
How to get your first 100k active users - annekate
https://blog.winnie.com/how-to-get-your-first-100k-active-users-909fa4292a27
======
ryanwaggoner
Not that you need my vote, but I agree with all of this. In particular:

\- Go true native, not hybrid

\- Use ads for testing ideas

\- Don't forget about email!

I'm also intrigued by your approach of not going market-by-market like a lot
of local-focused marketplaces do. Your approach seems to make sense, and
obviously worked for you. I particularly like that you had a different
onboarding flow for users in new markets, that's smart.

But still, I'm not sure that this approach would make sense for a lot of
local-focused apps? I think the fear would be that it would be relatively easy
to get 100k users but they'd be spread out so thin that they'd find little
utility in the app and stop using it. So you'd have 100k users in your
database, but a tiny fraction of that in terms of actual active users. But
maybe that doesn't even matter, since you wouldn't have had all those inactive
users anyway?

Could you speak to that? I'd love to hear how many of those 100k users are DAU
or MAU, but understand if you can't share that :)

Congrats!

~~~
onion2k
_Go true native, not hybrid_

Users don't care. Most of them can't tell.

~~~
awalton
And you're the reason I don't use very many phone apps.

Developer apathy becomes user apathy. If you make great apps, your customers
will be enthusiastic about using them. If you make mediocre apps, you will
attract mediocre users, or no users at all.

~~~
jjeaff
You are most likely using some hybrid apps and you don't even know it. When
done right, you pretty much can't tell.

~~~
ajdlinux
And when done _wrong_...

~~~
TrueGeek
Which can be said of native apps as well

------
amitmathew
"Grow even before you launch" and "Go big or go home" really resonate with me.

We were able to sign up a few thousand people to our new product waitlist
through two main channels: exhibiting at conferences and answering questions
on Quora. In the past, I would have just done a small beta with friends, but I
guess I'm getting a little wiser over the years :)

Going big from the beginning is really a tough one. I already got burned at a
previous startup by not narrowing the focus enough, but it really depends on
the market and the type of product you are building. We're building a product
for college students, which is a big group, so it's a toss-up whether to go
after a certain category of students or go after them all. We're casting a
wide net for now with the idea that our product will resonate with certain
subgroups which we can focus later.

~~~
amelius
> "Grow even before you launch" and "Go big or go home" really resonate with
> me.

What is wrong with building the functionality first, get paying customers, and
from there scale? At least that way, you'll have the money to scale.

~~~
fbr
You may simply build a product that nobody wants.

~~~
amelius
As opposed to building a product that lots of people want, but can't use
because it didn't scale? (Scaling costs money)

------
danielskogly
This evening we got our 171st user for our wishlist-service. When we launched
it 1 year ago we tried to get it out on different channels like Reddit and HN
without much success, while we _did_ see success in just talking about it to
friends and family, and had just over 100 users in January this year.

Since then, we've done close to zero marketing, and it's been amazing to see
new signups, wishlists and items being created - seemingly out of the blue. I
made a simple Slack-bot to post those events to a channel with their ID, and
these are the stats from it was added late March until now: 53 new users, 74
new wishlists, and 482 new items.

As we do no sort of analytics, we have no clue who these people are, but boy
does it make me happy to see those "A new user was just created!"-messages
nonetheless!

~~~
jonas21
In case anyone is wondering (like I was), I think this is the site:

[https://wishy.gift](https://wishy.gift)

~~~
danielskogly
That's the one! Any feedback and suggestions are appreciated!

~~~
BukhariH
Usually landing pages for early stage products tend to be iffy but you've
killed it honestly! I got what your product was in 10 secs.

What would be awesome is a link to a demo wishlist!

~~~
warent
Agree with this, your landing page is _so good_ I'm going to use the format to
replace my own garbage landing page. Thank you for the inspiration, this is
awesome. You're starting a movement!

By the way, congrats on 171 users :)

~~~
danielskogly
Wow, thank you! Good luck with your own project too!

------
notaboutdave
Best takeaways from the article (no particular order):

    
    
      - Retool ads as a way to test for and identify demand.
      - Bait people with truly useful content where they're already looking, and then direct them to your app.
      - Simple changes in wording or flow of UX can increase shares dramatically.
      - Get featured in app stores. How?
        - Integrate with latest device features being pushed
        - Adhere to vendor design standards
      - Email is still very effective, so use it.
      - Have 10 enthusiastic users that will spread their enthusiasm before you start.
    

That last point is good to know, and perhaps the most important, but it's way
easier said than done. Especially if you aren't a social butterfly.

Also, the "don't use cross platform" preached in the article isn't very
convincing. You can get excellent performance with well-coded cross-platform
build tools, and in far less time.

~~~
adventured
> Especially if you aren't a social butterfly.

