person who wrote this got my email from the pioneer virtual hackathon slack channel and sent me this unsolicited email: Heya! What a Hackathon :P I arrived on my own, found a team and went off hacking! Tbh, we were slightly too ambitious and 24h really isn't that much :) So, while we didn't make it to the finalists, it was tons of fun and I really enjoyed meeting new people! And that's why I'm reaching out, I guess you also met cool people with whom you'd like to stay in touch.. but you know the story: You've exchanged emails, added them on Twitter, but.. unless your a social monster, it will be difficult to stay in touch.. just because we're busy and forgetful I know about that because that's the problem my real startup (We're a Pioneer startup) is solving. We've built an algorithm that analyses your email interactions to figure out who you're losing touch with, that way you can always keep an eye on your gmail contacts and make sure to follow up with the people that matter. You can try it out now if you want, happy to chat if you've got questions!! Have a good one! (I'll get some rest now :P) Cheers, Not sure if they’re the person you want to go to for acquisition advice.

nartam11 6y ago
What type of person would you trust with acquisition advice? This is a topic I've struggled with how do you inform target users about your product without being dismisssed
- bobbyz 6y ago
  Someone who has managed to acquire customers in a way that does not make me lose all respect for them.
  - bobbyz 6y ago
    His next blog post should be “how to ruin your reputation in less than 50 lines of python”
  - jlbnjmn 6y ago
    Do you have any examples of outreach methods that you appreciate? Obviously when something works it's not likely it will be noticed, but I'm curious if anything broke through without offending? Also, do you pay for SaaS or are you not at all that demographic? I personally detest every email marketing attempt that is not a curated newsletter I intentionally signed up for. I also don't browse ad funded social media, so that's not reaching me. And I use ad blockers. So I guess my question is, how can someone with something that you or I would want to pay for let us know that it's available? In a way that leaves us saying "thanks for telling me"?

ta17711771 6y ago

> You've got to start somewhere right. Am I starting somewhere wrong?

winrid 6y ago

Depending on your product, you can setup premade demos and try to get and opportunity to show it to the potential customer.

nathanganser 6y ago
Loom.io is great for this!

archibaldJ 6y ago

> Advertising > It will cost you too much. Just don't think about it. In the early days, ads are not the way to go. This is downright self-mutilating! If you are not considering things like targeted advertising as one of your GTM I doubt you are building a serious product here. It just makes no sense to me if you are willing to miss all the valuable insights you can gain from advertising your product to an actual audience in the real world (vs in a bubble/hype community, etc) just because you want to save some bucks. To find your PMF you need to try everything. Also, I won't call getting your first 100 users a "growth hack", esp when they are not even paying customers.

nathanganser 6y ago
Interesting! I'm really basing this upon my own experience with ads. Were you able to get ROI positive ads? Would love to hear your experience! The closest we got to it was while targeting super niche keywords on Google Ads. I found personalized cold emailing to be much more effective :)