10 ms·

Getting Users Is Hard

80 points by ryansam 6y ago

I'm building a mobile app to create and share social events with your friends. A social event would be going to the bar, house party, or meeting up for coffee. You can fill out a simple form (event name, description, date, time) and post to a feed for your friends to see. Your friends can notify you they're going by pressing the "attend" button. Right now I'm trying to solve the communication problem. Everyday you might meet up with your friends at the bar after work, invite them to lunch, coffee in the morning, or dinner in the afternoon. But you have to do the dance. You text everyone who you want to come, wait for them to reply and they may not even want to go. And for each person you invite you have to do the dance longer. This has many times wasted over an hour for me. So I propose a faster solution. If you want your friends to meet you at the bar, create an "Event". The event has a title of what the event is (e.g. "Going to the bar"). It has a description to get your friends excited (e.g. "$2 margaritas"). It has the address (e.g. "123 SomeBar St."). Lastly it has the time (e.g. "Tonight at 8pm"). As soon as you post it to the feed all of your friends get a notification that you just created a new event. They can then all tell you if they are going by hitting the "attend" button. Now I'm trying to get my first users. Yesterday was my first day. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I can message that live in my target area. My list is 82 people. Yesterday I contacted 24 people and got one person to sign up, I was hoping to get five. But most of the people I messaged didn't even respond. It's definitely a grind. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how they got some of their first users. What was it like? Or any stories of how they got their first signs of growth. Also if you have this problem I could really use some feedback on my app. You can check it out by searching "bbook.io" in the Apple App Store. Thank you guys for reading! Ryan Sam

