
How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users - maxgt
https://www.lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-the-biggest-consumer-apps-got
======
alixanderwang
I bet the companies using inventive ways to get their first users like the
ones listed in the article are in the minority (but certainly make for more
interesting stories to read/write about).

I launched a SaaS product recently, and after a pretty successful HN launch,
I've been trying different ways of marketing.

What I learned, and this may be obvious to many, is that the boring path of
getting users by gamifying SEO actually works. I firmly believe that you can
get your first 1K visitors by just using the formula of writing content. You
don't even have to be good at writing -- target some keywords, use good SEO
hygiene, have a high enough word count, and people will at least come.

I pumped out some mediocre blog posts with clickbaity titles [1] just to test
it, and I was surprised to see it work, bringing in consistent weekly traffic.
A popular Chinese blogger including a one-liner about my product in his blog
in February is the sole source that brings ~1-2 Chinese users (actually signed
up) to my app every day 3 months later.

[1] [https://terrastruct.com/blog/10-tips-diagrams-system-
design-...](https://terrastruct.com/blog/10-tips-diagrams-system-design-
interview/)

~~~
StavrosK
Can you very quickly summarize the basics here? How do you find which keywords
to target, how do you include them in your content, what's good SEO hygiene,
what wordcount do you need, etc?

Basically, I'm not really aware of how you do SEO marketing, and would like to
learn.

~~~
alixanderwang
I basically just read this to learn:
[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-
seo/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/)

and watch patio11's talks on microconf.

I don't feel like qualified enough to give advice (also these are short term
results, they say SEO takes ~6 months to yield results), so you should refer
to his stuff.

~~~
StavrosK
Good enough, thanks!

------
nojvek
Beware of survival bias. This article tells a tale that if you do similar
things, you’ll get a billion dollar success too.

Suppose a black founder was out in the mall asking to install an app on your
phone, security would drag them away.

Most of the founders went to prestigious colleges with enough connections and
saved income to let them work on ideas before it became profitable. As the
income divide gets larger, less and less Americans have that luxury.

For every founder that made it, they’re prolly 100s that didn’t make it even
if they did the same things.

For a large chunk of the planet, surviving to day is a struggle, they can’t
weather out months blowing their only savings on an idea that may or may not
work.

This is why most founders tend to be white men from mostly wealthy
backgrounds. Most VCs are in a similar demographic and would fund them, so
it’s somewhat a self fulfilling cycle.

~~~
rofws
This.

IMO, every successful founder has had at least one of these things in
plentiful when starting up - money, connections, or deep insight into a
painful problem. Luck, of course, cannot be overlooked.

I think learning what worked for someone is good. But more important is
learning what did not work (which is only realised in hindsight)

There is a subreddit called r/shutdown. I keep visiting it from time to time
to learn what not to do.

------
CM30
Surprised the Reddit 'solution' to this (fake accounts and activity until real
people decide to join) isn't on the list. Fake it til you make it is
definitely a strategy that a fair few successful products, services and
communities used to kick things off.

~~~
jedberg
That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more
appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them.

Reddit used the "tell your friends" method first, and then "have PG blog about
us", which really accelerated their growth, and falls under "Leverage
Influencers".

~~~
FatalLogic
>That's not a strategy to get new users though. It makes a social site more
appealing to new users, but it doesn't attract them.

This statement appears thoroughly contradictory, unless you're using an
unusual definition of either appeal or attract. IMHO most people are going to
see those words having almost the same meaning in the context you used them

In 2012, Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder, was honest enough to attribute
Reddit's initial ability to attract new users to their fake user strategy
first of all [1]. Even while they were doing that, he said, they still needed
a few months to get the site self-sustaining so they could stop faking user
engagement.

In that talk, Steve Huffman never even mentions influencers. Paul Graham
didn't write about Reddit until 3 or 4 months in, after they had retired the
fake user posting, though I agree with you influencers and friends must have
been a help

[1] [https://youtu.be/zmeDzx4SUME?t=28](https://youtu.be/zmeDzx4SUME?t=28)

~~~
jedberg
The fake users are orthogonal to _finding_ new users, which is what this post
is about. The fake users were about retention, not new users. They kept people
using reddit after they found reddit, but it wasn't a way to find new users.

Reddit launched on June 23rd, 2005, and Paul blogged about them in the first
week of August. Only five weeks after launch. They were definitely still using
the fake users then. In fact when I joined the company in 2007, we still had
the ability to create new users on submit, we just didn't do it anymore.

Steve probably just didn't mention the PG blog post because he forgot. If you
ask him, he'll gladly tell you about how PG basically forced the wide release
of reddit by blogging about them despite Steve's objections.

------
nickbauman
What about the PayPal way? They took a certain amount of VC money and used it
to buy and sell on EBay and demand to pay/sell using only PayPal. It basically
acted as a parasite on EBay until they reached critical mass. I call it
"gamification of established platform". Diabolical but effective. PayPal's
company mascot should be the Sea Lamprey.

