Startup Tip: How I grew Mint's waiting list to 20,000+ | Hacker News Reader

Startup Tip: How I grew Mint's waiting list to 20,000+

okdork.com

44 pointscrxnamja13 comments

Really really good idea to attack something like this as early as possible...

In the spirit of failing early, this is a great way to figure out where people really what what you think they do. If you can't get a few thousand email addresses, you quite likely have a bad idea or haven't figured out how to talk about it yet.

The phone numbers are a particularly interesting idea, but how did you intend/did you get in touch with all the people after launch? Did you and a few others manually sit around and call 20,000 people?

Every person who uses your service is important, if you can call them personally, great. if you have to email so you can have some hours to sleep then do that. i didn't call but suggested that would be a fun idea to try.

after launch vip emails were sent and then emails were sent to different buckets of people.

love noah's stuff wish he blogged a bit more - classic thing he does is email anyone that comments on his blog

and on news.yc;) thanks J!

in case anyone was curious i started doing this and more 9 months before the techcrunch40 competition. i would say 4 months is a good headway to get this going. i think

a) some sites dont need outreach or trust to be built since their initial users could theoretically spread the product

b)you want to build the relationships and things earlier than you need them.

I don't see anything on the list about winning the TechCrunch 40. That's a good step to add.

To be fair, Noah left Mint around that time period. He did great work at getting Mint noticed before all that.

Yeah, I'm being cheeky. ;-)

I like #2.

Solve a problem and find the people to whom that solution is most valuable. Start there, cater to them, make them passionate, and voila: there's your base!

thanks alaska. hugs! i have part 2 about other things that worked well!

Great article! Some really good tips in there

is 20K really that big? what's the average pre-launch beta list I wonder?

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