itcrowd 6y ago
Cool initiative. Is it maybe that given the pandemic, many people are more wary of meeting in the first place? Your struggle might partially be explained by that?
- perrohunter 6y ago
  Exactly my thought
- avree 6y ago
  Or maybe the other 30 commenters in this thread who've made similar apps have something to do with the fact that most users are not interested in this type of product.
amerine 6y ago
Probably not super easy getting folks in your niche in a global pandemic, yeah?
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Depends where you live. A challenge where i am is yes you can meet up but you may need to arrange it 1 week out and book a table rather than just turn up.
- ryansam 6y ago
  The restrictions are very loose where I live, Houston, TX. I don't encourage using the app unless you are already going out regularly with your friends.
  - RL_Quine 6y ago
    You’re being super unpleasant by even suggesting that the lack of legal restriction makes it a good idea. That means you have no other reason to suggest that it’s a reasonable thing to do, just that it isn’t literally breaking the law.
quickthrower2 6y ago
It’s tricky I imagine as you have to sell people on the idea then they have to sell their friends on using it. WhatsApp is “good enough” for this task and there are simple workarounds such as say “we meet at 7 at xyz” and whoever can’t make it just doesn’t they come next time or join later. I suggest finding the type of people or situation where this sort of thing is a real headache for people by asking. The cool thing is you can just ask random people at bars, coffee houses and parties and get some feedback. Read “the mom test” to get an idea of how to approach this. Or in a nutshell don’t tell them about your app at all, find out about their habits and issues around arranging social events. There is a good chance that this might lead to a pivot or just work on something entirely different. So be prepared to jettison a sunk cost even though it feels painful!
crobertsbmw 6y ago
You are right, getting users is hard. With a product like this, I think the best way is to just ask people face to face if they would use it. And if they say “no”, find out why not. You may not have the right product. Also, Can you use it yourself, and invite friends to stuff using your app? If they get a few invites from you and all the events are successful, then maybe your friends will want to initiate their own events. Even if you had money, this “hit the pavement” approach is pretty crucial to making sure you are selling the right product.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Also if they say yes get them to commit: install it and follow up a week later how it went. Then if they then say no - ask those no questions. People can lie to get someone off their back but are too afraid to be direct.
shthrow 6y ago
Everyone has some kind of social event app as one of their first ideas. It never works.
- Johnny87 6y ago
  Yeah man my friend built one and it was a dud
- summitsummit 6y ago
  yeah i built one over a month and it was a dud
- nullsense 6y ago
  Built one in uni. Can confirm.
- brogrammer2019 6y ago
  Same here, I built one called "2 Events 1 Time" failed
the-dude 6y ago
Who are your competitors?
- xiaoxing 6y ago
  Sounds like Facebook to me... not a good sign.
- tpmx 6y ago
  Facebook
adventured 6y ago
Does everyone that is going to benefit from the system (receive notices, click attend, etc) have to download an app? That will be an powerful hindrance. People inherently don't want to download more apps, there is a lot of friction in that process. Remove as much friction as you can there. Narrow your action / marketing focus to get started. Perhaps see if you can promote your app at destinations (to the co-benefit of the destination / place if at all possible; tell the owner you'll market their business on your app in exchange), rather than focusing on trying to get users outside of active context. Go to where the activity is occurring, where people are doing the thing you want them to use your app for (eg at a bar). If you're willing to grind, that approach is probably your best bet (short of a huge, expensive ad blitz). Where people are doing the thing in question, they will be most receptive; outside of that, their receptivity plunges toward zero (unless referred by a friend in the moment of / before / during an activity). You better be a very social type, because you need to be out in the thick of it. You need to be of the people, in it, pushing this thing to every human that will listen at every location that will tolerate you. You need to be the social manifestation of the result you want out of the app (since it's a very social app by its nature), network user after user after user. This is an example of doing something that doesn't scale, you're going to go out and sell every initial new user on the app, where the app is going to live most of its life (at destinations, events). After a while, the snowball momentum will take over, if you're lucky, and you won't have to grind for every new user. Messaging people is a dead-end in most cases. It's like a spam email or cold call in how it lands in the brains of the people receiving it. Go to where the action is, sell (promote) your thing in its proper environment.
- ryansam 6y ago
  This seems like the best idea. I am friends with the owner of a high end bar and I am hosting my own events giving free chili to anyone willing to talk to about my app. I know many people there too. My other idea is asking my friends I know to go to the bar and form different groups of people each time. I would create the events ahead of time then show it to them when they all get there.
Lionga 6y ago
If you solve (most apps don't do a good enough job) a real (most problems are imaginery or tiny) problem, getting users is not hard.
- fiftyacorn 6y ago
  Finding a real problem is hard
  - jachee 6y ago
    If we solve that problem, we'd be halfway to solving them all.
  - Lionga 6y ago
    I can tell you hundreds of real problems in a minute. It is just that millions of people tried to find solutions and have failed. Thus they are extremly hard problems. The things is finding a real problem that you can actually solve.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      This has been my experience. My list of real problems shortens with every filter I apply to it so that I can solve it. Turns out if I can see the solution upfront and be able to solve it in a relatively short time period, so can someone else.
      - rdtwo 6y ago
        You have to find some other competitive advantage why you can solve it better. As a one man operation those advantages are very limited
    - varbhat 6y ago
      Can you please list and tell? Thanks in advance.
atum47 6y ago
my friend got into biking recently (bicycle) and wanted me to create an app so they can organize bike rides (cause they go in groups), extra functionalities would be share gps routes and status (heartbeat, speed...). I answered him to take a look at the app store, and if there's less then thousand apps just like that, I worked create one for him. not to be a dick or anything, but these kind of things I don't believe would fly. you have your WhatsApp groups, your Facebook groups, your telegram groups... how the hell am I supposed to compete with that? why people would left a app they already use to for a while to use mine? I think the same questions apply to your project. Again, not to be a dick, just my opinion
- karamanolev 6y ago
  To echo that, just for cycling, there's Strava events, which have decent functionality. I've seen a lot of events organized through that. So this is a solved problem, like I believe, OP's is.
- paul_f 6y ago
  You are correct. There is a reason these apps aren't popular, and it isn't because nobody thought of the idea or tried to build one before.
wyum 6y ago
I built a similar app for a client. It's called "Festi." It's on IOS and Android with web app as well... Getting traction has definitely been difficult, but is slowly growing.
tobyjsullivan 6y ago
I've thought and read a bit about getting initial users but never done it successfully so I can't offer much from experience. That said, reading your experience with your list of 82 prospects, I don't see where you demonstrated value to them. Demoing value is different from merely "explaining" value. One of the classic missteps is expecting people to inherently "see the value" of what you're building. Nobody just sees the value like you do. You have to demonstrate it. Show them how their life will be meaningfully improved with your app. Couple that with event organization being a two-sided problem. Any successful product needs to offer value for both organizers and attendees. You've mentioned time-saving for the organizer - great - but what does an attendee get out of it? For both parties, how are they coordinating currently? Is your app clearly 10x better for both sides? Assuming you've got all the above checked off, then I would start with a simple strategy: Organize some events with your app. Be your first user, and make the friends you invite your second, third, and fourth users. Did your app make organizing easier? Or did nobody actually RSVP when you know they would face-to-face? Remember, introducing an app into any experience inherently adds friction. So your default starting point is that you're actually making it harder for organizers to get RSVPs on the books. Your app needs to offer enough value to make up for that friction. I would expect there'll be a grind until you hit a point where people are more likely to attend events you organize through the app, and those attendees decide to use your app for their next event. At that point you're viral. But until that point, you've got an app that makes things worse for the user compared to their current alternative.
Tade0 6y ago
My friend is currently developing a todo app and interestingly enough is getting some users even though things like Trello exist and it boils down to two things: -Dogfooding. He even organised his wedding using the damn thing. -Talking face to face with people who are as dissatisfied with incumbent products as he was. You've got to have a problem that really bothers someone in order to get them to use your solution.
root_axis 6y ago
You're targeting an extremely saturated market. Unfortunately the need for your app is already solved by something like Facebook or even just a group text e.g. "2 dollar margaritas at 123bar, meeting there at 8, come on out". Ultimately the level of coordination and opt-in required by the friend group isn't really worthwhile for the mass market, you'll need to be a little more innovative to find some success, but the fact that you're disciplined enough to actually bring your ideas to fruition means its just a matter of iterating on your ideas till you build something more compelling.
pryelluw 6y ago
How is this better than any social network/messaging app? Why shouls I install it? Also, the timing for social apps isnt great given the ongoing pandemic. You might simply be suffering from bad timing
- ryansam 6y ago
  I live in Houston, TX. And the area I'm targeting does not have many restrictions on what you can do during the pandemic, it's almost the same as before the pandemic. But if I were to live somewhere else this would probably not be possible for me right now.
  - mattcaldwell 6y ago
    Yes, but people are still going to be reluctant to get out right now. At least that's the case where I'm at.
  - avree 6y ago
    You are actively putting people's lives at risk. Saying that users are naturally irresponsible doesn't absolve you of responsibility.
adamnemecek 6y ago
You are in a crowded space.
edoceo 6y ago
Check out this book called "Lean Customer Development" by Cindy Alveraz (so¿). Also, there's a talk called AARRR (metrics for pirates) that could be helpful. Customer development is WAY MORE important than product development (as you've just discovered)
positivejam 6y ago
I don't want to just spread negativity, but I see this so often on HN I feel like it's mean not to comment. I would strongly recommend anyone considering developing an app to have a list of potential customers before they write a single line of code. This is not a revolutionary idea, but I still see it regularly ignored. When you launch, you want to be able to send the announcement out to your 1,000/5,000/25,000 email subscribers/insta followers/podcast listeners. Simply writing an app and submitting it to the app store is going to be painful.
summitsummit 6y ago
> This page is blank lolz
- ryansam 6y ago
  That is supposed to be a loading screen but I opted to work on more important things haha.
dsshanley 6y ago
A friend build something that was pretty much this in 2016/7 (https://appadvice.com/app/down-for-whatever/1060924679 https://appadvice.com/app/down-for-whatever/1060924679) and failed harder and learned the lessons you are learning more slowly. There are excellent points in all of these responses, and customer development is critical before you dive into product. I would suggest you go through the process of: • truly identifying your goals (what do you want to get out of this? is this a 10 year business or just a side project) • target spaces where users already exist (FB groups, LinkedIn groups, Shopify marketplace, etc) where you can access them • Based on your goals, decide on whether you want a small % of a large user base or a larger % of a very niche user base. As you are discovering, only a small % of folks are going to be interested if there's not a massive frustration or fear you are tapping in to.