~~~
tomcam
I believe the primary way they succeeded was giving away money. When you
signed up they'd give you $10. Later it was reduced to $5. You could also get
that amount by signing up friends

~~~
bigtones
This is the same way Square's cash app has grown very fast to 50 million
users, buy giving away $5 to each new user referred.

~~~
chii
would uber count? They subsidize the cost of rides to get users.

------
hoorayimhelping
> _Below, you’ll find first-hand accounts of how essentially every major
> consumer app acquired their earliest users_

Did anyone follow through on the links? Some of these "first-hand accounts"
just redirect back to this guy's blog, some of them are just blurbs from other
media. I looked at the Etsy one and it's a story by an economist with no first
hand accounts by anyone at Etsy.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Is the author actually using some of the tricks described in other comments
here to gain traction?

------
blueside
This article fails to include how Airbnb really got their first users -
creating several accounts and mass emailing all the landlords on Craigslist

~~~
lennysan
That's how they (allegedly) got supply, not demand, which is what I focused on
in the post

~~~
akrymski
Posting fake homes on Craigslist is the common strategy to get demand.

------
jacobobryant
A strategy I've been thinking of for my startup (10-20 WAU currently ) is
going through old HN discussions that are relevant to my product, finding
people who I think would be interested in it based on their comments, and
emailing them with a quote from their comment and an explanation of why I
think they specifically would be interested. (and then ask them to try it out
& give feedback).

I thought of this since I was reading a discussion last night that made me
think "this is a perfect use case for what I'm building!", and I've had the
same thought with a few other discussions in the past.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has tried something like this.

~~~
mohsinhaider
I have utilized this approach, but on Reddit instead of HN. I launched a tool
I was working on and got my very first users from Reddit who were passionate
about the topic. Now, those users are evangelists and they've helped spread
the word to their communities which has lead recent numbers hovering around 2k
WAU.

~~~
egfx
Do you have any sample of a thread that you used for this strategy? I have a
content generator app and have been using reddit on my own and having fun
entering photoshop contests but I want to branch out and get evangelists of
people in other ways on Reddit.

~~~
mohsinhaider
The posts I made were simply a description of what I had built and a link to
my app. There are two things to focus on in your post: 1) do not use marketing
speak and 2) talk about the features in the app that would be the most
valuable to those users and why.

------
paulryanrogers
> Corey's plan was to infiltrate these communities. He wouldn't announce
> himself as a Netflix employee. ... and slowly, over time, alert the most
> respected commenters, moderators, and website owners about this great new
> site called Netflix.

Strikes me as unethical. Unless their alerts disclosed the relationship.

~~~
alain_gilbert
What's unethical about it ?

He talk about something that might be of interest for these people.

It doesn't sound like he was spamming or doing anything annoying.

It sounds to me like a more human way of doing advertisement. The only
difference is that he is actually there to have an actual conversation about
it.

~~~
gdhbcc
Generally advertising regulations require you to disclose any relationship
with the company.

That's why youtuber put #ad on their videos

~~~
bigtones
No, under US law you're required to disclose if you have been paid
specifically by a third party to promote their product or service. You don't
have to disclose a mear 'relationship'.

~~~
hnick
An employee is being paid. Is that a specific exemption?

I don't know what they count as advertising per se but if endorsement via
private message counts then the FTC's page[0] calls this out as "position with
the company":

"Connections between an endorser and the company that are unclear or
unexpected to a customer also must be disclosed, whether they have to do with
a financial arrangement for a favorable endorsement, a position with the
company, or stock ownership."

[0]: [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/adv...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road)

------
jhgg
Discord's first cohort of users came from the final fantasy XIV subreddit -
after a friend of the cofounder posted there after trying out the app. It's
been all uphill from there.

~~~
codeisawesome
Sorry to be that guy, but 'things were uphill from <point>' means something
got super difficult (as in running uphill is hard) - not sure if that's what
you were shooting for.

~~~
vczf
I believe they reversed the "it all went downhill from there" idiom.

------
petargyurov
> Get Press

Always wondered about this - do I just email an news outlet and tell them "my
story" and see if they roll with it?

I'm starting to advertise my business around with the idea of growing a
userbase before the official release. Ironically enough mentioning a link to
it on my previous HN comment lead to more visitors than either of the Facebook
or Reddit ads that I put up.

With that said, if you're into 3D printing, see
[https://makely.me](https://makely.me)

~~~
Monroe13
Yes, absolutely. Do your homework and find a reporter/ blogger that, based on
past reporting, you think would be interested in your company.

Email them and keep it short, make it timely (what have you accomplished
recently, how is it relevant to a current event or trend) and offer to provide
other pieces of the story (e.g. do you have a customer or investor who’d be
willing to speak to the reporter? Do you have photos, graphics, data you could
send the reporter). Offer to jump on a call and speak on the record.

