
How to Find Your Earliest Users - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/round-table/how-did-you-find-your-earliest-users
======
greysteil
For us (Dependabot) the best advice I ever got was that your initial customers
should come from sales, not marketing, even for a really low-price SaaS
product. I was literally giving Dependabot away for the first 6 months of its
existence, but I was still doing concierge sales on it.

When you sell to customers directly you get to hear their reactions and get a
much better sense of what's valuable to them. You also make yourself more
approachable if/when they've got feedback down the line. Finally, you get a
predictable return to your effort (even if it's low!), which prevents the kind
of boom and bust that can burn you out in the early days.

I'd really, really highly recommend anyone else looking to start a B2B
business take the same approach, even if your product is way too cheap for
sales to be scalable.

~~~
tnolet
This hits home. Literraly signed up the first paying customer for my
monitoring SaaS [0] two days ago. It was done through discussing issues over
mail, a tiny bit of “hand holding” and treating the customer as a launching
partner (which they totally are). That first Stripe notification is pretty
awesome [0] [https://checklyhq.com](https://checklyhq.com)

~~~
adventured
Just checked out your site. Two things I ran into, the first was that the site
seemingly wouldn't load. So I quickly typed in
[https://www.checklyhq.com](https://www.checklyhq.com) and it doesn't resolve.
Then I went back to the original url and gave it a bit of time, took maybe
eight seconds to load the content, and it's doing that every time (HN flood?).
It seems like something is fully loading, blocking the page load, before it
finally displays the whole page.

Anyway, I'd definitely suggest redirecting the www to the naked domain.

~~~
tnolet
Thanks for the tips. Crazy how things like this can slip. The site is static
and on AWS Cloudfront, but it's a quick port from the actual Vue.js app which
makes it rather big. Will make it server rendered (and faster) in the future.
For now just reshuffled some v-cloak tags which should result in a quicker
experience.

------
danenania
For a tech product, look no further than where you are right now. HN has been
one of the best sources of users for EnvKey[1], a developer-focused
configuration and secrets manager. While HN has a reputation for toughness,
it's also full of early adopters who will give you great feedback and be
understanding as you figure things out.

And don't be afraid to play small ball. Of course it's amazing to get on the
front page of HN, PH, big subreddits, etc., but it's also hit-or-miss and
subject to the whims of the hivemind. Posting comments in relevant threads is
slower, but it can drive a surprising amount of traffic over time, and the
conversion rates will often be _much_ higher than a 'featured' placement.

Of course, you need to take care that you're adding something to the
discussion and not just advertising. Basically, your comment should be able to
stand on its own as something valuable _without_ any mention of your product,
but make people curious about what you're doing, so that by the time they get
to your link, they actually want to click it and learn more.

Another tip: if you have a product that has sdks for various languages,
integrations with other platforms, etc., treat each one as a mini-launch to
that community. It's often _much_ easier to get attention with "here's a cool
new thing for Elixir" vs. "here's something for everyone".

1 - [https://www.envkey.com](https://www.envkey.com)

~~~
graystevens
This has definitely been the case for me over at breachinsider.com too – the
ShowHN brought our first handful of customers, which have been a real delight
to work with and completely fit the description outlined above... they
understand the position we are in, and are happy to report issues or bugs they
find (and are happy when we fix them in hours rather than weeks).

Generally speaking (and not in anyway a comment directed at the lovely people
behind EnvKey), it can be a double edged sword, as if you are seen to _only_
plug your business, even if you do add to the conversation, it can come across
as a little disingenuous or pushy. So if you do take this route, don’t forget
to be human and post normally sometimes.

~~~
danenania
> So if you do take this route, don’t forget to be human and post normally
> sometimes.

Great point. As an inveterate HN addict, this isn't an issue for me, but it's
important to strike a balance.

It's like asking friends for favors. It's totally fine, but if it's the only
reason you ever get in touch, it will start to get old.

------
mrskitch
When I started browserless.io, I was having a heck of a time getting Chrome
running properly in Docker. After about 1 month of hit-n-miss `docker build`'s
(which was taking ~15 minutes each time due to the amount of deps and lack of
layer caching therein), I decided to sort popular open-source libs by comments
and reactions. To my surprise I wasn't the only one experiencing this issue!

This actually turned out to help in two ways: I knew _exactly_ what to build,
and where to find first users. After that I point I really haven't had to
market or even cold-call anyone since (thanks to SEO and GitHub) most folks
find the solution when there in the midst of the problem.

If you're looking to build something, and are tech-savy, I think it's an
interesting thing to go to popular OS projects and do some research. It'll
open your eyes as to what others are needing and (sometimes willing) to pay
for.

~~~
gitgud
I agree, you can find a lot of peoples pain points from just going to forums.

Looking back now, it amazes me at how often you see people crying out for a
solution that they want to pay someone for. Mainly CMS plugins, but there's
still a lot of opportunity out there.

Also, nice product!

------
himynameisdom
Common sense theme here: focus on a small group of people and delight them. If
they're having the same problem, chances are others are as well. Be authentic,
work smart, and deliver value based on what people are telling you.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I liked this for contrast:

 _Additionally, when we started the company I didn 't have much money, but I
saw that the most commonly searched term for SoundCloud producers was "How do
I get more Reposts on SoundCloud?" A repost on SoundCloud is like a retweet on
Twitter, so artists want as many of them as possible so their music will get
heard.

