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Ask HN: How did you find your early adopters?
What outreach resources did you go through and how did you target potential users once you had a prototype?
edit (from comment I posted):
Some friends and I had trouble getting leads on who to "sell" our prototype to, and we had the thought that this may be an even more legitimate problem than the one we were previously trying to solve.
Is this a problem that other startups have faced, trying to find specific (with contact information) customers to talk to and become the first users?
- jmathai 14y agoWe had a successful kickstarter campaign followed by having open sourced the project from the start helped a ton. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jmathai/openphoto-a-photo-service-for-your-s3-or-dropbox-a http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jmathai/openphoto-a-phot...
- nicolasiac 14y agoWhen building http://www.CraftzBay.com http://www.CraftzBay.com the only logical way to find sellers of handmade items was through Facebook. We started chatting with them through Facebook to explain our idea and many of them signed up!
- youshaei 14y agoThat's awesome! Just curious, how did you go about searching for them?
- yoshyosh 14y agoNoah Kagan of appsumo literally goes over how you go about this http://www.appsumo.com/where-are-my-customers/ http://www.appsumo.com/where-are-my-customers/. The best videos I've seen on early customer aquisition hands down.
- chewxy 14y agoI tried a Show HN for one of my projects. It's now dead. For my latest, Fork the Cookbook (http://forkthecookbook.com http://forkthecookbook.com) I actually approached bloggers and talked to them, one by one. It's a tedious task, but I absolutely refuse to buy ads except for quick tests.
- hayksaakian 14y agoI'm curious as to why you refuse to buy ads.
- soyelmango 14y ago"Advertising is a tax for having an unremarkable product", said someone (http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/is-advertising-is-a-tax-for-having-an-unremarkable-product/ http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/is-advertisi...) Or in other words, spend your time and money not on advertising, but on making a product so compelling that your users/customers advertise for you. Think Dropbox, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Skype – no advertising, but a product that people will encourage others to use.
- hayksaakian 14y agoI would imagine that if you were entering a crowded market with an idea that simply cut costs, but provided no real unique consumer facing benefit, you could afford to ride on CPC. Am I wrong?
- MatthewB 14y agoI'm curious as well as to why you don't want to buy ads. It's a great way to quickly get data without wasting your time on "a tedious task."
- chewxy 14y agoIt is a great way to get data, which is why I mentioned "except for quick tests". For actual growth, it's actually a pretty poor channel. A lot of time and energy will need to be spent optimizing ads, LP, CTA, etc. Time spent on funnel optimization can be better spent running tests elsewhere. I have personally found it to be far easier to pop a few emails and reply over the course of the day. People who are genuinely interested about the product will link to it (take for example this fine lady: http://preppypaleo.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/paleo-banana-breakfast-cookies.html http://preppypaleo.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/paleo-banana-brea...). Those are the people we want to look for. That way we can more effectively run tests and grow users more naturally, as opposed to having a HN-level spike and not have any follow up activity. The current tests we're running/actively developing for are pro-accounts. So instead of spending time obsessing over ad quality, CTRs, optimizing landing pages, we can spend more time working on writing the software needed to test our assumptions. Hope that helps
- adidahiya 14y agoYou could try submitting to Beta List (http://betali.st/ http://betali.st/). It's also a good way to keep track of newly released smaller products / startups.
- LeFever 14y agoWhen we were looking to fill up our private beta for AppThwack early last year we went to reddit, XDA, LinkedIn groups, and other places where we thought our target customers (Test engineers and app developers) would be. We posted non-spammy posts asking for beta testers and did not mention our product's name. We just described the problem we solved, how we were doing it, and asked for volunteers to sign up. If I was doing it again I'd follow a similar path, but I'd also approach some of the more influential people in our target market and ask them directly for their help and feedback. We've done that with various features since and it's worked out great.
- jaddison 14y agoHow did people sign up if you didn't tell them the product name? Did you not direct them to the product site?
- LeFever 14y agoHaha, good question. We did it via PMs or DMs or whatever the given site had. It also made it a bit more personal since we were using our own accounts.
- chewxy 14y agoThis. For my current project, Fork the Cookbook (http://forkthecookbook.com http://forkthecookbook.com) we found that being personal helps.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yesimahuman 14y agoWe had the benefit of building products for a market that was highly active on Twitter. That and two popular HN posts bootstrapped both of my current company's products. I owe a ton to HN, but even more to Twitter.
- pwingo 14y agoThis is really interesting. Some friends and I had trouble getting leads on who to "sell" our prototype to, and we had the thought that it may be an even more legitimate problem than the one we were previously trying to solve. Can you comment more on the sell process to individual users with HN and Twitter: did you find and go after people that tweeted or posted about related topics to your products, or look for people that might want your products, or did you let them come to you through your posts or tweets?
- yesimahuman 14y agoThe residual activity on Twitter from a #1 HN post is where we focused our energy, mainly by retweeting, engaging, following, etc. I think these HN posts also helped build our SEO and especially as some bloggers wrote about their experiences with our products.
