How To Get the First 1000 Users for Your Startup

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could just build a great product, put it out there in the world and then watch as willing users flock gratefully to sign up for your new masterpiece?

It sure as hell would make my life a lot easier. Being a serial startup founder I find myself praying to the user acquisition gods more often than I would like to admit, because getting your first users is bloody hard work. However, over time I have learned that there is some sort of playbook of activities (not a formula, such things are nearly always snake-oil) that will do the job of getting the first users onto your product, regardless of what it is.

In this post I will aim to shed some light on some of these activities while explaining why they work and roughly how long they will take to deliver. These are not tricks or hacks, they are widely used strategies that work for very simple reasons, and are time-tested. I should caveat this by saying that my focus is primarily on tech startups, particularly SaaS businesses with a subscription model, so adjust your expectations accordingly if you are not in that particular sphere. Nonetheless, much of this stuff is pretty generalized marketing strategy so you should be able to get some joy regardless of your sector. YMMV, as they say.

With that said, let’s start with the fundamentals.

When to start acquiring users

If you’ve spent any time at all in tech as either a consumer or industry professional, you will have come across at least one pre-launch landing page. These are the one-page websites dedicated to products that are yet to be launched. They tend to feature a large hero image of some kind, a bit of blurb and some sort of lead capture, normally a big email address field with an inviting “Sign up for early access” button. You know the ones.

What this tells you is that user acquisition can start as soon as you’ve had the idea for your product. In fact, it probably should. If not, you could spend weeks building a product only to discover that nobody wants it, which would be a huge waste of time. Validate your idea first, build second.

I always use Buffer as an example of early validation executed well. You can read about it on their blog here, but essentially they threw up a landing page for the product with some pricing and then tracked which pricing plan people clicked on. Ta-da: validation that not only did people want the product, but that they would pay for it. They started building it after this.

Buffer’s first landing page flow with pricing

This was over 10 years ago now but the principle remains. Throwing up a landing page is easier than ever before now (more on that shortly), so there’s no real excuse for not testing your idea first.

The other upside of getting users early, before you build the product, is that it will help you if you are trying to raise money. Many people assume that fundraising only happens with fully built products — or at least an MVP — but that’s not always true: many early-stage companies have raised money with nothing more than an idea and some evidence that the idea has demand. At Firedrop we raised our first round of funding with a simple prototype that took us two days to mock up, and some social proof that we were solving a genuine pain point. Our second round of funding — still pre-launch — happened because we had used some of the techniques below to acquire 8,000 early beta testers who were all itching to get their hands on the product.

Acquiring users should start as soon as possible.

Cost and speed

The next consideration is how long it will take to get to your first 1000 users. This is a function of effort, specific market, how much money/time you are willing to spend on acquisition, and even a little bit of luck. In short, there is no catch-all answer to how long it will take to get to the 1000 user milestone, but you would be sensible to set aside at least 6–12 months if you’re not really going to go hell-for-leather on this.

Money is obviously also a factor. If you have budget for advertising then your timeline will shorten significantly assuming you have a half-competent advertising strategy. There are marketing agencies who specialize in helping with this, including one I founded for precisely this reason (shameless plug).

Generally speaking though, I will assume you are building a startup with very little budget as you’re just trying to get something off the ground, and will focus this article on non-paid tactics (although you may have to pay small mounts for things like website hosting).

1. The foundations

Before you start shouting about your startup from every rooftop, make sure you’ve got your house in order. There’s nothing worse than generating a buzz that dies out because people don’t know what you’re shouting about or how to get involved.

• Get a website. Even if you’ve decided you’re not going to collect email addresses at this stage (for which I hope you have a great reason), you need to have a destination for people to land on. There are loads of options available for getting a website online quickly, but my personal favourite for early stage startups is Unicorn Platform. It’s just so simple to use, looks great, and you can hook up an email field to something like Google Sheets just to get started. It’s very cheap too.
• Buy a domain name. Not strictly essential as platforms like Unicorn do provide a URL for you, but it is highly recommended. A professional domain is more likely to get users to sign up because it provides assurance of professionalism. Domains are dirt cheap nowadays, you can get a .com or a .co for less than £10 per year. I tend to recommend Namecheap for this.
• Grab your social media URLs. This is a defensive tactic but one you will regret not doing if your startup takes off. Grab the URLs for every single social media channel you can think of. The idea isn’t to start using them all yet, merely to prevent someone else grabbing the name.

As an aside, here are some things not to do at this stage, which I only mention because I’ve seen so many people get over-excited once they’ve got their website online:

• Don’t register a company. Once you’ve registered a limited company you immediately add unnecessary admin to your workload. Hold off until you are taking money from either sales or investment.
• Don’t buy business cards. Honestly, nobody really cares about business cards these days and they’re a waste of money.
• Don’t pay for a professionally designed logo. You’ll probably change your logo once your startup takes off. Just use a free logo builder like Canva’s one for now.
• Don’t quit your day job. It’s going to take you much longer than you think before your startup is going to be able to pay you. Don’t cut off your source of income before you can afford to.

