Ask HN: How did you acquire your first customers for a consumer SaaS? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did you acquire your first customers for a consumer SaaS?

14 pointsguywithahat11 comments

This is a common question, but the answer evolves quickly and new startups are constantly trying new things and discovering new customer bases. Now seems like as good at time as any to ask again.

Here are some previous threads, ranked in order of most to least helpful (in my opinion at least):

2017 Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191161

2021 Ask HN: How to get first 10 paying customers? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26134790

2022 Ask HN: Where and how do you find your early adoptors? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31930935

2023 Ask HN: How do you get your first customers? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35833216

2021 How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819548

If you've found anything has or hasn't worked for you in the past, let us know!

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- I tweeted every time I was thinking about a feature, building a feature, and released a feature

- I tweeted random things I learned about running a business, as I learned them

- I tapped my personal network on LinkedIn to find out what folks were currently using, and how they were dissatisfied

- I charged way too low and attracted un-ideal customers

- I made a free tier to compete with other providers that also charged way too low

- I wrote changelogs for every big feature

- I wrote docs for every feature

- I kept a mailing list where I would update folks about the product's progress

- I kept a mailing list where I would update folks about running the SaaS

- I talked about OnlineOrNot on Reddit, Hacker News, in the aim of inspiring people to launch their idea in a highly competitive space

- I shared OnlineOrNot on popular lists (Product Hunt, etc)

- I made landing pages that resonate with folks looking specifically for my type of product

- I built features customers asked for

- I would spend one week marketing, followed by one week coding, and repeat

- I was extremely responsive to customers via email and chat

- I kept improving the product, adding features, and revisiting features

There's probably a lot more, but that's what comes to mind first.

> - I made landing pages that resonate with folks looking specifically for my type of product

As a consumer SaaS tool, what kind of data convinced you to go with a landing page over directly to the tool itself?

Purely vibes.

I didn't have thousands of views yet to get statistically significant results, all I could do was guess.

I found better results with LinkedIn in promoting my business and getting site visitors. It’s so satisfying when something eventually works! Tbh I am surprised as I wasn’t the biggest fan of LinkedIn in the past. On the contrary, reddit has proven very difficult to promote anything. HNs is also tricky, so many posts lol. Facebook groups relevant to you are anither option! I also find that organic growth and referrals from close trusted friends have higher success rates at sharing your message. All the best!

I made a vscode extension which I charge money for. I mainly relied on reddit + seo to gain users. Eg: I made interesting reddit posts, and made a pretty website. Then users find it organically

In my observation of some successful sales folks:

* Build a relationship of trust with key people inside the customer org

* Keep showing up (literally) and be friendly and helpful

* Frame the ask as a trial or something that fits in their business patterns and budgets

They are asking about a consumer SAAS

Ah right, my bad. I was definitely thinking more about b2b.

I run a SaaS which, increasingly, seems to resonate with a conservative parents, so I've started targeting more conservative media and social media. I am a little concerned about public image in the future, but that seems more like a problem to deal with after I have a meaningful amount of customers.

Betalist/Pitchwall - These both feel scammy to me. You sign up, and then they try to extract a few hundred dollars from you to list your product. For a non-target audience who probably doesn’t exist this seems like a bad idea. I haven’t used ProductHunt yet, however I am suspicious of it too, despite them having a greater market dominance.

Reddit (and scored.co) - Reddit has proved difficult, because it has strict account age rules and karma requirements for posts. The subreddits I want to post to also usually have strict spam rules, which would include my posts (even though I’d hardly count a CEO doing a Q/A on his product spam, but I digress). Sticking with the conservative theme I also tried scored.co, which had the best sign up rate, althoguh ultimately though my posts were still removed due to spam/off topic rules.

4chan - Famously (allegedly?) Notch got all of Minecraft’s early customers through 4chan, so it seemed like it could be a good idea. Unfortunately I found it wasn’t. I got a lot of interaction, more than hacker news with dozens of comments, but neither post showed any click through. I also ran ads; these were very cheap, at around $0.08 per thousand views, however they had unbelievably low click through rates and even worse sign ups. I got more people offering to work for the company than trying to buy our product.

Quora - This is nice in the sense they aren’t banning me, however timing questions seems to be tricky. I’ve answered old questions which get no new traffic, and I’ve yet to find appropriate new questions to answer. I’m also watching stack exchange, which has a parenting exchange, however it has the same waiting issue.

Twitter/Truth Social/Gab - Twitter is actually great for messaging influencers, I've been surprised with how many major influencers message back even if I'm not verified (although I haven't really made anything happen yet). I also find on smaller sites (Gab/Truth), the group feature can be a great benefit, as people do watch and interact with it groups. I am recently verified on Twitter though, so I'll have to see if that helps with anything. I suspect you could use mastodon.social and have similar results for more left-wing targeted ads. One thing I've also been trying (which I've heard works) is responding to popular posts with your account to drive traffic. While some replies have received attention, it hasn't driven any traffic.

Obviously I am OP, I just didn't want to pollute the description with my comment.

> I run a SaaS which, increasingly, seems to resonate with a conservative parents

A service that blocks "pro-lgbt groups" and "pro-atheist content"[1] but doesn't block anti-LGBTQ groups, racist groups, anti-science content, beliefs in the supernatural, etc. "seems to resonate with a conservative parents"? LOL!

[1] https://www.parentcontrols.win/content_filter_faq

I don't know if this is more obvious to you than you let on but in case it's not, your software at first glance seems potentially harmful to children and is very clearly biased towards a conservative viewpoint.

It shouldn't be a suprise to end up with the user base you did when you are intentionally (or possibly unintentionally) biasing your filter the way you do.

With all due respect, the filter list reads like a list of things a drunk uncle would complain about at the family BBQ. I mean really chatGPT girlfriends???

To give some constructive criticism, I think you need to take a step back and decide if you are building a politically motivated tool or not. I want to be clear that what you have here is not representative of the moral status quo in the United States. It can be easily to think it is depending on the circles you frequent but it's statistically just not.

Consulting with someone to help eliminate politically bias in the filtering could go a long way to improve your potential customer base. Most parents I know would take one look at this and run.

In a very general sense I think your site feels too technical. Are people who can't control their children's computer usage really reading patch notes and switching website themes from a drop down?

Sorry if this sounds harsh. I originally intended to just write about the last point but after looking more into the site it became clear that there are bigger problems here.

Edit: As has been pointed out it's not so much about what you included as it is what you left out. You could potentially eliminate the bias just by balancing this list considerably. At what point do you just make an allow-list though lol?

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