I thought if I named the company Repost and dominated the SEO on that specific
search we could get some free inbound traffic. My assumption worked. I believe
if you search "SoundCloud repost" in Google we're one of the top hits, and
something like 25% of our inbound applicants come organically._

~~~
daveguy
I found this one very interesting too. I wanted to ask the founder how he knew
"the most commonly searched term for SoundCloud producers was..." Is this
somethig someone just threw out as a bit of anecdotal evidence? A running joke
in the community or common knowledge among fellow producers? Or was there a
specific analysis of say Google trends he did to come up with this nugget of
insight? I think if you can identify a common search terms for a niche group
then you can find common problems to solve... But how did he do that or know
that?

~~~
mch82
As part of its marketing products Google used to have a keyword analysis tool
that enabled the look up of search statistics for keywords. It also recommend
keywords based on a target URL. They’ve changed their tools since I used it
last, but I assume something similar still exists.

The approach of discovering a keyword niche and targeting it is harder now
that more people know about the technique.

------
soperj
I'm going through this right now with my real estate related site
OpenHouseTour[1]. It's definitely different (and eye opening) when you're
dealing with clients that aren't as savvy with computers and you're having to
explain how to do things like copy and paste. I try to take the XKCD one of
the lucky 10,000 approach and just think about how much time learning this
will save them in other parts of their life, but sometimes it's hard.

1 - [https://www.openhousetour.ca](https://www.openhousetour.ca)

~~~
hluska
If you're struggling with that kind of support, I recommend that you start
playing a game. It's called "learn something new every contact".

The rules are simple. Whenever you talk to a client you haven't spoken to
before, your goal is to learn something new. It might be something new about
your product/problem, but it could be completely unrelated. Hell, through the
years I've learned how to make an insanely good brine for turkeys, piss off
Mormons in Utah and make a killer whiskey sour.

I recommend this because at this point, that level of support you're providing
is business development, so the impression you leave is very important.
Clients tend to feel very awkward when they have simple problems with someone
they deem an expert. And, if you can provide that level of support while
seeming genuinely interested in your clients, you'll win more than you lose.
Try it!! Worst case scenario, you might learn to make a turkey so good you'll
get emotional thinking about it...:)

~~~
soperj
hahaha. Thanks, that's good advice. I'm not the most personable (luckily my
wife is) and honestly when you put it this way it sounds so simple, but for
the life of me I wonder how on earth people manage to do this without feeling
scripted like "what are your interests?". How do you get to the point where
you actually know enough about someone to say hey, that's something they know
that I would like to learn?

~~~
hluska
Unfortunately, the shortest possible answer is really hand wavy and vague.
That kind of knowledge tends to come fairly organically if you really listen
to what people say and aren't afraid to share a little bit about yourself.

When you're in the early stages of a venture, ideally, you know a little bit
about the person you're talking to, know a bit about the problem they're
having and are genuinely interested in how they found you and if your solution
is working for them. That gives you a ton of fertile ground. In this stage, I
love to thank people for using my product, tell them that because my product
is so new it's very important to me that all of my users are very happy, and
then ask them for any feedback or advice they have. It sounds very corny and
scripted (and honestly, it is), but most of the time, if my product is any
good and if it solves a real problem, everyone I talk to will have something.

At that point, it's about always validating what the person says to you. It
doesn't matter if you agree, if you plan to implement the feature, or if you
think it is the most incredibly stupid thing you've ever heard. Someone cares
enough about your product to give you some feedback! Hearing feedback is an
honour and I think it should be treated as such.

If you get those two things down, you'll learn from almost everyone you talk
to. Particularly those people who need a little extra help. And, when you're
working with people who need a little extra help, it's good to validate them
too. Maybe you have a user who has trouble with copying and pasting. That
sucks, but it's also an unbelievable opportunity. As builders, we need people
like that to help us escape our own little, highly technical echo chambers!

Aside from those things, it really just comes down to active listening. If you
listen closely, you'll start to notice that lots of people leave little
threads in their statements. They'll often leave these little threads when
they're about to pause and let you talk. For example, if you ask "how are
you?" someone who is really open to talking will reply, "I'm good, it's a
beautiful day today." That little thread about a beautiful day opens up lots
of questions. If you don't already know where they're from, you can ask. If
you do know, you can confirm, "Ah, you're from Timbuktu, right?"

Also, it's important to note that this only really works if you're genuinely
interested in what people are saying. A big part of the game is knowing when
to stop playing. We live in a world where it's expected to be prosocial and
interested in everyone around you. But honestly, there's nothing wrong with
being selective in who interests you. I would caution you that if you aren't
genuinely interested in what people are telling you, you need to either get
genuinely interested, or you need to replace yourself with someone who is.
But, there's no value judgement in that. We're all programmed differently and
it's all good.

~~~
selestify
Not OP but thanks, this was helpful to me too!

------
TomK32
I'm still weeks from where I want to accept customers... and I'm getting
nervous.

------
yakubin
The title is misleading. It should be “How to Get Your First Users”.

