Hey there!
In this week's newsletter, we’re breaking down how we (earlystagefounders.co) got our first few users without an audience and without spending a dime.
The problem: we needed our first few users to get feedback and improve the product.
The approach: we took a more personal approach, leveraging Reddit to find users who were dealing with the pain points we were trying to solve.
The results: after a few iterations, we found the sweet spot. More than 40 interested people and 7 really solid users for an Alpha group.
Key learnings: taking a more personal approach was a good call to get exactly who we needed. Keeping the post short, sweet, and to the point brought us way more activity, and it’s okay to do things that won’t necessarily scale in the beginning - quality over quantity.
When we first started our journey, we faced a common challenge that many early-stage founders encounter: how to attract our initial users without an existing audience or a marketing budget.
We needed to find a way to connect with potential users and demonstrate the value of our product without spending money on ads or relying on established channels.
With no brand recognition and limited resources, we knew that reaching our target audience was going to be a difficult task of trial and error.
We had used Reddit before to do research on our target audience, asking questions about what challenges early stage founders are facing when building their businesses.
To adapt this approach from a research focus to (essentially) a marketing focus, we would need to talk about our project and give a call to action - two things that are usually forbidden on Reddit.
For our first try, we just went for it. We briefly explained the concept and offered to bring on a few people as part of a cohort… we saw mixed results.
We tried a few more iterations of this idea, ranging from complete value posts where we break down frameworks and concepts to educate the reader all the way to thorough, detailed explanations of our project and how it could help members.
By helping Redditors with their projects in the comments and via extended DMs and conversations, we learned a ton about what they needed and what kind of community appealed to them.
Finally, we posted a message that really worked. It was short and sweet, gave people a good amount of background and info on the community, and really just expanded on the help we were already offering.
We received 19 upvotes and 46 comments with users expressing their interest in the community.
At this point, we were very careful to bring in new members who were really fired up about their projects, were taking action to build their businesses already, and who seemed like a good culture fit to help us seed the community.
Following this plan, we offered a 30 minute introduction call for those who were interested to see if they were a good fit and get them setup.
Of the 46 commenters, about half accepted the call and we ended up with 7 very solid, high quality founding members.
What we learned first about Reddit is it’s best to lead with value and start to build relationships with users on the platform. This helped instill some trust and pave the way for a real offer.
The second key learnings was about how to craft the offer post. When it was too short and vague, users wouldn’t be interested (and would actually call out the lack of information). When it was too thorough, users wouldn’t read the entire thing or they’d be lost in information overload.
What worked was a concise, to the point message that called users to join us on our journey. It clearly called out what we were trying to do while quickly highlighting the value we’d be delivering to members.
Lastly, we realized it was completely viable to do things that don’t scale at this stage. What’s important at this point is getting those first few users or customers, getting feedback, and improving the product - there will come a time later to develop full scale marketing systems.
Through a combination of research, genuine engagement, and iterative experimentation, we were able to successfully acquire our first users from Reddit without spending any money.
This process taught us valuable lessons about the importance of providing value, building relationships, and crafting compelling, concise offers. These early users not only validated our efforts but also became instrumental in shaping our product and community.
If you'd like to stay at the forefront of what's working and join a community of like-minded early-stage founders, become a member of Early Stage Founders today! Together, we can navigate the challenges of building a business and achieve success faster.
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