sroussey 6y ago
Invite friends to something using the app. If they don’t have the app, send an email with the event invite and saying how they can install. Ideally you would have web functionality as well, in case installing won’t happen.
azinman2 6y ago
As many people have said this is a very crowded space littered with dead apps. One of the biggest issues is that you ultimately will want some kind of “comments” section because communication is central to planning, which at that point you end up reinventing texting but as a worse interface as comments, and then people will just resort to texting. It’s not clear why this is so much better than a) texting, and b) posting this to a social network in the first place. Covid certainly makes the timing poor, and even if you don’t have restrictions now, that’s probably not a good thing and not something to encourage. Getting people to download a new app or a new anything at this point needs to be really a fundamentally new product experience that is 10-100x better than anything else you’re using. It’s easy to think about... if someone told you to download an app to notify when you’re going to the bar, and everyone has to download it, would you really change the social inertia from your existing communication solutions just to post a bar notification? That’s a pretty tough proposition.
- ryansam 6y ago
  I'm am not encouraging people should go out. Just the people that already are if they want they can use my app.
  - RL_Quine 6y ago
    That’s not a distinction.
    - ethanwillis 6y ago
      It's a distinction that Facebook seems to make since they still allow creating events on their platform.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
somishere 6y ago
As mentioned a group text goes a long way to resolving your problem. I'm going to a bbq this arvo organised on whatsapp. But also your solution sounds like it's trying to disrupt/recreate Apple/Google/MS calendar, not Facebook events. I'd probably be looking into CalDAV or similar to ensure interopability with whatever system your mates/users are already working with in their day-to-day .. And then sprinkling some sugar to kickstart a slow-shuffle to your side of the dance floor. Good luck!
arihant 6y ago
This micro version of clique-only Facebook events is not bad. If someone builds a usable version of this that will eat into a significant portion of WhatsApp groups. I believe if your app can just record my video, then transcribe my audio to figure out details of my plan (location, time, etc.) and then post an Instagram story with my video plus metadata in an elegant way with a poll widget, that is something I would use today. Maybe later in product lifecycle you can add more useful features within your app. But I'd definitely start out by latching on to an existing social network.
- ryansam 6y ago
  That would be a great growth hack. I wonder if instagram has any APIs for this. I don't know anything about processing speech but maybe if you posted on my app it would create a story on instagram or make a twitter post. Snapchat would be better for this because it's more private, not everybody wants everyone they know to come to an event they post.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tootie 6y ago
https://first1000.substack.com/ https://first1000.substack.com/
Jugurtha 6y ago
Some things to think about - not necessarily true, but just a brain dump: >I'm building a mobile app to create and share social events with your friends. A social event would be going to the bar, house party, or meeting up for coffee. You can fill out a simple form (event name, description, date, time) and post to a feed for your friends to see. Your friends can notify you they're going by pressing the "attend" button. Have you tried selecting people you want to hang out with at a bar and sending a text message to them that says "Hey, we're going to bar X at 5 if you want to tag along" to validate the concept. >Now I'm trying to get my first users. Yesterday was my first day. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I can message that live in my target area. My list is 82 people. Yesterday I contacted 24 people and got one person to sign up, I was hoping to get five. But most of the people I messaged didn't even respond. Instead of contacting the 24 people to ask them to sign up, tell them you're going to have coffee at place X. Basically, use the spreadsheet as your app and validate the concept. Generally speaking, if people are not coming for you, they're coming for someone else: the crazy guy, the wicked smart girl, the hot one, or the one who's always funnier when drunk. If you're none of those, your job is to set it up and do a "casting" of people who go well together, and do so in a certain context. Someone will invite you and you'll say "I don't know...". They'll say "X and Y will be there, too" and that may change your mind because X knows more than anyone on some esoteric subject you love, and Y is just so much fun to hang out with. Sooo... Maybe you want to focus on the Person/Venue/Clique fit and the application automatically invites the right people when you're going to the right venue. The right people for the right venue, but also the right people who gel together in that venue. I wouldn't invite Y to a bar because he doesn't hold his liquor and acts douchey, so the application embeds that in its graph. See Person/Venue/Clique fit below. - There maybe an asymmetry in that people are more interested to know what you're doing than to let you know what they're doing. Unless there is a vanity component in there. - Is it a broadcast or personal invites? If it is a broadcast, maybe I don't know how you feel about me and feel I'd bother if I came. Me: "Hey! I saw you beaconed earlier". You: "Uhmm.. Sure!". - Platform fragmentation: how is your beacon broadcasting? Do I have to have the app installed to know where you are, or does it broadcast to Instagram, add a WhatsApp status, post something on Facebook? or text message [supposing it's invite/private] and Twitter or similar if it's not. - Maybe there's "diffusion of resposibility" going on. If you invite me personally, I'll feel much more compelled than if I see it on a broadcast because I might think surely other people might join you and you'll be fine. If everyone has that thought, nobody will show up. - Person/Venue/Clique Fit: Person A is cool with Person B and Person C, however, Person A would hangout with Person B in venue Y, but not with Person C. Person A would also hangout with Person C in venue Z, but not necessarily with Person B. It can be for a variety of reasons: perception, image, precedents, etc. Regulars Person A meets in a venue might not appreciate Person B for example. Usually, when a person goes to a venue, there's a small set of people they want to be with at that venue. - People might have "spots" they don't want other people to joing them at.
ryansam 6y ago
I would like to comment a little bit on my competitors. Facebook and meetup.com are search based events. If you want to find something to do you have to search it. You could get invited as well but if you don't you will never know about an event unless you actively look for it. They are not the same culture ethier. I would not go on meetup.com to see if my friends are going to the bar. The same goes for Facebook. Also I'm 21 most of my friends don't use Facebook. I went on meetup.com to find coding events or networking events. A lot of my friends have never heard of meetup.com. My problem is I hate texting people every time I'm trying to go out for the night. If people don't already have plans that I can go to, I have to create the plans. Then I have get everyone on board with them. I have texted like over 20 people doing this sometimes, and we don't always have a group chat, or want one. People hate group chats sometimes because you get included in a conversation that you didn't even want to be included in the first place. Plus your phone dings too much with group chats. And some people can't make it due to timing, or simple they don't want to go. So I would love an app where I can just go on it, see what all my friends are doing that night, and go to their events.
- root_axis 6y ago
  You may be on to something with respect to culture, but that is where the hard work will be: user experience design and marketing that codifies the culture into a brand that can distinguish your product among the sea of commodity social networking software.
  - ryansam 6y ago
    Well my signup screen (first thing the user sees) has a background photo of a night life party to set the tone. Maybe I should make it darkmode themed to set the tone more but I don't want to discourage people using this to meet up for coffee. I strongly agree though, lots of hard work will be needed to be put in culture.
    - rdtwo 6y ago
      I don’t think there is currently any danger of anybody using it for anything.
muzani 6y ago
It sounds like you don't have a good enough solution. First app I did - 1,200 users in the first 24 hours, just with a brief Facebook post that everyone shared to their friends. If they're not sharing it, there's a problem there, especially if it's a social app. We paid a copywriter friend to post it a second time on Facebook, and it got 3,000 users within 24 hours. After that, further postings did little, but others sharing the app in their groups or things from the apps got lots of users in. Some interesting thing I spotted was someone posting the app, someone else complaining that the app sucked because X, then the poster telling them that the app was better now. Then we paid bloggers to review the app - the blogging ranked us well on Google, and we'd get 50% of our traffic through organic searches, thousands of visitors a month. It was easy enough that the app and the whole company around it got acquired as a marketing channel. I think being a marketing channel is ideal these days for apps that have lots of users but are free, so if you can't get a lot of users right off the bat, it's just not going to work as a free app. My cofounder did a sports based site. He got millions of pageviews less than a year in, although they spent a little on Facebook marketing. They're worth millions of dollars now. I'm doing another side project years later, something small I put half an hour into every day. It started off with about 100 visitors/week from posting on Reddit, HN, forums, etc. One person shared it on Twitter. I mentioned it a few months later on HN, after some heavy improvements, and it got a spike of about 300 users in one day. The spike was enough to rank the site on Bing, and it's at over 400 users/week today (10% returning). I'm not here to brag; but I'm no Zuckerberg, didn't even get into YC, so it's doable and repeatable with the right techniques. You shouldn't have to contact every person from a list, lol. First thing you should do is look at your competitor. Yours is probably Facebook Events. How is your app ten times better? Find a way to do things faster, cheaper, better. Or in this case, probably faster. You might have to remove the friction of downloading an app, maybe have invites in web, WhatsApp or SMS. You might want to try instant apps.
gkoberger 6y ago
Wait. You're in Texas and are trying to get people to use an app that encourages them to meet in person, often in groups? During a pandemic where people are dying? I always want to be supportive of anyone building anything, but seriously... stop. Put it on ice for 6-12 months. This app sucks. Technology should be used to help people. Spend your time doing something good during the pandemic, not getting them killed.
- RL_Quine 6y ago
  Their responses in this thread make them out to be pretty uncaring. It’s not illegal to go out, I’m not suggesting people do by giving them a means to facilitate it, I’m not responsible! At some point you just have to admit you don’t care about the well-being of anybody.
  - ryansam 6y ago
    I do care a lot actually as this pandemic's risk is personal to me. But because of where I live the people are not responding they way they are in different states. It's not like the pandemic happened and all the sudden I had this idea. I had this idea before the pandemic, started working on it before the pandemic. Then the pandemic happened. As I have mentioned I don't want people using this app unless they already are going out regularly with their friends.
    - gkoberger 6y ago
      Ryan, you've fallen into a trap a lot of younger engineers do... a complete lack of empathy. Code is rigid and logical, but the reasons we write code never are. Ignoring COVID, you don't seem to be able to see this from anyone's perceptive but your own. Your app offers nothing to the user they can't get in a thousand other places, better. The quality is very low compared to what people expect, the usecase is one nobody has ever asked for, yet you still have this vibe of believing people owe you an audience. Rather than making something good that people want, you're looking for growth hacks. People are telling you directly and indirectly that this was a swing and a miss. Add on COVID, and your responses just kinda make you seem like you don't care. Don't say "the risk is personal," as though that's a magic wand that exculpates you... it just makes it worse. Find something to work on that won't endanger people, and stop justifying building a meetup app during a pandemic. I get it, things changed since you started in November and that sucks... but they did change. Now you have to. Ryan, if you pivot into something that helps people rather than hurts, I'd be more than happy to help you get your first users. My email's in my profile.