- brianr 14y agoFor Rollbar (http://rollbar.com http://rollbar.com) it's been a fairly random mix: friends, twitter, reddit ads, sponsoring the Node Knockout, the occasional HN comment, and a surprising amount of word of mouth. More recently we've done a bit of PR but it hasn't been targeted at customers.
- marcofucci 14y agoWanted to check out your project but your homepage looks broken on my iPhone. You might want to fix it ;-)
- kirillzubovsky 14y agoI looked online for people who I wanted to be our early users, then emailed everyone with a personalized message. Surprisingly, when you are honest with people and ask them to join something that would benefit them, it's possible to get a lot of interest. Took some time though, a lot of time.
- pwingo 14y agoI think that with most products, there are at least some people for whom trying out the product would be a win-win. The issue is finding those people. Your comment is really validating; thanks for your input!
- akg_67 14y agoThree months before the MVP, I started a blog and established myself as 'somebody' for data analytics in the target domain. Started participating in online forums and commenting on other blog posts relevant to the target domain, specifically focusing on data analytics. By the time, I launched MVP, influentials in the domain were aware of me. In a few months since launch, I gained several hundred registered users through these activities ... not a single penny spent on ads or to generate traffic. Now I am working on figuring out how to generate revenue ...
- smartial_arts 14y agoDo you mind sharing a link o your MVP and maybe some ideas on ways you can monetise the service? Thanks!
- boyter 14y agoShow HN for original project, then iterate on the idea with new one (http://searchco.de/ http://searchco.de/) and just keep going. I got a lot of initial traction by being one of the first people to work on DuckDuckGo's ZeroClick info (donated a lot of the programming documentation) which provided some initial back-links and referral traffic. Kept this going by adding more things through DuckDuckHack. Everything from there has been posting on comments (where relevant), posting in StackOverflow, building relationships with those using it and improving things. There is quite a bit of SEO mixed in there but mostly I just keep pushing and making something I want to use. A few larger blog posts seemed to work too. Some of the more in depth ones that took quite a while to write helped quite a bit. This was more about adding discover ability and SEO value though. EDIT - Also a lot of directly targeting people complaining about lack of code search over twitter. This was especially effective when Google Code Search shut down and Koders.com hadn't got its act together. I had planned for this, but it was not as effective as I would have expected.
- bilus 14y agoI just found this thread so it's 'a bit' late but... A very useful service, I use it myself. I also couldn't fail to notice lots of supportive comments on Criticue (while moderating). Keep up the great work. What have you written it in if it's not a secret? PHP?
- boyter 14y agoThat's ok :) Yes a lot of support on Criticue which I used for a while to work on the design. Its not. PHP for the front facing code, Python for most processing tasks, MySQL and Sphinx for the search. Feel free to email me bboyte01@gmail.com for more details.
- caublestone 14y agoCurrently building something that allows startups to automate their twitter accounts to try and get the lead gen going early. Right now we allow you to find and add topics that relate to your business, generate stories for you, and automate the tweets to a schedule. Tomorrow we will begin showing you experts for your topics on Twitter and incorporating their tweets into your feed. Check it out at gobirdfeeder.com. It doesn't say this on the site, but we have a 30 day free trial going on right now for all new accounts. Would love for you to use it and provide input. You can reach me at matthew.cauble at googles email service. </shamelessplug>
- sideproject 14y agoI also tried "Show HN" and Betali.st for my project - sideprojectors (http://www.sideprojectors.com http://www.sideprojectors.com). They are good starting points. I think Reddit also has a sub-reddit regarding startups. As a shameless plug, would you like to post your project on SideProjectors? :) I'm doing a private beta testing at the moment with a handful of users. It's a showcase/discovery too for side projects.
- infogaufire 14y ago1. I searched for journalists who have written about topics my startup was related to and shared my story and gave them sneak peek into beta version. That gave me some great visibility via blogs like thenextweb and mashable. 2. I made sure that I use write set of words and language to provoke few early users to share my beta website with their network - It was all about wordings. 3. The tweets and facebook messages that went out had similarly provoking wordings that made posts viral. 4. I launched beta version with very basic feature but started rolling out new things every 48-72 hours. 5. I used a real bad logo initially, people made fun of that logo on twitter - i used that as an opportunity to ask for help from twitter world - got 19 logo designs (some from designers at big ad agency, TV network) in my inbox in 24 hours or so. 6. I was super super quick in support - people were wow'ed by the speed at which me and my small team replied to support mails. 1 month later, we were @ 100K users and got acquired in 4th month of launch. Hope this helps.
- crindy 14y agoWow, can you share any details of what your startup was?
- louhong 14y agoBusiness guy here. Depending on what your product is the approach can vary. For all my projects I try to target the most interested group of users. In some cases I might target linkedin groups, meetups, target specific website forums, etc. In other cases, I've tried the ad approach (fb, google, etc). You can also try direct emailing your user group (depending on where they are) and have them sign up for your product (launchrock). Although I love HN, the challenge I've found with places like Show HN, reddit/r/startup, betalist is that its sometimes not related to the product I'm selling so a)I'm trying to sell a product to the wrong target market and b)tech sites can often times be an echo chamber and the data you get isn't necessarily quantitative.
