
How to Find Your Early Adopters: Getting to 1000+ Users - emson
http://www.kickassproducts.co/post/61447336082/how-to-find-your-early-adopters-getting-to-1000-users
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namenotrequired
This is helpful advice for how to treat your first few users. As for where to
find them, the advice is "don't worry if this method won't scale" and
"identify a core/goal user group". What I hoped to learn, and expected to find
with this article title, is: how to identify this core group, and how to reach
them?

(The Quibb example seems to explain how she made sure the early users would
enjoy it, but not how she identified or found them.)

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dshanahan
I won't speak for Sandy, but Quibb's not (necessarily) built with the startup
niche in mind. She knew the most likely people to try a work linksharing tool
would be tech/startup workers, so she focused on the path of least resistance.
As to how she found them and reached them, it was mining her network for a
strong first group of users, and tons of emails, coffees, and follow up.

To me the useful lesson of Quibb's first 1k is that your earliest users may
not look like exactly like your target market, but need to be the most likely
to adopt and provide useful feedback. Especially in B2C, this is likely some
subset of the tech early adopter archetype.

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normloman
I've noticed lots of articles where people give the same advice: Don't worry
if your plan isn't scalable at first.

Is this really a problem? Do that many founders throw out an idea because it
won't scale?

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marioluigi
I believe that it truly is a problem - specifically with respect to scalable
marketing and especially if the founders are engineers with a great dislike of
anything marketing related (yours truly included).

We like to believe that once we launch and get a handful of users, the viral
effect will take place and bada-bing bada-boom we will have a million users.
Movies like social network make it look like Facebook reached its first
million users drinking and coding 24/7 (I still love that movie) - but the
truth is that you have to put the effort in building relationships with your
users and there is no scalable way to do that.

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normloman
I can relate. Building the website is fun. Promoting it takes a massive
effort, and can make you feel like a sleazy door-to-door salesperson.

I feel the same way applying for jobs.

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dshanahan
Fortunately there are those of us who love that part:) (minus the sleazy
stuff)

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brianbreslin
Some good points, but they make an assumption that you already know where
those consumers hang out. Easier said than done identifying them.

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peacemaker
If you have no idea where potential consumers of your product might be, you
shouldn't even start building something to target them.

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jasonlotito
Not sure why you are getting down voted. It's true. If you are trying to get
people to use your product, your best bet is to start with the people you
validated against. Have them help you in this regard. If you don't have those
people, you are effectively doing things backwards.

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Romoku
So don't make a product without knowing the potential user base first?

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jasonlotito
Otherwise, you are making something for no one.