One mistake I’ve seen founders make is they treat the reporters as a marketing
channel. I.e they want the reporter to help them “get the word out.” That is
not a reporters job. Their job is to bring their readers timely, interesting
and novel stories, so your goal is to help the reporter accomplish that.

~~~
petargyurov
> One mistake I’ve seen founders make is they treat the reporters as a
> marketing channel

This is what I am afraid of doing and why I've been a bit apprehensive about
it. Thanks you for your advice, it actually really helped.

------
FpUser
I had zero problems acquiring first 1K customers for my product. Just spammed
some relevant forums. Actually I got way more then 1K this way. Problem was
that said amount was not making it worth for me. And acquiring more presented
a challenge. Basically lacking external investment to increase market share by
whatever means I put that particular product on a diet (invest few hours here
and there). Since then it brings me small but steady income without investing
much. As I have other products and also create those for other companies I am
ok and happy with what I got for my efforts. But if I had to live from that
single product it would not be a comfy life to say it mildly

~~~
mromanuk
Are you commenting on every thread and linking to your site? How do you spam a
forum? (Genuinely asking)

~~~
FpUser
I did not comment on every thread. But I do answer some relevant questions on
forums where my answer is likely to be appreciated and my signature is linked.
Sometimes write short semi-article in the post (same thing with the
signature). Also do product announcement once per forum. Sometimes they have
rules against it but they also often let it slide. At some point was noticed
by some reviewers and that had some positive outcome as well.

But as already said nothing really stellar in that particular product I
mentioned

------
goatherders
A relatively well known and highly funded managed WordPress company got its
first X,000 users by offering free accounts to people with audience in
exchange for being able to place links on the site that juiced the SEO. It
wasn't "Powered by hosting company X" but rather things like "Best WordPress
Hosting" and "How to Update WordPress".

SEO juice + new/immature sector = lots of FOS traffic/users.

------
fbnlsr
Shouldn't Netflix be in the "offline" category?

They started as a mail DVD service, didn't they?

~~~
tedsanders
They did start by mailing DVDs, but you ordered them from a website, not a
print catalog or a phone number. Delivery was physical, but ordering was
digital. This is similar to DoorDash or Lyft, where you order digitally and
then wait for something physical to arrive at your doorstep.

------
andrewfromx
I thought for sure this article was going to mention Bird or the other scooter
companies that followed. But leaving the vehicles on the street was the way to
get first 1,000 users for sure. What is the next thing that can be done this
way? I've often thought it should be cheap android phones set with a custom
build of android that does something very simple. Like display a bright green
background and some text like "take me i'm free!" and some way to encourage
the taker to charge the device and place it back in circulation.

------
pritambarhate
Shameless plug: A bit old blog post from my company on the same topic. A bit
more mobile app-specific. A little old but most of it is still relevant:
[https://mobisoftinfotech.com/resources/blog/top-34-technique...](https://mobisoftinfotech.com/resources/blog/top-34-techniques-
to-get-first-100000-downloads-for-your-app/)

------
jedberg
I used to do that Apple store trick with reddit.

~~~
lennysan
That's amazing

------
1cvmask
Looking forward to the version on B2B and B2D SaaS companies.

------
sharker8
What's that first app in Create FOMO, the logo with the Bill Murray
lookalike's face? Honest question, not trolling.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Clubhouse, apparently? Which is some kind of faddish social networking app
that will never be heard from again after they run out of their current round
of funding, I assume? [https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-clubhouse-why-does-
silic...](https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-clubhouse-why-does-silicon-
valley-care/)

~~~
hmillison
I thought it was weird to feature Clubhouse when the app launched fairly
recently. Feels like this article is a way to market them?

------
redis_mlc
I've been following these techniques for decades:

1) PG and Viaweb had no traction until they hired a PR firm. Back in the day,
those were $5k to $15k/month.

"It took a painfully long time for word of mouth to get going, and we did not
start to get a lot of press coverage until we hired a PR firm (admittedly the
best in the business) for $16,000 per month."

[https://www.you-books.com/book/P-Graham/Essays](https://www.you-
books.com/book/P-Graham/Essays)

YC now has "BookFace", so I suppose you could just promote to other YC'ers if
you have an account.

2) Hotmail used a footer on every email for viral mindshare.

3) At Yahoo, new properties were announced on internal employee lists and it
was requested that say 500 employees would seed the new service so it didn't
look like a ghost town.

4) Most of the social networks spammed your contact list to go viral. Or just
changed preferences underneath what you set, like Linkedin and Facebook.

5) Most of the dating sites early on send emails from women, even when you
don't have an account on those sites!

~~~
bemmu
As for 4), it looks like it was indeed very important for Facebook. Here's a
quote from Steven Levy's book "Facebook":

 _For months, the two companies had been feuding over the way Facebook was
scraping data from Hotmail and MSN Messenger products. Facebook had its own
complaint—as retaliation, Hotmail had begun labeling invitations to join
Facebook as spam. According to The Facebook Effect, Moskovitz said that this
caused a 70 percent drop in new users._

Later on when Microsoft buys a stake in Facebook, they stop classifying the
invites as spam.

~~~
redis_mlc
I hadn't read that spam pass statistic before.

IIRC, FB also got MS Messenger chat access for FB messenger for a period of
time after MS' investment, then that abruptly ended (likely the day the
initial agreement expired.)

