How to Acquire the First 100 Users at No Cost
I’m Morgan, the founder of Gemoo.
As a startup founder, I completely understand how eager every founder is to get more users and their feedback as soon as possible, and how difficult it is to drive new users when you have a limited budget. That’s how we embarked on our journey, with these expectations but no prior experience.
How to Acquire the First 100 Users at No Cost
It’s been a difficult journey because we all lacked experience, so we began to search, collect, and read a plethora of posts, threads, and even books about growth hacks before attempting them. We finally reached our goal after a few days. The number of users far exceeded our expectations, with over 1k visits, and around 100+ active users.
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🤝Create strong bonds with other founders
😼Hang out around all related community
🌟Influencer outreach is necessary
To assist new businesses like ours in gaining users as quickly as possible, I’ve decided to share my experience here:
🤝 Create Strong Bonds with Other Founders
The product grows as a result of your efforts and those of your five coworkers. The tech industry thrives thanks to your efforts and those of the other 100+ founders. So if you’re in this industry, don’t be shy, try to connect with more founders and invite them to try your product.
The majority of the founders are experienced people in this field, having founded more than one product, and are dedicated to product growth. Most importantly, the majority of them are friendly and warm-hearted, so after talking to them, you may find the best way to get more users.
Grant Lee’s Inspiring Article
( Grant Lee, the founder of Gamma, has generously provided an inspiring article to help understand how to grow a product at various stages.)
😼Hang Out Around all Related Community
Personally, I adore the internet’s enchantment. If you want to dive into a specific topic and drive traffic from there, just join a community and get involved.
I’ve joined more than 10 Facebook groups, participated in 5+ Slack communities, met 100+ Twitter founders, and posted more than 20 times on various subreddits. Fortunately, we’ve seen the result (all screenshots were taken with Gemoo Snap):
60 + News Visits from Facebook
130+ New Visits from Reddit
200+ New Visits from Twitter
I’m so proud of my team and myself for accomplishing all of this!
🌟Influencer Outreach Is Necessary
We were initially unsure about who our target users were (a mistake we should not have made, please let me know if you want to learn more about what we learned from those mistakes, and I can dedicate a post to it).
So we devise a strategy: imagine some users in various fields, identify a few people who are regarded as experts in those fields and have a consistent following, and then connect with them.
It was effective. We initially targeted marketers, and I discovered a lead marketer in a Facebook group who also runs a community. We talked about something he was interested in, and then I began to recommend Gemoo and promised to provide some benefits to users in his community. It demonstrated that it is an excellent method for both recruiting beta users and soliciting their feedback.
After a few months, we conducted an interview with him, and he provided us with additional valuable advice. Thank you for your help, Albert.
Comments and Suggestions We’ve Received
The above suggestions are the most effective for me and my team; however, we have many other ways to drive traffic, such as email outreach (which is actually not very effective for us), submitting products to tech-related platforms (which I will show you in another post), and so on.
If you have any ideas, whether they are in agreement or disagreement, please DM me (@MorganKung7) at any time; I will gladly spare some time to discuss them.
🚀Launch on Product Hunt
I wasn’t going to write about Product Hunt at first because it’s such a well-known platform and so competitive that it may be difficult to stand out.
However, it is still the most effective way to generate more visits and feedback, so I must demonstrate its effectiveness to you.
Gained More Than 500 Visits from Product Hunt
Here, to read my thoughts on ProductHunt.
All of the above are based on my personal experience; if you have any additional suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me on Twitter at any time.
I’m hoping to hear your voice,
Morgan