- orangethirty 14y agoWhat have you done already?
- billclerico 14y agoat wepay, we cold emailed & cold called fraternities at stanford to see if they would use our system to collect dues.
- olegp 14y agoWith StartHQ (http://starthq.com http://starthq.com) I've been posting comments on HN, as well as relevant Facebook groups like local JS meetups, startup incubator & meetup groups etc. Those seem to work much better than e.g. LinkedIn or Google Plus. One thing that dramatically improved the conversion rate was a blog post giving the background on what problem the service solves: http://www.arcticstartup.com/2013/03/11/starthq-targets-and-launches-web-apps http://www.arcticstartup.com/2013/03/11/starthq-targets-and-...
- KevinWaller 14y agoThe most important thing is consistent effort. Keep posting links and info and questions into relevant forums, and try posting them at different times of day to catch different audiences using the same site. Definitely get a Show HN up. I would also recommend commenting on Sulia posts by recognized industry experts - It's a good way to get noticed by them and over the course of a few comments on different posts you can start to build a relationship.
- plam 14y agoCliche but true: Become your client and swim in their circle. I sold a product for business users. I presented myself as an expert in the field and became active in the field. Although the product actually came after the fact as I figured I might as well monetise on my publicity. My first paying client contacted me days after I posted an open for beta landing page without any marketing. Edit: after the first few customers, I failed to keep momentum and my business flopped. I folded it a year after.
- timjahn 14y agoGo to where your customers are. When we launched matchist (http://matchist.com/talent http://matchist.com/talent) a few months ago, we wanted to get developers on board first. And since we knew a lot of quality developers hang out here on HN, we posted here. About a month later, we wanted to started marketing to clients. We pitched at an in person event in Chicago, as well as started using a relevant existing newsletter from another business we run to reach potential clients for matchist. Once you start getting a few initial customers using your product, talk to them constantly and get feedback.
- volandovengo 14y agoPress works pretty well as does posting to Facebook. About press - you need to pitch people. Start with smaller blogs and work your way up from there. Guess reporter's email addresses and try to find a way in by being helpful first. That's how I got my first customers for http://www.artsumo.com http://www.artsumo.com.
- dhirajbajaj 14y ago'Make Noise' as you can see below everyone is sharing their links. More the links, more clicks, and thus you get some visitors. Now turning that visitor into adopters is Selling part. If there is something for visitors they will use it, else not. P.S. I am also doing such experiments for my project: http://feedbacker.51stacks.com http://feedbacker.51stacks.com and blog a few things at http://blog.51stacks.com http://blog.51stacks.com
- ihaveajob 14y agoCarry them over from another product you've made in the past. I work for Appfluence, and we make Priority Matrix, and app for managers. Every time we build a new version (for a different platform), it's easier to get traffic, because some of the people that were using the app on the original platforms migrate to the new ones. I realize this doesn't apply to everyone, but if you can use it, it's great. Zynga is the master of this, but network effects work at all levels. Even if you don't have another product, think of what other social circles you can tap into. Chances are you talk to potential early adopters on a regular basis.
- mattgray 14y agoAt Bitmaker Labs, we found our early adopters by reaching out in the community and meeting people face-to-face. We were able to convince them with our vision to spread programming literacy and get people jobs. Check us out and learn more about our progress http://bitmakerlabs.com/ http://bitmakerlabs.com/
- catalogster 14y agoReach for people in your social networks, former classmates, alumni, etc. Post and comment on websites that cover your area. This is what we are doing at http://www.unioncy.com http://www.unioncy.com. We are building a platform that lets you easily catalog all your personal belongings.
- Backerbase 14y agoHere's how we did it at Backerbase.com. The first thing to do is hypothesize/define as narrowly as possible who your early adopters will be and then start looking for where they're hanging out together online. (They will be hanging out together because early adopters are obsessives.) Once you've found where they are you can approach them directly at that online hangout or launch a simple email marketing. (Hint: People's online handles are strongly correlated with their email addresses. Another hint: There are lots of taskrabbits who are good at finding email addresses.) Pitch your value props and invite them to become early users.
- maxua 14y agoThe best course is to find users before building a prototype. Guess it's too late to apply. Think about why you're doing what you're doing. What kind of problem it solves? Who has this problem? Once you understand the problem it takes some trial-and-error to find actual people that have it. The good thing if you're right about the problem people will be willing to talk to you, since you might have a solution they are looking for. it takes time to really learn your users. I've built a community site for developers (DOU.ua) and it took me five years to figure out the most pressing problem my customers have. May be I wasn't listening hard enough but it still takes time.
- mdzeng 14y agoRecently found out about this site http://betali.st/ http://betali.st/ that has lists of startups coming out with new products you can sign up for a beta. I've personally never put anything on, but I like to scour the site to see what new useful ideas are coming out.
- meerita 14y agoI write a blog since 2001. So I am a known person in the design field. Over the years I have created a kind of network of readers which access anything I create or publish in my blog. That's the fastest way, and pretty healthy way to start. Then I try to open the case using paid advertising methods.