2. The target audience

This might sound boring, but before you can start marketing your startup you need to do some groundwork to ensure you’re doing the right things. As minimums, I would strongly urge you to:

• Create a user persona or avatar. Understanding your target market is one of the most critical things you’ll need to grasp if you’re going to make a success of your startup, not just now but in future too. At this early stage, doing the work of sketching out a proper persona or avatar will really help you to nail the messaging you can use to speak to them, as well as giving you some insights into where to find your users. You can grab a template for a user avatar here.
• Understand the adoption curve. The way people find and sign up for any given product is usually the same: it starts off with a small number of technically savvy enthusiasts who are curious about the product and willing to invest time in trying it out, before the userbase grows through progressive levels of risk tolerance and excitement. At this early stage you’re targeting the first tranche of the curve (see below) — the Innovators — with the goal of getting them to attract the early adopters.

Source: CrazyEgg

• Nail your audience’s pain points. This should have come out of your avatar if you’ve done that, but really understanding your audience’s pain points will give you the focus needed to hit them with the right messaging, in the right place. Don’t just focus on the pain point you’re trying to solve, think about the other related pain points too. This will help you with content marketing (see section 5) as well as engineering-as-marketing (section 6).

This may all sound very obvious, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to actually go through the process of understanding your playing field, as very often our own bias obscures insights that we would miss without going through the thought process in a systematic way. Set aside some time for a brainstorm and write down your user avatar and pain points. You can even stick them on the wall if you’re into that kind of thing.

3. The first 100 users

Now we’re getting into the actionable checklists. Going from 0 to 100 users is a great first step; you’ll feel validated and the thrill of seeing things starting to happen will motivate you. Here’s what you should do.

• Tell everyone you know. So many people miss this obvious step, but it’s a really important and easy one. Broadcast your new startup to your network on social media, email people, talk about it with everyone who might be interested. Encourage them to visit the website and sign up, and nag people to share it with their networks too. You might become a pain in the backside within your social circle, but I’m sure they will still love you and more importantly, want to support you.
• Post it on Betalist and similar sites. There are lots of websites focused solely on showcasing new startups. Betalist is great for pre-launch campaigns and you can get featured for $200 if you have it (otherwise there is a free listing option). Other similar sites which accept submissions at various stages of pre-launch are Betafy.co, BetaTesters.io, 10Words, BetaTesting, LaunchingNext… the list goes on.

That should be enough to get you over the 100 users mark. If it doesn’t, use this as a signal that your product or idea may not be of interest, and you should re-evaluate. Or, keep reading to try some of the other tactics below.

4. Engaging the innovators

Having got your first few users and gained some early validation of the product idea, it’s time to throw yourself into the lions’ den and start targeting the tech enthusiasts. This means engaging with them where they live. Here are some ideas:

• Post your startup on Reddit. If you’re looking for tech enthusiasts, Reddit is the place. It also happens to be the fourth most popular website in the world, which not many people realize. If you’re not familiar, it’s essentially a forum platform with lots of communities — called subreddits — for different interests. There are several subreddits you could post your startup to, including /r/startups, /r/startup_ideas, /r/startup, or even /r/roastmystartup if you’re feeling thick-skinned. You should also target subreddits focused on the topic or pain point your startup is aiming to address, as well as join in with the communities aimed at entrepreneurs such as /r/entrepreneurridealong. Just be mindful of the rules in each subreddit and don’t spam the site. There is a great write-up of relevant subreddits over at Logic Rank.
• Submit to ProductHunt. In many ways, ProductHunt is similar to Betalist et al but with a higher cachet. The idea is to be “hunted”, aka discovered, by one of the website’s members, which adds an element of prestige and authenticity to a listing on the site. It’s also generally a one-shot deal so you need to get it right, but with careful preparation and coordination it can be a huge boost. Here is a guide to help you prepare and launch on ProductHunt.
• Find and engage with relevant people on social. Find and follow influencers in your industry and start commenting on their content. Set up a search term on a tool like Tweetdeck and engage with people who are expressing the pain you’re aiming to address. Join groups and answer questions there. The one thing to keep in mind is the target audience: if you’re after business customers for your B2B startup, focus on Linkedin and Twitter. If you’re targeting young consumers and have good visual content, look on Instagram. Engaging on social is something you need to do alongside your actual posting strategy (more on that next).
• Answer questions on forums and groups. Forums are still a thing in 2022, and many of your users might be found lurking on forums related to your industry or topic. If so, sign up and start answering questions, particularly if they relate to one of the pain points you are aiming to solve. Linkedin and Facebook groups are also decent sources for this. One of the biggest sites for engagement of this nature is Quora, a highly popular Q&A platform where you can really show off your expertise and gain a wide audience. The controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson once wrote a response on Quora that directly led to a book publishing deal. The founders of Unbounce also invested a lot of time early on in answering questions on Quora and other forums.

A bit of groundwork engaging with your target audience in their own communities can pay huge dividends. When Firedrop got posted on Hacker News we acquired 2000 new users in 24 hours!

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Learn more

Due to overwhelming popularity and follow-up questions, I have put the rest of the tips into a free guide that you can download here:

How to Get the First 1000 Users for Your Startup (growthmode.co).

That contains all of the above tips neatly organized into instructions with links, plus another 4 critical tactics.

Good luck!

Originally published at https://www.thegingerviking.com on January 26, 2022.