
How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers - ingve
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-get-your-first-1000-customers/
======
shubhamjain
> There is a fine line between persistence and annoyance. I once had a
> journalist write me after we had an announcement that was covered by the
> press, “Why didn’t you let me know?! I would have written about that!” I had
> sent him three emails about the upcoming announcement to which he never
> responded.

And that's the reason folks why people follow-up. People might share a deep
repulsion towards them and until recently, even I abhorred the idea. But, I
have seen people I emailed respond a few weeks after I sent a follow-up—the
point when I assumed I am pestering and the other guy is getting infuriated.
My email wasn't about selling something, it was a small question around
someone else's work but the general principle applies.

I am not courageous—salesman-type courageous—to send more than one follow-up
but I have consistently seen people winning big deals in the third or fourth
one. It's undeniable that many people will get vexed in the process but
there's hardly any salesperson in the world who didn't annoy that many.

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> Gleb (author) and I have both had that (writers
missing our emails and then being shocked that they missed a story) and it
really does make your heart sink a little bit. We've adjusted our pitch
schedules as well based on the writer and how responsive they are (and what
their contact preferences are - some like 2 weeks notice, others like 2 days,
etc...).

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jpster
I've done PR for startups and this is one of the best, most detailed guides
I've seen about how the sausage is made.

I would add:

Getting good PR in premiere outlets will give you so much more than just the
first 1,000 customers. It can open the door to all kinds of opportunities,
from being invited to speak at the conferences your customers attend, better
recruiting, being noticed for partnership and business development deals, an
being top-of-mind if you start looking for funding.

Embargoes are a tricky logistical detail, if you're using one, you don't want
to leave any room for error. So aside from mentioning it in the pitch, also
include something like "Embargoed until 4/13/17 at 8am California time" in
stand-out font at the top of any fact sheet, press release, etc. that you
share with the journalist and be sure to mention it in all your confirmation
emails.

Once you get awesome PR, figure out the best way for it to live on your site
going forward. I see lots of startup landing pages these days with logos like
TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, etc across the bottom but no links to said
articles. I can understand why, for conversion rate optimization, you may not
want to include the links on your landing page. But for ultimate credibility
and (possibly SEO juice) consider having a separate section on your site for
press where the actual links to the articles can be found.

~~~
zapoist
What are a few "premiere outlets"?

~~~
jpster
TechCrunch, Recode, Fortune, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, MIT Tech
Review, to name a few. Of these TC is the one you would typically go to for
announcing your launch or new funding. The others don't tend to cover launches
of brand new startups and have a higher bar but there are other angles you
might use to pitch them.

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faizshah
I've always thought that the best way to launch is a Show HN and a reddit post
on some related subreddits. Is this a better option for the launch of a
productivity app?

Surely a productivity app launch can't be that interesting for news.

~~~
codingdave
I've found reddit to be a questionable place to get customers. Traffic, sure,
but customers? Not so much. If you want to spike up your traffic for a few
hours, post on reddit. But the conversation rates from reddit traffic are a
fraction of the rates coming from other sources, in my experience.

~~~
faizshah
I've read many posts that suggest your same conclusion, however people seem to
have very positive things to say about reddit ads in terms of conversion rate.

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VladimirGolovin
What is the exact meaning of 'exclusivity' in this context? If I give an
editor exclusivity on some piece of information, does it mean that I literally
can't publish it anywhere else, including my own website?

(BTW, I'm a happy Backblaze customer since their launch. Thanks guys, you're
incredible!)

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simonswords82
So this is odd. This post is currently sat at 44 points but zero comments?

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here - sometimes we jump-start the conversation by saying,
"Hey, we're monitoring the thread if you want to chat." \- but you beat me to
it, I hadn't even noticed it was posted until I saw a tweet a few minutes ago
by a HackerBot :D

~~~
atYevP
Also it's kind of a long post, maybe folks are reading it before commenting?
The title doesn't really give too much away :D

~~~
reitanqild
Confirm.

Sometimes though when things are really interesting but long I'll go back,
upvote and then continue reading to prevent it from dropping off the page.

This is especially true if it is a story from /newest

Also with a few web sites I _might_ upvote it first and then read it :-|

~~~
eriknstr
> Also with a few web sites I might upvote it first and then read it :-|

I can neither confirm nor deny that I do this too but I can say that I think
it makes sense to do this, and I would go as far as to say that I think it's
_healthy_ for the HN community that stories get upvoted by people who have not
yet read the story in full, as long as it doesn't happen too much -- while a
story might turn out to be lacking or even factually incorrect in some way I
think there is opportunity for interesting discussion to be had as long as the
_topic_ at hand is interesting.

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kapauldo
Is yev from backblaze around?

~~~
atYevP
Always...though HackerNews has a horrendous system of notifying me when I'm
mentioned (non) so sometimes I miss these :P

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Cryptogocrazy
I've had a surprising amount of traffic using a simple referral program.

~~~
shanecleveland
Can you elaborate on how you have implemented this?

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mobitar
Related soft piece on getting your first 100 users:

[https://medium.com/@mobitar/how-to-get-your-
first-100-users-...](https://medium.com/@mobitar/how-to-get-your-
first-100-users-9f9d21e1b6e6)