nullsense 6y ago
You might have a chance if you can get your group of friends to use it regularly. If you can't even get your own group of friends to use it, you can't expect much right? Facebook events solves this basically perfectly for anyone who's network is on Facebook. The app functionality itself is just an event with location, time and comments. Nothing fancy or ground-breaking. It's the network effects that are what make it work. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. The struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. Even when it doesn't work, trying stuff still teaches you a lot. Keep it up.
an_opabinia 6y ago
An acquaintance of mine spent almost $250,000 paying a Bulgarian contractor shop to make this exact app a few years ago. Honestly just consider this a pretty inexpensive learning experience and just move on. You can try to tune this out as negativity but if you make yourself vulnerable to your closest love ones and friends they'd be honest with you and tell you it's a bad idea, and you would have stopped before you started. This is the real problem, it's why people will say nice things but not sign up, it's what you gotta really deal with.
switch11 6y ago
I'll share a few points here. We've sold over 1 million paid apps. We've gotten to 5 million+ app downloads in 4 additional markets. So the approach is based on what worked and what didn't. However, we don't know how to get to 100 million or even 10 million users as we haven't done it yet. So keep that in mind Our approach is VERY extreme. So it depends on whether you have the resources and persistence to do it A) The Market Always Wins/Product Market Fit Always Wins So every possible project you could do, its success will be determined PRIMARILY by whether the market wants your product or not Everything else doesn't matter B) So your approach should NOT be I have a problem. I solved it for myself by building this app. How do I get users for it It should be What is a LARGE market which has a strong need that is UNSERVED completely forget yourself and focus 100% on users who are dying for a product In your post and responses there is a massive amount of me-centrism i.e. I'm building, I'm trying, I propose, I'm trying, I made, I contacted. I was hoping. I was wondering. I messaged. I was wondering, I could really use Where is - Customer needs. Customer demands. Team aims. Do you have a team? or you did it all yourself? Where is your designer and tester? even if you did all the coding yourself? C) If you build the right product, then getting users is automatic List of 82 people is around 100 times smaller than it needs to be. Probably 1,000 times smaller. You can't derive any worthwhile data from this 1 out of 24. That's too small a sample size At best, it gives us no information At worst, it tells us that out of those 24 people only 1 cared about the product enough to sign up These are such small data points that you can't learn anything from them D) Yes, Getting Users is Hard However, you can make it easier by making something people want and which has little to no competition The old saying - Be First, Be Best, or Have the Most Money So, are you the first? No, not really The Best? depends on how good your app and overall service is Have the most money? Don't know but would be surprised if you were as your marketing plan seems to be 'tell my friends' * E) Another VERY BIG mistake that lots of creators like developers, artists, musicians, etc make is thinking their friends and family will boost them For every 1 musician whose friends and family are going to buy 100 albums and give them a tiny boost at the start, there are 999 musicians whose friends and family won't That is just not a viable business strategy, not even at the start F) You should be going where your customers are. some forum where people are looking for a way to do quick events such as knitting groups that are frustrated they can't meet up, or runner groups or bingo or book clubs Find where they are and ask them to test your product * G) I think there is superb value in the people who are telling you that you got some painful feedback right at the beginning, before you had invested half a million and 4 years of your life Take that feedback to heart Put this product on hold. You're launching it during a pandemic. It's LITERALLY the worst time to test out such a product Plus, keep in mind that - YES, you are inviting your users to get Coronoavirus and die or infect their loved ones and they die This is a SHOCKING amount of lack of consideration for your users Really, I wrote this for other people. Not for you. You can still benefit from it Market Always Wins Have Consideration for the well being of your users. A few companies that don't do that have become very big. However, those are exceptions. Most companies that are very successful provide lots of value to their users and care about their users' well being
Axsuul 6y ago
You are better off building an integration on top of a platform that your users are already on (e.g a Telegram bot). Also, I wouldn't call it a grind yet–you only just started contacting them yesterday :)
jlgaddis 6y ago
> If you want your friends to meet you at the bar, create an "Event". The event has a title of what the event is (e.g. "Going to the bar"). It has a description to get your friends excited (e.g. "$2 margaritas"). It has the address (e.g. "123 SomeBar St."). Lastly it has the time (e.g. "Tonight at 8pm"). As soon as you post it to the feed all of your friends get a notification that you just created a new event. They can then all tell you if they are going by hitting the "attend" button. So you're making an app whose entire functionality is just one of Facebook's many features? And with Facebook already having a billion or so users -- a large fraction of which likely already use Facebook's "Events" for exactly this purpose -- how do you plan to get everyone to use this completely separate app -- that no one else they know of uses -- over Facebook? I really do wish you the best of luck but it seems like you've got several things going against you before you've even really got started. Just the whole "network effects" thing is gonna kill it.
- ryansam 6y ago
  You mentioned one of the issues with Facebook. They built a product to connect everyone around the world with their friends online. Then added more features on to that (well I think the original facebook events has been there forever). But events was not their focus. I'm focusing only on events just for cliques of friends. I want to be the best at that and build a product that has the most value to those people.
  - armatav 6y ago
    This was exactly my excuse when I built the same app. Take a look at this; https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual
- withinboredom 6y ago
  "You mean you're making an app whose entire functionality is just one of Craigslist's many features" -- and many successful businesses came from that. I think this is OK, many people are trying to get off and leave Facebook.
justanothersys 6y ago
Get TikTok - it worked for me!
svatwork 6y ago
I don't see the value proposition of this idea, because like others have said, there are a lot of solutions to this problem like Facebook Events, WhatsApp groups, and what not. However, some acquaintances of mine have recently launched a (apparently successful) messaging app for new university students to the university they attended. Their users are in 80 countries and spend 30 minutes per day on the app messaging each other. So I guess there are still niche cases.
around_here 6y ago
Mate, you’ve invented the calendar. Like outlook, Gmail, etc. all have this functionality. It’s easy, has reminders, and doesn’t really need to to install something you’re not already using on your phone/a new website to go to
armatav 6y ago
This is like THE network effect app that just does not get traction in my book, I built one just like it a few years ago. Push a button, get people to hang out with you. Problem is that people meet up using chat, that’s the core thing you have to be better than. Better, faster, simpler or easier than WhatsApp/Messenger/iMessage/SMS/FB Events/Instagram/Snapchat. Those things have extreme network effects and you probably will not dislodge them, I would aim somewhere else. This exact app is detailed in one of NFX’s write ups as the “wrong” approach. If you still want to try getting users, throw it on Product Hunt and see if it takes. The only momentarily successful version of this was Down to Lunch - and only because they harvested your entire contacts list and then messaged every single person at once to get them using the app. They’re gone now. It was simply easier to group chat your friends “yo movies?”.
- ryansam 6y ago
  Simply I strongly believe I can do it. My friends and I have encountered this problem over 100 times in the past two years and I just think there has to be a better solution than texting or snapchat. This problem bugged my friends and I so much there has to be a market of people who want something better.
  - yoyonamite 6y ago
    I feel like many iterations of coordinating events has been tried as evidenced by different comments discussing previous solutions that have been built by someone else or by themselves. Why has this idea failed previously? How will your iteration be different? I'm not naturally a social person but I did go through a phase where I was more social and ended up organizing events. I never thought using texts, whatsapp, etc. to be much of a hassle. I'm also close to a couple of friends that are very social and I've seen them plan and coordinate events. It's never seemed like a hassle and they've never mentioned it as a problem. Solving your own problem is good advice, but the pitfall is that your own problem may not be one that is shared by many people. I've had to learn this lesson as well. I would run some of my early app ideas by my friends and their response would basically be, "why would I want to do that?" I'm not saying this idea will not work, but definitely talk to the people you're messaging and find out what they think. Best of luck.
ric2b 6y ago
The main time waster when trying to organize an event is choosing the date/time, I don't see how this helps. You'll set up an event, most people will say they can't make it and now you're back to chatting about which time is the most suitable for the group, wasting the same amount of time.
shahbaby 6y ago
With every app you download - Another username/password and another potential security vulnerability - More complexity to your life as you have to familiarize yourself with another app - More space on your phone Maybe your app would be an improvement over current solutions but it's not going to be a significant enough of a job to help you get that initial critical mass of users.
TudorBirlea 6y ago
I've seen this a million times and I have a recipe for it. (note: I'm a behavioural scientist turned growth marketer) So here's the solution - your Early Adopter Profile: For a single person to adopt any solution, it has to: //> solve a clear problem - what do you help them to do, in what context and what is the desired outcome //> the individual has to (1) have the problem badly solved today; (2) actively looking for a solution; and (3) unhappy with existing solutions identified; and (4)interested in alternatives - that's your solution Where do engineers fail? They imagine that a BETTER solution will attract more users, while the first solution failed to attract any (meaningful numbers). This is understandable, but there is a better way: understand that the reason your Early Adopters adopt you is not because your solution but because they have a frustrating problem that is badly solved. Unless you can convince them that you Empathise with their problem, they will not pay attention to your solution. This is where you should focus right now. Wanna test my perspective? Imagine I put here an offer for free 1kg diamonds. Valuable? Absolutely! Credible, reasonable, trustable? Naaah. You need to pull your solution's features out of those Early Adopters, by validating what's missing for them in their problem space. Please observe that Adoption has only 20% to do with you and your solution and 80% with how well you understand who is your Early Adopter. Anyway, drop me a line and I can guide how to start this up.
paulsutter 6y ago
Have a candid talk with the 23 people who didn't sign up, and listen carefully. Avoid any persuasion, just listen to why they aren't interested. Keep following this path, and you'll eventually have an app that people are eager to use.
dave_sid 6y ago
Well done for building and releasing an app in the first place. Ignore the negative commenters, they have probably never even bothered trying.

