

Ask HN: How did your startup get its first 1,000 users? - ndlx


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tehsin
I am not the ultimate expert, but I have been thinking a lot about this lately
(I quit my job on Tuesday and am launching my own startup), and this is how I
see one great approach to doing it:

1\. First things first, the time to get those initial 1,000 to 5,000 users is
before you officially launch your startup. For Ausobot
(<http://www.ausobot.com>), I created a simple landing page (with LaunchRock).
I put it out yesterday morning and as of today I have about 234 people signed
up.

2\. Neeharc's tip on betali.st is great too. I submitted to it on Friday
evening and paid $15 to get the review expedited. I got an email yesterday
afternoon though that they do not accept LaunchRock created landing pages so
that would be one thing to consider. I am now in the process of creating a
custom landing page.

3\. I also created a simple Facebook Fan page, nothing too creative on it yet
but the idea there is to use that to create posts that trigger engagement
(www.facebook.com/ausobot).

4\. On the Twitter side, the goal is to use the @ausobot to add like minded
followers, and actively participate in discussions where I can add value. I am
not sure what social listening tool I am going to use for this yet (inputs
would be great). My current pick is DataSift. I was playing around with it at
BNOTIONS (where I used to be a Director of Product up until Tuesday when I
resigned / got laid off).

It allows you to filter tweets around specific tags. Use these tags to
identify the users that your startup can add value for. Reach out to them
proactively by offering something they can use. Since this is in real-time,
use context to your advantage. If someone is trying to solve a billing related
issue and you have a billing software, offer tips.

That's pretty much all I have. I don't like the idea of AdWords, I don't like
the idea of paying for acquisition until I have proven the model.

Oh and finally HN of course. I have never been actively participating in HN, I
do peruse the tweets though and I was currently trying to figure out how
people post Show HN and what the rules around that were :) That's of course
another avenue if the story gets picked up(?).

Good luck and would love to hear from others on this.

\- Tehsin Bhayani @tehsin681 www.ausobot.com Founder of the Ausobot, Your
first personal robot.

~~~
147
How'd you get the traffic to the landing page?

~~~
tehsin
These were the main sources that I have been able to identify:

1\. I tweeted out 'The product I have dreamed of making is finally going to be
a reality: <http://www.ausobot.com> Please do sign up for the Beta and RT :)'

I only got 2 retweets despite my plea, and 7 people that tweeted about it
directly.

I wish I could figure out which of these 9 people got me the most of my sign
ups from Twitter. At the very least, what I will do in my next attempt is put
the link on Twitter out with a ?ref code or a separate subdomain altogether.

2\. I posted the link on my FB, and once again despite my (quite an emotional)
plea, I got all of 35 people who willingly posted it on their timelines. This
I think helped me with at least 75% of my sign ups. Each time I saw a share on
the timeline, I would log into Insights, take a look at the sign ups, and
notice them trickle in.

Next steps: What I left out from the above strategy was the idea of talking to
all the mavens (well connected folks).

These 'mavens' fall into two categories: 1\. Those that I know (all 5 of them)
2\. The 200 or so that I wish I knew.

I would make a list of these 200, and listen for when they are talking about
something related that I can contribute about (you can again pay attention and
filter this through DataSift or manually). Contribute, help the discussion,
engage them and try to convert them into advocates of your product.

Does that make sense? This is my first time attempting marketing but I am
trying to emulate (and improve upon) all the success stories as best as I can.

------
neeharc
Put up a good landing page about your startup and start promoting it using
social media and/or ads.

Try using <http://betali.st/>. It's a good way to get the first 100 users or
more. It's not the first 1000 but its a start.

Kissmetrics had put up a good article on how to go about doing this.

<http://blog.kissmetrics.com/landing-page-design-infographic/>

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ndlx
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I particularly found the betali.st
suggestion helpful and will check them out.

I will probably use facebook/google ads after the startup has been validated
by users as we are still in the alpha testing phase. Will keep you posted if I
find out any killer tips for getting more users.

------
tferris
Google

~~~
byoung2
AdWords? SEO? Plus? Groups? Code?

