
How to get your first 100 users as a SaaS startup founder? - nathanganser
https://blog.nat.app/how-to-get-your-first-100-users-as-a-saas-startup-founder-ckbnjyv6v00oajps1v7082imx
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bobbyz
The person who wrote this got my email from the pioneer virtual hackathon
slack channel and sent me this unsolicited email:

Heya!

What a Hackathon :P I arrived on my own, found a team and went off hacking!
Tbh, we were slightly too ambitious and 24h really isn't that much :) So,
while we didn't make it to the finalists, it was tons of fun and I really
enjoyed meeting new people!

And that's why I'm reaching out, I guess you also met cool people with whom
you'd like to stay in touch.. but you know the story: You've exchanged emails,
added them on Twitter, but.. unless your a social monster, it will be
difficult to stay in touch.. just because we're busy and forgetful

I know about that because that's the problem my real startup (We're a Pioneer
startup) is solving. We've built an algorithm that analyses your email
interactions to figure out who you're losing touch with, that way you can
always keep an eye on your gmail contacts and make sure to follow up with the
people that matter.

You can try it out now if you want, happy to chat if you've got questions!!

Have a good one! (I'll get some rest now :P)

Cheers,

Not sure if they’re the person you want to go to for acquisition advice.

~~~
nartam11
What type of person would you trust with acquisition advice? This is a topic
I've struggled with how do you inform target users about your product without
being dismisssed

~~~
bobbyz
Someone who has managed to acquire customers in a way that does not make me
lose all respect for them.

~~~
jlbnjmn
Do you have any examples of outreach methods that you appreciate?

Obviously when something works it's not likely it will be noticed, but I'm
curious if anything broke through without offending?

Also, do you pay for SaaS or are you not at all that demographic?

I personally detest every email marketing attempt that is not a curated
newsletter I intentionally signed up for.

I also don't browse ad funded social media, so that's not reaching me.

And I use ad blockers.

So I guess my question is, how can someone with something that you or I would
want to pay for let us know that it's available? In a way that leaves us
saying "thanks for telling me"?

~~~
throwawaygh
Hackathons and conferences are good venues for advertising this particular
product, and an email/slack message is not a completely unreasonable mechanism
for doing so.

However,

1\. Do it through official channels. If you want to advertise your product by
mass emailing hackathon participants, then _sponsor the hackathon_.

2\. If are not sponsoring, then at least limit your outreach to people who you
actually talked to during the event. Have genuine conversations, tell them
about your product during the conversation, and ask if they'd like a "tree
trial of the pro membership" or whatever. Only follow-up if they are actually
interested.

3\. Most importantly, communicate professionally. That means a well-
structured, concise, convincing, and error-free piece of text. It helps to
list next steps. The message in the OP is, to be frank, a rambling mess of a
narrative with middle school-level grammar errors. I would expect better
written communication skills from a high schooler. Even if I met this person
at the hackathon, and even if I solicited a followup, this email would
probably still make me lose all interest.

~~~
jlbnjmn
Thanks, I think I understand your perspective better. It sounds like you care
more about the lack of genuineness or professionalism than the act of reaching
out and selling, if I'm understanding correctly.

I think the takeaway for me is to work in a space/field of genuine interest so
that building relationships can be a genuine activity.

~~~
throwawaygh
No, it's exclusively the lack of profesionalism. Business is business. I don't
want a "genuine" sales/marketing person. Your product is not my baby.

The right way to do this is to 1) sponsor the event and then 2) send out a
professional email/flyer/whatever pitching the product through the official
mechanism.

~~~
bobbyz
I also want to add that he emailed me under false pretences. He conjured up an
imaginary world in which we were close friends and I cared about what he did
at the hackathon and what he’s doing afterwards (I’ve never met the guy). He
undoubtedly wanted me to believe that he handwrote this email for me alone
when its a copy-paste marketing email that he’d reused many times.

Not only is it dishonest and wastes my time, the execution is so bad I feel
embarrassed for the guy (really? You “arrived” at a virtual hackathon?)

Edit: Oh my god and I almost forgot. He sent this to me at 3:21 AM!