80 points by ryansam 6y ago

itcrowd 6y ago

Cool initiative. Is it maybe that given the pandemic, many people are more wary of meeting in the first place? Your struggle might partially be explained by that?

perrohunter 6y ago
Exactly my thought
avree 6y ago
Or maybe the other 30 commenters in this thread who've made similar apps have something to do with the fact that most users are not interested in this type of product.

amerine 6y ago

Probably not super easy getting folks in your niche in a global pandemic, yeah?

quickthrower2 6y ago
Depends where you live. A challenge where i am is yes you can meet up but you may need to arrange it 1 week out and book a table rather than just turn up.
ryansam 6y ago
The restrictions are very loose where I live, Houston, TX. I don't encourage using the app unless you are already going out regularly with your friends.
- RL_Quine 6y ago
  You’re being super unpleasant by even suggesting that the lack of legal restriction makes it a good idea. That means you have no other reason to suggest that it’s a reasonable thing to do, just that it isn’t literally breaking the law.

quickthrower2 6y ago

It’s tricky I imagine as you have to sell people on the idea then they have to sell their friends on using it. WhatsApp is “good enough” for this task and there are simple workarounds such as say “we meet at 7 at xyz” and whoever can’t make it just doesn’t they come next time or join later. I suggest finding the type of people or situation where this sort of thing is a real headache for people by asking. The cool thing is you can just ask random people at bars, coffee houses and parties and get some feedback. Read “the mom test” to get an idea of how to approach this. Or in a nutshell don’t tell them about your app at all, find out about their habits and issues around arranging social events. There is a good chance that this might lead to a pivot or just work on something entirely different. So be prepared to jettison a sunk cost even though it feels painful!

crobertsbmw 6y ago

You are right, getting users is hard. With a product like this, I think the best way is to just ask people face to face if they would use it. And if they say “no”, find out why not. You may not have the right product. Also, Can you use it yourself, and invite friends to stuff using your app? If they get a few invites from you and all the events are successful, then maybe your friends will want to initiate their own events. Even if you had money, this “hit the pavement” approach is pretty crucial to making sure you are selling the right product.

quickthrower2 6y ago
Also if they say yes get them to commit: install it and follow up a week later how it went. Then if they then say no - ask those no questions. People can lie to get someone off their back but are too afraid to be direct.

shthrow 6y ago

Everyone has some kind of social event app as one of their first ideas. It never works.

Johnny87 6y ago
Yeah man my friend built one and it was a dud
summitsummit 6y ago
yeah i built one over a month and it was a dud
nullsense 6y ago
Built one in uni. Can confirm.
brogrammer2019 6y ago
Same here, I built one called "2 Events 1 Time" failed

the-dude 6y ago

Who are your competitors?

xiaoxing 6y ago
Sounds like Facebook to me... not a good sign.
tpmx 6y ago
Facebook

adventured 6y ago

Does everyone that is going to benefit from the system (receive notices, click attend, etc) have to download an app? That will be an powerful hindrance. People inherently don't want to download more apps, there is a lot of friction in that process. Remove as much friction as you can there. Narrow your action / marketing focus to get started. Perhaps see if you can promote your app at destinations (to the co-benefit of the destination / place if at all possible; tell the owner you'll market their business on your app in exchange), rather than focusing on trying to get users outside of active context. Go to where the activity is occurring, where people are doing the thing you want them to use your app for (eg at a bar). If you're willing to grind, that approach is probably your best bet (short of a huge, expensive ad blitz). Where people are doing the thing in question, they will be most receptive; outside of that, their receptivity plunges toward zero (unless referred by a friend in the moment of / before / during an activity). You better be a very social type, because you need to be out in the thick of it. You need to be of the people, in it, pushing this thing to every human that will listen at every location that will tolerate you. You need to be the social manifestation of the result you want out of the app (since it's a very social app by its nature), network user after user after user. This is an example of doing something that doesn't scale, you're going to go out and sell every initial new user on the app, where the app is going to live most of its life (at destinations, events). After a while, the snowball momentum will take over, if you're lucky, and you won't have to grind for every new user. Messaging people is a dead-end in most cases. It's like a spam email or cold call in how it lands in the brains of the people receiving it. Go to where the action is, sell (promote) your thing in its proper environment.

ryansam 6y ago
This seems like the best idea. I am friends with the owner of a high end bar and I am hosting my own events giving free chili to anyone willing to talk to about my app. I know many people there too. My other idea is asking my friends I know to go to the bar and form different groups of people each time. I would create the events ahead of time then show it to them when they all get there.

Lionga 6y ago

If you solve (most apps don't do a good enough job) a real (most problems are imaginery or tiny) problem, getting users is not hard.

fiftyacorn 6y ago
Finding a real problem is hard
- jachee 6y ago
  If we solve that problem, we'd be halfway to solving them all.
- Lionga 6y ago
  I can tell you hundreds of real problems in a minute. It is just that millions of people tried to find solutions and have failed. Thus they are extremly hard problems. The things is finding a real problem that you can actually solve.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    This has been my experience. My list of real problems shortens with every filter I apply to it so that I can solve it. Turns out if I can see the solution upfront and be able to solve it in a relatively short time period, so can someone else.
    - rdtwo 6y ago
      You have to find some other competitive advantage why you can solve it better. As a one man operation those advantages are very limited
  - varbhat 6y ago
    Can you please list and tell? Thanks in advance.

atum47 6y ago

my friend got into biking recently (bicycle) and wanted me to create an app so they can organize bike rides (cause they go in groups), extra functionalities would be share gps routes and status (heartbeat, speed...). I answered him to take a look at the app store, and if there's less then thousand apps just like that, I worked create one for him. not to be a dick or anything, but these kind of things I don't believe would fly. you have your WhatsApp groups, your Facebook groups, your telegram groups... how the hell am I supposed to compete with that? why people would left a app they already use to for a while to use mine? I think the same questions apply to your project. Again, not to be a dick, just my opinion

karamanolev 6y ago
To echo that, just for cycling, there's Strava events, which have decent functionality. I've seen a lot of events organized through that. So this is a solved problem, like I believe, OP's is.
paul_f 6y ago
You are correct. There is a reason these apps aren't popular, and it isn't because nobody thought of the idea or tried to build one before.

wyum 6y ago

I built a similar app for a client. It's called "Festi." It's on IOS and Android with web app as well... Getting traction has definitely been difficult, but is slowly growing.

tobyjsullivan 6y ago

I've thought and read a bit about getting initial users but never done it successfully so I can't offer much from experience. That said, reading your experience with your list of 82 prospects, I don't see where you demonstrated value to them. Demoing value is different from merely "explaining" value. One of the classic missteps is expecting people to inherently "see the value" of what you're building. Nobody just sees the value like you do. You have to demonstrate it. Show them how their life will be meaningfully improved with your app. Couple that with event organization being a two-sided problem. Any successful product needs to offer value for both organizers and attendees. You've mentioned time-saving for the organizer - great - but what does an attendee get out of it? For both parties, how are they coordinating currently? Is your app clearly 10x better for both sides? Assuming you've got all the above checked off, then I would start with a simple strategy: Organize some events with your app. Be your first user, and make the friends you invite your second, third, and fourth users. Did your app make organizing easier? Or did nobody actually RSVP when you know they would face-to-face? Remember, introducing an app into any experience inherently adds friction. So your default starting point is that you're actually making it harder for organizers to get RSVPs on the books. Your app needs to offer enough value to make up for that friction. I would expect there'll be a grind until you hit a point where people are more likely to attend events you organize through the app, and those attendees decide to use your app for their next event. At that point you're viral. But until that point, you've got an app that makes things worse for the user compared to their current alternative.

