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How To Get Your First 1,000 Users (2011)
- kristiandupont 6y agoIn some ways, it's quite astonishing to see how little has changed since 2011. "Get on Hacker News and Techcrunch, post ads on Facebook and Google Adwords". I think back in 2011 I would expect this list to be completely obsolete in 10 years. Back then, it felt like the whole ecosystem would shift every two years..
- fjabre 6y agoThe current players are comfortably entrenched. Thankfully China does not allow them to operate there. It gives us some hope that new players will form and become competitive like TikTok. Google and friends are only beholden to their stock holders. Google and Facebook destroy competitors. And make sure new entrants cannot gain traction. They are about as anti-competitive as they can be.
- baxtr 6y ago> Google and Facebook destroy competitors. I agree that they both hold onto their monopolies. But I don't think it's because they "destroy competition". Take Bing for example: it is quite alive. Google just delivers better search results. Yes the results have been deteriorating, but every time I get frustrated with them and try Bing as standard search engine, I switch back after a week. I don't like the google monopoly, but their core product is still not being challenging by anything I know of.
- mandeepj 6y agoHave you tried DuckDuckGo? If yes, how's your experience?
- jwdunne 6y agoTo be fair, Google can deliver that quality because they have so much more data. For every search in Bing where a user clicks on the first result and never clicks back on the first search, Google will much more. Likewise, for every frustrated chain of search refinements in Bing, Google will have many more to learn from. Their position as market share leader gives them everything they need to know to maintain quality. Any deterioration in search quality with the data Google has means far worse than the competition in relative terms. Which is a complete shame since people like quality in absolute terms so it’s gonna stay that way. Even I’ve tried DuckDuckGo and Bing - regardless of how not-Google they are, the results are absolutely worse. So I’m not switching either, despite knowing how Google keeps its position.
- snide 6y agoI once started a social network around car culture. It did OK, and we got an exit offer, but decided to pivot to something else (which was the right move). Anyways, the way we got our early users was nontraditional. We went in person to car shows, took pictures of the cars, making sure one of them was with a polaroid camera. We then handed the Polaroid to the owner of the car and asked if we could feature their car on our website. If they said yes, we wrote out a email/pass on the back of the polaroid and then went home and set up their account. This seeded our original social graph. Harder to do these days, but don't forget about your legs. It's a lot easier to convince people in person than over a rote email. We got on Techcrunch as well, but it didn't help nearly as much. Techcrunch is mostly good for the inner industry[0] [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2006/06/11/cnet-veterans-launch-boompa-myspace-for-cars/ https://techcrunch.com/2006/06/11/cnet-veterans-launch-boomp...
- adamtester 6y agoInteresting! I am trying to start a social network around car culture, I’d be interesting in knowing your thoughts!
- snide 6y agoUnfortunately I'm not a good person to ask. I didn't own a car at the time, which was part of the problem :D
- noomerikal 6y agoOh, I remember Boompa! I was at Edmunds when we rolled out CarSpace. https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/edmundscom-launches-carspace-automotive-lifestyle-social-networking-site.html https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/edmundscom-launches-cars...
- distribot 6y agoDo you think harder to do these days because the existing social networks are so deeply entrenched?
- 6y ago
- newbie578 6y agoI do wonder what if you are mobile first? You are trying to get the first 1000 users for your mobile app, how would you then pitch on HN? Again the same landing page but with links to the app store?
- xavier_ 6y agoI curated a list of 400+ places to post your startup [1]. Getting your first 1000 users aren't that difficult when you know where to find them. What i do is: - Post to startup directories (brings some traffic and some shout-out) - Post to communities, to better understand your customers and make friends - Create some content around your product and post it to Facebook groups, big Sub reddit and blog that allow guest post. That is pretty much how i get my early users to get the first feedback and iterate on my first version. Then I go with ads and newsletter sponsorship. [1] https://spreadtheworld.net https://spreadtheworld.net
- dang 6y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2193539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2193539
- kowlo 6y agoFirst 1,000 users is great if you have something with a "free" version. Any advice on how to get your first 1,000 customers?
- gnicholas 6y agoCame here to say this. Ten years later, there are many more entrepreneurs who think about revenue (and even profitability!), not just sending their user numbers to the moon. Presumably the first thousand users will help you to figure out what are the most important aspects of your product/service, what you can charge for, what you should give away for free, etc. It would be really interesting to see a follow-on article titled How To Get Your First 1,000 Customers.