The best way to get those 10 enthusiastic users, without being a social
butterfly (in a traditional sense), is to manufacture them through inclusion.
For example, find a subreddit that is relevant to what you're doing, and sell
a batch of users on being early adopters (a certain type of people love that).
Then give those people credit, attention, and make them feel like their input
matters and that their contribution to the thing matters. Basically, make it
personal for them, cultivate that experience. For a lot of people those last
few concepts can be very rewarding, they'll become your first cheerleaders
(and just one of those on eg Reddit can spark something). I've observed that
people who are not traditional social butterflies, can still often function at
a decent social level on sites like Reddit (at least enough to do what I've
described).

~~~
annekate
^ This is good advice.

------
Caligula
"Get featured by apple/google"

Honestly, its like giving financial advice and saying "Ok, win the lottery or
marry someone rich"

~~~
fragsworth
It's not really like winning the lottery. There's a lot of different kinds of
promotional features they can give you, with different levels of publicity.
You just have to make a high quality app that does something useful or new (or
a good game), and ask their editorial team if they can promote your app.
They'll usually give you _some_ kind of promotion on the store.

It's "editor's choice" and the other front/center features that you might
equate to "winning the lottery". And yeah, you can't expect that unless you've
already made something huge.

~~~
folli
and how do you actually contact the editorial team?

~~~
wahnfrieden
If you look around there are ways to reach them. The author of A Dark Room
made a thorough post on this on Reddit but he’s since taken it down; maybe
there’s an archive.

------
annekate
BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is
obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking
about growth. It's my superpower!

~~~
dna_polymerase
Regarding the part about native apps, would you go as far as even restraining
from publishing any app, if native app developers are not available (or not in
the budget) in the beginning?

~~~
fpisfun
That sounds absurd to me, go hybrid first then go native once it takes off,
you can write your app in JavaScript and have an app that runs in all major
mobile devices and a website, I'm not sure how can be beat unless money isn't
a problem, such as massive initial funding.

~~~
annekate
Or you can write a native app and get 10-20k installs for free from a feature
on the app store. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
samastur
Most native apps are not featured. Polish isn't cheap.

------
dboreham
"Relying on push notifications alone"

Yeah no. Apps using push notification for marketing/dark purposes is super
irritating and for that reason I block notifications by default from all apps.

~~~
samschooler
You say that, but you are in a minority. Most users just mindlessly click
Allow. Its an amazing power - being able to appear on someones home screen
instantly at anytime with any message - but a privilege. So having each
notification be useful and actionable is key. In addition to not flooding them
with too much frequency.

------
evanspa
Sorry if it's already mentioned, but I found it frustrating that I could not
get to the winnie homepage ([http://www.winnie.com](http://www.winnie.com))
from the blog. Even the "Home" nav link at the top of the blog just points to
the blog's homepage.

------
Ologn
> Do the work to get featured by Apple & Google

Sigh...this is one of the last things to worry about. It's like hoping your
roulette number hits. Doing a lot of work is like getting a second roulette
wheel number towards getting featured, but a lot of work might improve your
chances of success any how. Every year that goes by, this hope becomes less
and less likely as the competition grows.

Also, the advice on how to get featured on Google Play is not great advice. If
I wanted a higher chance of being featured in Play, I would read this web page
-
[https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8....](https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.0.html)
. New features of the latest Android. Then I would make an app showcasing one
of the new features that Android wants to highlight. If you look at featured
apps, these are what get featured a lot. Think of it from Google's POV.
Actually, Oreo has been out for a bit, so someone trying for Oreo is already
behind the ball. There are videos of the Google people telling you what they
look for when featuring, watch those.

~~~
AWebOfBrown
I also think it's a bit ridiculous to start advising people to "go native"
because of the possibility of being featured in the app store.

The cost of doing two native apps is not small at all, and I imagine (not
being a mobile dev) that being featured in the App store is a LOT easier for a
family friendly app like OP's than the average. I'd also assume the vast
majority of native apps don't get featured.

It's well-intentioned advice, but the cost-benefit analysis is nowhere near
that simple.

------
yeukhon
Great tips for an aspiring startup founder. I agree completely.

In particular the “mobile-only” resonates with me well. I have seen a number
of products only provides a homepage to send me to their appstore/google play.
In some cases I was trying to see what job openings were available. I was
suprised to see no “career” page. Hmm Did they hide that in the webconsole /
developer console? Nope!

So please do not do that to both your users and your potential hires. Your
modern website should be mobile friendly, and if you are mobile-focus like
instant messenger, that makes sense - but I recommend adding a desktop version
later. I have facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Telegram installed on my Macs
so (1) I don’t need to switch gears constantly, and (2) there are times I need
to transfer stuff over from desktop...

Partnering with people in the same pace is a great idea. For example. Reaching
out to Youtubers who are parents early on, brainstorm with them, and invite
them to your paid sponsorship could help in your case.

At last, I am surprised you are able to register winnie.com. I would have
expected it taken and if so I wonder how much it cost to buy it.