Tade0 6y ago

My friend is currently developing a todo app and interestingly enough is getting some users even though things like Trello exist and it boils down to two things: -Dogfooding. He even organised his wedding using the damn thing. -Talking face to face with people who are as dissatisfied with incumbent products as he was. You've got to have a problem that really bothers someone in order to get them to use your solution.

root_axis 6y ago

You're targeting an extremely saturated market. Unfortunately the need for your app is already solved by something like Facebook or even just a group text e.g. "2 dollar margaritas at 123bar, meeting there at 8, come on out". Ultimately the level of coordination and opt-in required by the friend group isn't really worthwhile for the mass market, you'll need to be a little more innovative to find some success, but the fact that you're disciplined enough to actually bring your ideas to fruition means its just a matter of iterating on your ideas till you build something more compelling.

pryelluw 6y ago

How is this better than any social network/messaging app? Why shouls I install it? Also, the timing for social apps isnt great given the ongoing pandemic. You might simply be suffering from bad timing

ryansam 6y ago
I live in Houston, TX. And the area I'm targeting does not have many restrictions on what you can do during the pandemic, it's almost the same as before the pandemic. But if I were to live somewhere else this would probably not be possible for me right now.
- mattcaldwell 6y ago
  Yes, but people are still going to be reluctant to get out right now. At least that's the case where I'm at.
- avree 6y ago
  You are actively putting people's lives at risk. Saying that users are naturally irresponsible doesn't absolve you of responsibility.

adamnemecek 6y ago

You are in a crowded space.

edoceo 6y ago

Check out this book called "Lean Customer Development" by Cindy Alveraz (so¿). Also, there's a talk called AARRR (metrics for pirates) that could be helpful. Customer development is WAY MORE important than product development (as you've just discovered)

positivejam 6y ago

I don't want to just spread negativity, but I see this so often on HN I feel like it's mean not to comment. I would strongly recommend anyone considering developing an app to have a list of potential customers before they write a single line of code. This is not a revolutionary idea, but I still see it regularly ignored. When you launch, you want to be able to send the announcement out to your 1,000/5,000/25,000 email subscribers/insta followers/podcast listeners. Simply writing an app and submitting it to the app store is going to be painful.

summitsummit 6y ago

> This page is blank lolz

ryansam 6y ago
That is supposed to be a loading screen but I opted to work on more important things haha.

dsshanley 6y ago

A friend build something that was pretty much this in 2016/7 (https://appadvice.com/app/down-for-whatever/1060924679 https://appadvice.com/app/down-for-whatever/1060924679) and failed harder and learned the lessons you are learning more slowly. There are excellent points in all of these responses, and customer development is critical before you dive into product. I would suggest you go through the process of: • truly identifying your goals (what do you want to get out of this? is this a 10 year business or just a side project) • target spaces where users already exist (FB groups, LinkedIn groups, Shopify marketplace, etc) where you can access them • Based on your goals, decide on whether you want a small % of a large user base or a larger % of a very niche user base. As you are discovering, only a small % of folks are going to be interested if there's not a massive frustration or fear you are tapping in to.

sroussey 6y ago

Invite friends to something using the app. If they don’t have the app, send an email with the event invite and saying how they can install. Ideally you would have web functionality as well, in case installing won’t happen.

azinman2 6y ago

As many people have said this is a very crowded space littered with dead apps. One of the biggest issues is that you ultimately will want some kind of “comments” section because communication is central to planning, which at that point you end up reinventing texting but as a worse interface as comments, and then people will just resort to texting. It’s not clear why this is so much better than a) texting, and b) posting this to a social network in the first place. Covid certainly makes the timing poor, and even if you don’t have restrictions now, that’s probably not a good thing and not something to encourage. Getting people to download a new app or a new anything at this point needs to be really a fundamentally new product experience that is 10-100x better than anything else you’re using. It’s easy to think about... if someone told you to download an app to notify when you’re going to the bar, and everyone has to download it, would you really change the social inertia from your existing communication solutions just to post a bar notification? That’s a pretty tough proposition.

ryansam 6y ago
I'm am not encouraging people should go out. Just the people that already are if they want they can use my app.
- RL_Quine 6y ago
  That’s not a distinction.
  - ethanwillis 6y ago
    It's a distinction that Facebook seems to make since they still allow creating events on their platform.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

somishere 6y ago

As mentioned a group text goes a long way to resolving your problem. I'm going to a bbq this arvo organised on whatsapp. But also your solution sounds like it's trying to disrupt/recreate Apple/Google/MS calendar, not Facebook events. I'd probably be looking into CalDAV or similar to ensure interopability with whatever system your mates/users are already working with in their day-to-day .. And then sprinkling some sugar to kickstart a slow-shuffle to your side of the dance floor. Good luck!

arihant 6y ago

This micro version of clique-only Facebook events is not bad. If someone builds a usable version of this that will eat into a significant portion of WhatsApp groups. I believe if your app can just record my video, then transcribe my audio to figure out details of my plan (location, time, etc.) and then post an Instagram story with my video plus metadata in an elegant way with a poll widget, that is something I would use today. Maybe later in product lifecycle you can add more useful features within your app. But I'd definitely start out by latching on to an existing social network.

ryansam 6y ago
That would be a great growth hack. I wonder if instagram has any APIs for this. I don't know anything about processing speech but maybe if you posted on my app it would create a story on instagram or make a twitter post. Snapchat would be better for this because it's more private, not everybody wants everyone they know to come to an event they post.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tootie 6y ago

https://first1000.substack.com/ https://first1000.substack.com/

Jugurtha 6y ago

Some things to think about - not necessarily true, but just a brain dump: >I'm building a mobile app to create and share social events with your friends. A social event would be going to the bar, house party, or meeting up for coffee. You can fill out a simple form (event name, description, date, time) and post to a feed for your friends to see. Your friends can notify you they're going by pressing the "attend" button. Have you tried selecting people you want to hang out with at a bar and sending a text message to them that says "Hey, we're going to bar X at 5 if you want to tag along" to validate the concept. >Now I'm trying to get my first users. Yesterday was my first day. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I can message that live in my target area. My list is 82 people. Yesterday I contacted 24 people and got one person to sign up, I was hoping to get five. But most of the people I messaged didn't even respond. Instead of contacting the 24 people to ask them to sign up, tell them you're going to have coffee at place X. Basically, use the spreadsheet as your app and validate the concept. Generally speaking, if people are not coming for you, they're coming for someone else: the crazy guy, the wicked smart girl, the hot one, or the one who's always funnier when drunk. If you're none of those, your job is to set it up and do a "casting" of people who go well together, and do so in a certain context. Someone will invite you and you'll say "I don't know...". They'll say "X and Y will be there, too" and that may change your mind because X knows more than anyone on some esoteric subject you love, and Y is just so much fun to hang out with. Sooo... Maybe you want to focus on the Person/Venue/Clique fit and the application automatically invites the right people when you're going to the right venue. The right people for the right venue, but also the right people who gel together in that venue. I wouldn't invite Y to a bar because he doesn't hold his liquor and acts douchey, so the application embeds that in its graph. See Person/Venue/Clique fit below. - There maybe an asymmetry in that people are more interested to know what you're doing than to let you know what they're doing. Unless there is a vanity component in there. - Is it a broadcast or personal invites? If it is a broadcast, maybe I don't know how you feel about me and feel I'd bother if I came. Me: "Hey! I saw you beaconed earlier". You: "Uhmm.. Sure!". - Platform fragmentation: how is your beacon broadcasting? Do I have to have the app installed to know where you are, or does it broadcast to Instagram, add a WhatsApp status, post something on Facebook? or text message [supposing it's invite/private] and Twitter or similar if it's not. - Maybe there's "diffusion of resposibility" going on. If you invite me personally, I'll feel much more compelled than if I see it on a broadcast because I might think surely other people might join you and you'll be fine. If everyone has that thought, nobody will show up. - Person/Venue/Clique Fit: Person A is cool with Person B and Person C, however, Person A would hangout with Person B in venue Y, but not with Person C. Person A would also hangout with Person C in venue Z, but not necessarily with Person B. It can be for a variety of reasons: perception, image, precedents, etc. Regulars Person A meets in a venue might not appreciate Person B for example. Usually, when a person goes to a venue, there's a small set of people they want to be with at that venue. - People might have "spots" they don't want other people to joing them at.

