How I Got My First 2000 Beta Users

startupbynumbers.posterous.com

31 points·pmjoyce··5 comments

For those that don't want to read it:

He posted on Hacker News and got up to #2 on the front page and got a lot of good suggestions. He then got mentioned on TechCrunch in the first paragraph of an article. He had to shut down invites due to technical issues.

Honestly, this seems pretty standard for getting those 2 things, only 1 of which was his doing.

He is very thankful to the HN community, though.

Just to be clear, I haven't shut down invites due to technical issues. I want to implement a couple of changes before the next cohort arrives as I've had some user retention issues (the subject of my next post). These are being worked on and tested now so hopefully it won't be too long before I can start letting more people in.

Your's truly just applied to be a beta user. The product looks awesome. I would love to try it with my app.

I think that you have a really exciting idea on your hands. I can't wait until the product matures and you can offer some case studies of cool widget dashboards that people have assembled. That way, I can just copy their setups instead of having to wrap my brain around a new technology. Once that kind of thing is ready, I would love to receive an email blast about it on your newsletter. Thanks!

Great idea re the case studies. The aim is to make the dashboard as easy to use as possible and use standard connectors to many services (authenticated via OAuth where that option exists) and have a "reverse API" to allow you to upload your custom data straight on to your status board also. I have a way to go to properly explain the potential benefits.

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