~~~
nathanganser
Hey bobbyz!

I'm really surprised that this is taking so much of your mental energy :/ I
remember you wrote quite an aggressive message on the Hackathon Slack that had
to be removed by admins..

It seems like you took my email so much more serious that you should have!

I definitely didn't want you to feel like I was faking a friendship, this was
a cold outreach done because I believed that this could add value to you.

But it's just cold emailing. I didn't mass email people without a reason :)
You met people, you might not want to lose touch, that's it.

But agreed - totally a grey area - I'm not complaining, I should of course
expect such reactions!

~~~
bobbyz
Grey area? Don't you mean technically illegal in the sender, receiver, and
slack's jurisdiction?

([https://www.fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/00013.html](https://www.fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/00013.html))

([https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+spam+laws&oq=swi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+spam+laws&oq=switzerland+spam+laws&aqs=chrome..69i57.3991j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8))

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ericb
I'm working on a B2B SaaS solution that lets you reuse your Postman and
Selenium tests for load testing. I get stuck on the first 5 or 10, more than
100. How do you convince an enterprise to trust you when you are tiny and new?

~~~
josho
I don’t think you sell to the enterprise at this stage. You sell to a manager
of a department, and keep the deal size small enough that approvals are
contained at that level.

Then expand the account later when you’ve gained traction and can go through
an enterprise sales process.

~~~
Silhouette
Exactly. Unless you already have an established connection to a potential
enterprise customer with the influence to get you in, you're probably not
going to be playing at that level for at least several years.

Fortunately, you also probably don't want to be, because it would mean
investing many resources in a months-long sales process with no guarantee of
getting anything out of it at the end. Unless you have huge amounts of funding
to burn through, your money is probably better spent on activities that
generate revenue more quickly and build up a sustainable cash flow in the
early days.

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Silhouette
Some interesting links for new entrepreneurs who weren't already aware of
them.

Definitely not a fan of buying and spamming an email list.

~~~
nathanganser
Agreed, buying a 100k email list and sending a generic email about a great new
IOS application is silly.

But that's not what I mean by buying and sending emails! The other way works
like this: 1\. Buy a super targeted email list (lets say early businesses that
generate revenue through ads, if you're an ad network company) 2\. Have a
quick look at their website to double check they actually might be interested
and gather some information to add to the email. 3\. Use a tool like Gmass to
send them a personal email like: "Hey {name},

{personal message}

I'd love to show you a short demo.. book a slot here..we help ad-based
business like yourself to... blabla"

I'd personally be ok to get such an email - what do you think?

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archibaldJ
> Advertising

> It will cost you too much. Just don't think about it. In the early days, ads
> are not the way to go.

This is downright self-mutilating!

If you are not considering things like targeted advertising as one of your GTM
I doubt you are building a serious product here.

It just makes no sense to me if you are willing to miss all the valuable
insights you can gain from advertising your product to an actual audience in
the real world (vs in a bubble/hype community, etc) just because you want to
save some bucks.

To find your PMF you need to try everything.

Also, I won't call getting your first 100 users a "growth hack", esp when they
are not even paying customers.

~~~
nathanganser
Interesting! I'm really basing this upon my own experience with ads.

Were you able to get ROI positive ads? Would love to hear your experience!

The closest we got to it was while targeting super niche keywords on Google
Ads.

I found personalized cold emailing to be much more effective :)

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winrid
Depending on your product, you can setup premade demos and try to get and
opportunity to show it to the potential customer.

~~~
nathanganser
Loom.io is great for this!

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ta17711771
> You've got to start somewhere right.

Am I starting somewhere wrong?

------
nathanganser
My first ever submission on HN :)

I'm part of Pioneer.app, a startup accelerator, and many founders ask about
this. They have their first MVP but literally 0 visitors to their website.

Hope this can help! I'd really love it if other founders could suggest
additional actions that early founders can take to get them over the 100 user
mark! I'll add them to the article (with your permission).