ryansam 6y ago

I would like to comment a little bit on my competitors. Facebook and meetup.com are search based events. If you want to find something to do you have to search it. You could get invited as well but if you don't you will never know about an event unless you actively look for it. They are not the same culture ethier. I would not go on meetup.com to see if my friends are going to the bar. The same goes for Facebook. Also I'm 21 most of my friends don't use Facebook. I went on meetup.com to find coding events or networking events. A lot of my friends have never heard of meetup.com. My problem is I hate texting people every time I'm trying to go out for the night. If people don't already have plans that I can go to, I have to create the plans. Then I have get everyone on board with them. I have texted like over 20 people doing this sometimes, and we don't always have a group chat, or want one. People hate group chats sometimes because you get included in a conversation that you didn't even want to be included in the first place. Plus your phone dings too much with group chats. And some people can't make it due to timing, or simple they don't want to go. So I would love an app where I can just go on it, see what all my friends are doing that night, and go to their events.

root_axis 6y ago
You may be on to something with respect to culture, but that is where the hard work will be: user experience design and marketing that codifies the culture into a brand that can distinguish your product among the sea of commodity social networking software.
- ryansam 6y ago
  Well my signup screen (first thing the user sees) has a background photo of a night life party to set the tone. Maybe I should make it darkmode themed to set the tone more but I don't want to discourage people using this to meet up for coffee. I strongly agree though, lots of hard work will be needed to be put in culture.
  - rdtwo 6y ago
    I don’t think there is currently any danger of anybody using it for anything.

muzani 6y ago

It sounds like you don't have a good enough solution. First app I did - 1,200 users in the first 24 hours, just with a brief Facebook post that everyone shared to their friends. If they're not sharing it, there's a problem there, especially if it's a social app. We paid a copywriter friend to post it a second time on Facebook, and it got 3,000 users within 24 hours. After that, further postings did little, but others sharing the app in their groups or things from the apps got lots of users in. Some interesting thing I spotted was someone posting the app, someone else complaining that the app sucked because X, then the poster telling them that the app was better now. Then we paid bloggers to review the app - the blogging ranked us well on Google, and we'd get 50% of our traffic through organic searches, thousands of visitors a month. It was easy enough that the app and the whole company around it got acquired as a marketing channel. I think being a marketing channel is ideal these days for apps that have lots of users but are free, so if you can't get a lot of users right off the bat, it's just not going to work as a free app. My cofounder did a sports based site. He got millions of pageviews less than a year in, although they spent a little on Facebook marketing. They're worth millions of dollars now. I'm doing another side project years later, something small I put half an hour into every day. It started off with about 100 visitors/week from posting on Reddit, HN, forums, etc. One person shared it on Twitter. I mentioned it a few months later on HN, after some heavy improvements, and it got a spike of about 300 users in one day. The spike was enough to rank the site on Bing, and it's at over 400 users/week today (10% returning). I'm not here to brag; but I'm no Zuckerberg, didn't even get into YC, so it's doable and repeatable with the right techniques. You shouldn't have to contact every person from a list, lol. First thing you should do is look at your competitor. Yours is probably Facebook Events. How is your app ten times better? Find a way to do things faster, cheaper, better. Or in this case, probably faster. You might have to remove the friction of downloading an app, maybe have invites in web, WhatsApp or SMS. You might want to try instant apps.

gkoberger 6y ago

Wait. You're in Texas and are trying to get people to use an app that encourages them to meet in person, often in groups? During a pandemic where people are dying? I always want to be supportive of anyone building anything, but seriously... stop. Put it on ice for 6-12 months. This app sucks. Technology should be used to help people. Spend your time doing something good during the pandemic, not getting them killed.

RL_Quine 6y ago
Their responses in this thread make them out to be pretty uncaring. It’s not illegal to go out, I’m not suggesting people do by giving them a means to facilitate it, I’m not responsible! At some point you just have to admit you don’t care about the well-being of anybody.
- ryansam 6y ago
  I do care a lot actually as this pandemic's risk is personal to me. But because of where I live the people are not responding they way they are in different states. It's not like the pandemic happened and all the sudden I had this idea. I had this idea before the pandemic, started working on it before the pandemic. Then the pandemic happened. As I have mentioned I don't want people using this app unless they already are going out regularly with their friends.
  - gkoberger 6y ago
    Ryan, you've fallen into a trap a lot of younger engineers do... a complete lack of empathy. Code is rigid and logical, but the reasons we write code never are. Ignoring COVID, you don't seem to be able to see this from anyone's perceptive but your own. Your app offers nothing to the user they can't get in a thousand other places, better. The quality is very low compared to what people expect, the usecase is one nobody has ever asked for, yet you still have this vibe of believing people owe you an audience. Rather than making something good that people want, you're looking for growth hacks. People are telling you directly and indirectly that this was a swing and a miss. Add on COVID, and your responses just kinda make you seem like you don't care. Don't say "the risk is personal," as though that's a magic wand that exculpates you... it just makes it worse. Find something to work on that won't endanger people, and stop justifying building a meetup app during a pandemic. I get it, things changed since you started in November and that sucks... but they did change. Now you have to. Ryan, if you pivot into something that helps people rather than hurts, I'd be more than happy to help you get your first users. My email's in my profile.

nullsense 6y ago

You might have a chance if you can get your group of friends to use it regularly. If you can't even get your own group of friends to use it, you can't expect much right? Facebook events solves this basically perfectly for anyone who's network is on Facebook. The app functionality itself is just an event with location, time and comments. Nothing fancy or ground-breaking. It's the network effects that are what make it work. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. The struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. Even when it doesn't work, trying stuff still teaches you a lot. Keep it up.

an_opabinia 6y ago

An acquaintance of mine spent almost $250,000 paying a Bulgarian contractor shop to make this exact app a few years ago. Honestly just consider this a pretty inexpensive learning experience and just move on. You can try to tune this out as negativity but if you make yourself vulnerable to your closest love ones and friends they'd be honest with you and tell you it's a bad idea, and you would have stopped before you started. This is the real problem, it's why people will say nice things but not sign up, it's what you gotta really deal with.

