How did you get your first 100 users/customers?
For my last company we did automated outreach on LinkedIn. I was very skeptical that this could work (circa 2021), but it absolutely did. We used @meet_alfred for this. We tried cold email, trade shows, affiliates, etc. but LI was the channel that accounted for more than 90% of our revenue. The key was identifying the right ICP which is often hard to do with Sales Navigator so we used tools like Apollo, @ZoomInfo and @Clay to generate the right list of leads and then used Meet Alfred to create personalized outreach. As the technical co-founder, I was very apprehensive that this would work and would just feel spammy, but it absolutely worked.
Here is what we did to get our first 10 paying users:
Pre Launch
1.We shared our challenges and asked for feedback during the building phase (design, user persona, pricing, marketing, basically anything).
2. Help and support others, and make friends on Twitter.
3.Engaged in conversations where people are talking about the problem we were solving (you can use F5Bot, a free service that emails you when your selected keywords are mentioned on Reddit or Hacker News).
Soft-Launch
4. Create a no-brainer offer and DM potential users to share their feedback.
5. Reach out to users over DM of our previous product.
6. Joined the PH community on LinkedIn and share love with people asking for support and ask for feedback if they are our ICP.
About to Launch
7. Promoted our product in the communities of products we used to build your product (like softr, a no code website builder, has a community)
8. Joined the community of founders/creators we love (our favorite is morningmakershow)
9. Promoted our product on "pitch your product" tweets.
10. Launched on launchpads like Uneed, Microlaunch.
11. Launched our product on relevant platforms and directories.
Cross- Launch
12. Collaborated with founders and platforms having the same audience as ours.
13. Find creators and founders whose products or services work well with ours. (For example, we are building a platform submission service, Boringlaunch so we collaborated with a launch platform to create a bundle of featured listings on the platform with our submission services on other platforms)
Post-Launch
14. Tried ads on social platforms (didn't work out for us, but it may work for you)
15. Overdelivered and ask for a testimonial.
16. Shared your small wins and learning over the internet.
17. Try, try, and try until something works, and double down on what works.
P.S. The order of these steps may vary based on your product, audience, and 99 other factors. So, feel free to adapt and experiment.
I emailed and messaged potential users offering something valuable upfront.
They had a small but engaged audience and their recommendations brought me my first customers.
Sharing my journey, struggles and progress attracted people who wanted to be part of the process.