
Ask HN: How did you find your early adopters? - pwingo
What outreach resources did you go through and how did you target potential users once you had a prototype?<p>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.<p>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?
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akg_67
Three 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
Do you mind sharing a link o your MVP and maybe some ideas on ways you can
monetise the service? Thanks!

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chewxy
I tried a Show HN for one of my projects. It's now dead. For my latest, Fork
the Cookbook (<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.

~~~
MatthewB
I'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
It 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-
brea...](http://preppypaleo.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/paleo-banana-breakfast-
cookies.html)). 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

~~~
guptaneil
I think it really depends on the kind of product and your target market.
Certain types of ads might not be worth the time and effort due to various
factors.

To provide a counterexample though, I'm working on a student planner
(tabuleapp.com). Homework management is a surprisingly big pain point for
students, and we've found that Facebook ads are an excellent way to reach our
audience. Near the beginning of the semester, when the need for a new
organizational tool is highest, we had a lot of success from our first ad with
no time spent on optimizing it. I can't think of a better way to reach
thousands of college students that's scalable and affordable for a startup.

~~~
rolleiflex
Just gave your app a shot (design student here). Some feedback:

As a designer:

* I love the expanding bottom bar and it's a very creative use of that space, you might have in your hands the new "Path menu" phenomenon.

* Your Path menu, on the other hand, could use a little bit more design effort.

* Item details is too busy / roughly designed that it looks busy, would benefit from a second look.

* Your logo on the other hand and above all, is quite awful. You might want to hire a real logo designer or illustrator to get that working.

* "Location" looks like the header of the details box as you're visually connecting them.

As a student:

* I like the idea, and I can immediately see the use case,

* but the intent is unclear in having "duration". Deadlines don't, and it feels like you're trying to replicate google calendar. Removing that ability would make it more clear that it's essentially a deadline app.

* I have different kinds of assignments, so for example this does not work very well for assignments other than those on paper.

* I want to be able to take a photo of the assignment sheet (there is almost always one) and attach it to the deadline.

* Better yet, do OCR on the sheet and fill the deadline for me. That's tricky, but not impossible to get 90% right.

* New Due Date is unclear. I'm not adding due dates, I'm adding assignments.

* There is no point in having a global class name search for a single user.

* It's unclear if the global names listed here are attached to specific universities. If yes, you're not showing me the uni name or allow me to search for it, if not, what's the point?

Here you go. If you need more feedback, reach me from HN profile, happy to
give more. I'll be using your app.

------
LeFever
When 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
How did people sign up if you didn't tell them the product name? Did you not
direct them to the product site?

~~~
LeFever
Haha, 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
This. For my current project, Fork the Cookbook (<http://forkthecookbook.com>)
we found that being personal helps.

------
boyter
Show HN for original project, then iterate on the idea with new one
(<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
I 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
That'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.

------
infogaufire
1\. 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
Wow, can you share any details of what your startup was?

------
olegp
With StartHQ (<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-...](http://www.arcticstartup.com/2013/03/11/starthq-targets-and-launches-
web-apps)

------
adidahiya
You could try submitting to Beta List (<http://betali.st/>). It's also a good
way to keep track of newly released smaller products / startups.

------
plam
Cliche 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.

------
dhirajbajaj
'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>

and blog a few things at <http://blog.51stacks.com>

------
volandovengo
Press 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>.

------
louhong
Business 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.

------
maxua
The 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.

------
ihaveajob
Carry 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.

------
Backerbase
Here'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.

------
timjahn
Go to where your customers are.

When we launched matchist (<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.

------
yesimahuman
We 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
This 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
The 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.

------
sideproject
I also tried "Show HN" and Betali.st for my project - sideprojectors
(<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.

~~~
ibudiallo
I just posted my project on your website. It looks amazing, and the experience
was great. when are you coming out of beta?

------
mattgray
At 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/>

------
brianr
For Rollbar (<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
Wanted to check out your project but your homepage looks broken on my iPhone.
You might want to fix it ;-)

------
meerita
I 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.

------
mdzeng
Recently found out about this site <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.

------
catalogster
Reach 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>. We are building a
platform that lets you easily catalog all your personal belongings.

------
kirillzubovsky
I 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
I 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!

------
jmathai
We 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-
phot...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jmathai/openphoto-a-photo-
service-for-your-s3-or-dropbox-a)

------
nicolasiac
When building <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
That's awesome! Just curious, how did you go about searching for them?

~~~
yoshyosh
Noah Kagan of appsumo literally goes over how you go about this
<http://www.appsumo.com/where-are-my-customers/>. The best videos I've seen on
early customer aquisition hands down.

------
billclerico
at wepay, we cold emailed & cold called fraternities at stanford to see if
they would use our system to collect dues.

------
orangethirty
What have you done already?

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caublestone
Currently 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>