~~~
abraae
Indeed, any startup founders that are not aspirating will fail almost
instantly!

~~~
yeukhon
Nice catch! Thanks noticing the misspelling.

------
fabianuribe
I love this kind of posts, by sharing the anecdotes of what worked and what
didn't, they provide a glimpse into the inner workings and strategies for one
of the biggest challenges for any startup, plus most likely will generate a
considerable influx of new users from the post itself. Everybody wins.

------
sebleon
Kudos - 100k MAU is an extremely impressive feat. This is an excellent post,
very succinct and punchy advice. Especially interesting to hear about the role
of web and email in growth, advice around using ads to develop company
positioning is great.

------
greggarious
You could just use fake users like Reddit did.

[https://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-
users/](https://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-users/)

------
tmatthewj
Thanks for admitting the failures you picked on the way. Since you said
Mobile-only was a terrible thing to do, how did you decide Winnie has to be a
mobile app and not a simple mobile responsive website in the first place?

I'm really curious how product folks decide to go mobile-first, especially in
many cases where the user interacts with the app once a week or less
frequently. Would love to know how you decided on this with the assumptions
you made.

------
mkalygin
This is very interesting strategy. Thanks for the good article.

Could you elaborate on the content-growth strategy? I'm really curious since
in some business ideas I'm usually stuck with "chicken and egg" kind of
problem. I believe there is no universal strategy here, but what worked for
you except this special onboarding flow for users in new markets?

~~~
annekate
It's in the article. Provide the supply yourself (content) while you build
demand (users). Do things that don't scale.

One specific example is that we saw a lot of demand for information on child
care, so we researched over 5000 local daycares & preschools and created very
comprehensive pages for all of them. This sounds like a lot of work but it
actually wasn't that bad. Once we had done that we were instantly the best
place in the SF Bay Area to research daycares and find open spaces. Word
spread like wildfire and we climbed the Google rankings quickly as well. Now,
we no longer have to collect data manually, because the daycare providers come
to us to reach their audience of customers. So it delivered growth on both
sides of the network in a sustainable, ongoing fashion, and only required a
one-time upfront investment in content creation.

~~~
mherdeg
Cool, when do you expect to gather daycare data outside the Bay Area? I see
one total daycare listed in my ZIP code (in the Boston area) and the search
results page doesn't say anything like "we know this is a tiny number of
listings, sign up here to be notified when we reach your area" (at
[https://winnie.com/search?category=childcare&near=[zip]](https://winnie.com/search?category=childcare&near=\[zip\])
).

~~~
annekate
Childcare data in 50 states is coming early in 2018.

~~~
mherdeg
Very cool, thanks!

------
yakshaving_jgt
What if your product doesn't really have any inherent network effects? How do
you incentivise your paying customers to share the platform that's giving them
a competitive edge (my SaaS is B2B)?

~~~
annekate
You could do an ambassador program of some kind (check out The Skimm, they
have a great one). But I wouldn't expect people to eagerly spread the word
about solutions. For B2B you should be investing in content marketing and SEO
above all else. Other clever ideas are like what Slack did; make it friendly
enough for a consumer to use, and then that consumer ends up advocating for
the product to their organization.

------
miradu
The advice to not only rely on push and native mobile hits home hard - despite
it being cool - email, text, and the web still work really well to bring the
customers in!

~~~
myf01d
But mobile app stores could be easier way for users to find your product using
search, am I wrong?

------
40acres
Very interesting perspective w.r.t going native. Does that mean you would
advise to use Swift/Obj-C & Java/Kotlin as opposed to React Native?

~~~
annekate
If you have the choice, yes. You'll regret React for many reasons but you are
so, so much less likely to be featured with a React app, even a great one.
Suck it up and learn Swift/Kotlin (not that hard) and if you can get your app
featured that's a cool 10-20k installs for free.

~~~
skeet
Sorry, but this is bad advice.

------
subirm
Great post. We at Rave Analytics just got out of stealth.We enable retail
investors to discover market structure in real time. This is good advice for
us to keep up our growth. We are already working on a native experience and
email.The part about the network effects is quite interesting too. Its really
hard to get network effect

------
intrasight
How about getting 100 active users paying you $500/month each?

~~~
wellboy
Only possible with SaaS and a few exceptions.

------
agentofoblivion
Interesting use of the word "users".

------
subirm
Great post. We just got out of stealth -
[https://raveanalytics.com](https://raveanalytics.com) .We enable retail
investors to discover market structure in real time. This is good advice for
us to keep up our growth. We are already working on a native experience and
email.The part about the network effects is quite interesting too. Its really
hard to get network effects going.Makes sense to focus on the demand side
first.

------
subirm
Great post. We just got out of stealth and have launched a site that makes it
easy for retail investors to discover market structure in real time -
[https://raveanalytics.com](https://raveanalytics.com) .We could definitely
use some of the advice here to fuel our growth.

Going native on the mobile and email is something we are already working on.
The advice about focusing on the demand side first is really interesting
too.Network effect is great but its easier said than done and really hard to
get it going.