switch11 6y ago

I'll share a few points here. We've sold over 1 million paid apps. We've gotten to 5 million+ app downloads in 4 additional markets. So the approach is based on what worked and what didn't. However, we don't know how to get to 100 million or even 10 million users as we haven't done it yet. So keep that in mind Our approach is VERY extreme. So it depends on whether you have the resources and persistence to do it A) The Market Always Wins/Product Market Fit Always Wins So every possible project you could do, its success will be determined PRIMARILY by whether the market wants your product or not Everything else doesn't matter B) So your approach should NOT be I have a problem. I solved it for myself by building this app. How do I get users for it It should be What is a LARGE market which has a strong need that is UNSERVED completely forget yourself and focus 100% on users who are dying for a product In your post and responses there is a massive amount of me-centrism i.e. I'm building, I'm trying, I propose, I'm trying, I made, I contacted. I was hoping. I was wondering. I messaged. I was wondering, I could really use Where is - Customer needs. Customer demands. Team aims. Do you have a team? or you did it all yourself? Where is your designer and tester? even if you did all the coding yourself? C) If you build the right product, then getting users is automatic List of 82 people is around 100 times smaller than it needs to be. Probably 1,000 times smaller. You can't derive any worthwhile data from this 1 out of 24. That's too small a sample size At best, it gives us no information At worst, it tells us that out of those 24 people only 1 cared about the product enough to sign up These are such small data points that you can't learn anything from them D) Yes, Getting Users is Hard However, you can make it easier by making something people want and which has little to no competition The old saying - Be First, Be Best, or Have the Most Money So, are you the first? No, not really The Best? depends on how good your app and overall service is Have the most money? Don't know but would be surprised if you were as your marketing plan seems to be 'tell my friends' * E) Another VERY BIG mistake that lots of creators like developers, artists, musicians, etc make is thinking their friends and family will boost them For every 1 musician whose friends and family are going to buy 100 albums and give them a tiny boost at the start, there are 999 musicians whose friends and family won't That is just not a viable business strategy, not even at the start F) You should be going where your customers are. some forum where people are looking for a way to do quick events such as knitting groups that are frustrated they can't meet up, or runner groups or bingo or book clubs Find where they are and ask them to test your product * G) I think there is superb value in the people who are telling you that you got some painful feedback right at the beginning, before you had invested half a million and 4 years of your life Take that feedback to heart Put this product on hold. You're launching it during a pandemic. It's LITERALLY the worst time to test out such a product Plus, keep in mind that - YES, you are inviting your users to get Coronoavirus and die or infect their loved ones and they die This is a SHOCKING amount of lack of consideration for your users Really, I wrote this for other people. Not for you. You can still benefit from it Market Always Wins Have Consideration for the well being of your users. A few companies that don't do that have become very big. However, those are exceptions. Most companies that are very successful provide lots of value to their users and care about their users' well being

Axsuul 6y ago

You are better off building an integration on top of a platform that your users are already on (e.g a Telegram bot). Also, I wouldn't call it a grind yet–you only just started contacting them yesterday :)

jlgaddis 6y ago

> If you want your friends to meet you at the bar, create an "Event". The event has a title of what the event is (e.g. "Going to the bar"). It has a description to get your friends excited (e.g. "$2 margaritas"). It has the address (e.g. "123 SomeBar St."). Lastly it has the time (e.g. "Tonight at 8pm"). As soon as you post it to the feed all of your friends get a notification that you just created a new event. They can then all tell you if they are going by hitting the "attend" button. So you're making an app whose entire functionality is just one of Facebook's many features? And with Facebook already having a billion or so users -- a large fraction of which likely already use Facebook's "Events" for exactly this purpose -- how do you plan to get everyone to use this completely separate app -- that no one else they know of uses -- over Facebook? I really do wish you the best of luck but it seems like you've got several things going against you before you've even really got started. Just the whole "network effects" thing is gonna kill it.

ryansam 6y ago
You mentioned one of the issues with Facebook. They built a product to connect everyone around the world with their friends online. Then added more features on to that (well I think the original facebook events has been there forever). But events was not their focus. I'm focusing only on events just for cliques of friends. I want to be the best at that and build a product that has the most value to those people.
- armatav 6y ago
  This was exactly my excuse when I built the same app. Take a look at this; https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual
withinboredom 6y ago
"You mean you're making an app whose entire functionality is just one of Craigslist's many features" -- and many successful businesses came from that. I think this is OK, many people are trying to get off and leave Facebook.

justanothersys 6y ago

Get TikTok - it worked for me!

svatwork 6y ago

I don't see the value proposition of this idea, because like others have said, there are a lot of solutions to this problem like Facebook Events, WhatsApp groups, and what not. However, some acquaintances of mine have recently launched a (apparently successful) messaging app for new university students to the university they attended. Their users are in 80 countries and spend 30 minutes per day on the app messaging each other. So I guess there are still niche cases.

around_here 6y ago

Mate, you’ve invented the calendar. Like outlook, Gmail, etc. all have this functionality. It’s easy, has reminders, and doesn’t really need to to install something you’re not already using on your phone/a new website to go to

armatav 6y ago

This is like THE network effect app that just does not get traction in my book, I built one just like it a few years ago. Push a button, get people to hang out with you. Problem is that people meet up using chat, that’s the core thing you have to be better than. Better, faster, simpler or easier than WhatsApp/Messenger/iMessage/SMS/FB Events/Instagram/Snapchat. Those things have extreme network effects and you probably will not dislodge them, I would aim somewhere else. This exact app is detailed in one of NFX’s write ups as the “wrong” approach. If you still want to try getting users, throw it on Product Hunt and see if it takes. The only momentarily successful version of this was Down to Lunch - and only because they harvested your entire contacts list and then messaged every single person at once to get them using the app. They’re gone now. It was simply easier to group chat your friends “yo movies?”.

ryansam 6y ago
Simply I strongly believe I can do it. My friends and I have encountered this problem over 100 times in the past two years and I just think there has to be a better solution than texting or snapchat. This problem bugged my friends and I so much there has to be a market of people who want something better.
- yoyonamite 6y ago
  I feel like many iterations of coordinating events has been tried as evidenced by different comments discussing previous solutions that have been built by someone else or by themselves. Why has this idea failed previously? How will your iteration be different? I'm not naturally a social person but I did go through a phase where I was more social and ended up organizing events. I never thought using texts, whatsapp, etc. to be much of a hassle. I'm also close to a couple of friends that are very social and I've seen them plan and coordinate events. It's never seemed like a hassle and they've never mentioned it as a problem. Solving your own problem is good advice, but the pitfall is that your own problem may not be one that is shared by many people. I've had to learn this lesson as well. I would run some of my early app ideas by my friends and their response would basically be, "why would I want to do that?" I'm not saying this idea will not work, but definitely talk to the people you're messaging and find out what they think. Best of luck.

ric2b 6y ago

The main time waster when trying to organize an event is choosing the date/time, I don't see how this helps. You'll set up an event, most people will say they can't make it and now you're back to chatting about which time is the most suitable for the group, wasting the same amount of time.

shahbaby 6y ago

With every app you download - Another username/password and another potential security vulnerability - More complexity to your life as you have to familiarize yourself with another app - More space on your phone Maybe your app would be an improvement over current solutions but it's not going to be a significant enough of a job to help you get that initial critical mass of users.

TudorBirlea 6y ago

I've seen this a million times and I have a recipe for it. (note: I'm a behavioural scientist turned growth marketer) So here's the solution - your Early Adopter Profile: For a single person to adopt any solution, it has to: //> solve a clear problem - what do you help them to do, in what context and what is the desired outcome //> the individual has to (1) have the problem badly solved today; (2) actively looking for a solution; and (3) unhappy with existing solutions identified; and (4)interested in alternatives - that's your solution Where do engineers fail? They imagine that a BETTER solution will attract more users, while the first solution failed to attract any (meaningful numbers). This is understandable, but there is a better way: understand that the reason your Early Adopters adopt you is not because your solution but because they have a frustrating problem that is badly solved. Unless you can convince them that you Empathise with their problem, they will not pay attention to your solution. This is where you should focus right now. Wanna test my perspective? Imagine I put here an offer for free 1kg diamonds. Valuable? Absolutely! Credible, reasonable, trustable? Naaah. You need to pull your solution's features out of those Early Adopters, by validating what's missing for them in their problem space. Please observe that Adoption has only 20% to do with you and your solution and 80% with how well you understand who is your Early Adopter. Anyway, drop me a line and I can guide how to start this up.

paulsutter 6y ago

Have a candid talk with the 23 people who didn't sign up, and listen carefully. Avoid any persuasion, just listen to why they aren't interested. Keep following this path, and you'll eventually have an app that people are eager to use.

dave_sid 6y ago

Well done for building and releasing an app in the first place. Ignore the negative commenters, they have probably never even bothered trying.