How I got my first 100 users FAST with 0$

If you want to create a start-up or sell a digital product, you might dream of growing your user base to 1k, 10k, or even 1 million users. But in reality, how can you even get your first 100 users?

In this article, I'll share how I was able to get my first 100 users in less than a week of launching my first-ever product (Reply More), without spending a single dime on advertising. And how you can do the same.

Before getting into it, you might have this question in mind: What's so special about the first 100 users? Why not plan to get 1k users? That's a good question, and understanding this is important in the startup journey.

The reason the first 100 users are the most important is because these are the users that will help you build a good product. Before launching your product, you can only have hypotheses about your users. But after getting the first 100 users, you start to get some answers about your hypotheses. You'll learn what kind of people will use your products, what they like or dislike, and what's good and bad about your product, and how you can make it the best product for your users.

Another reason is that paid advertising is really expensive and generally doesn't work well for software products. What most startups actually use is what's called product-led growth. That's when people like your product so much that they share it with others. To achieve this, you need two things: a product that people love and people to use it and share it. Both of these things will be achieved by first getting your first 100 users. You'll use them to build a good product, and they will serve as a base to start growing by telling their friends about it.

So it's really critical to get these first 100 users as soon as possible. But how can we do it if we're new entrepreneurs with no money? Fortunately, I've found three ways that we can do it for free.

1. Product Hunt

This is undoubtedly the most important and easiest way to get your first 100 users. Product Hunt is a website where every day, product makers post the products they've launched. Then people vote for their favorite product of the day. The products are displayed on a leaderboard, and this website gets a lot of visits. So if you manage to get your product on the top page, you get a lot of eyes on your product.

The key is to get your product in the top 5 because the lower-ranking products barely get any exposure at all. And you can only launch your product once in 6 months, so you really have to make it count.

The way to get upvotes and rank higher is to gather support for your product early. So in the first couple of hours of the day, when the products aren't ranked by upvotes, you need to get as many people to upvote your product. These people need to be active Product Hunt users for their votes to count, so you can't just rely on your friends and co-workers.

Fortunately, there is a way to gather relevant upvotes, and that is by using LinkedIn. What makes LinkedIn special is that many Product Hunt users have LinkedIn accounts, and it's pretty easy to find them in Product Hunt groups. So you need to message them, asking for support to upvote your product in exchange for upvoting their product when they launch it.

This way, you can get the ball rolling and start getting organic exposure from Product Hunt. If you manage to get into the top 5, you can expect to get around 100 users for your product.

2. Twitter / X

This is the second strategy I used to get my first 100 users. I posted my launch video on Twitter and was able to get 25k views while only having 50 followers at the time.

X, formerly Twitter, is a well-known social media platform. But what makes it special for getting early adopters is that X is where many entrepreneurs, developers, and start-up founders hang out, more than any other social media platform. And these kinds of people are most likely to try out new products and promote them. In the startup world, they've called early adopters.

The other good thing about Twitter is the retweet option. If people like your product, it will be pretty easy to go viral because everyone will retweet it, and you can get an enormous amount of views without having a lot of followers.

Launching on Twitter needs some work beforehand. Unlike platforms like TikTok, where you can get many views without having any followers, on Twitter, your posts will only be shown to your followers. So if you don't have any, you're basically posting into the void.

So you need to spend some time gathering followers. I recommend doing it for at least a month. The way you do it is to find a niche; it can be either startup founders, developers, or just the niche of your product. Then you need to start following and engaging with people in your niche. People will start to follow you back, and some people will see your comments, and if they're interesting, they'll follow you.

After getting around 50 followers at least, you can launch your product. You do that by posting a video where you explain what your product does and why people should use it. Here is an example of the video I posted for my product launch. These types of videos do really well on Twitter because people are more likely to repost them with their friends.

This brings us to the next step. Now it's time to use the followers that we've gathered. You must reach out to them to tell them about your product launch and ask them to repost your launch video. Some of them will accept. This is where Twitter magic happens. Now your post is not only shown to your 50 followers; it's shown to every follower of everyone who reposted it. And since it's a shareable video, these people will likely repost it themselves. So there is a really good chance that it goes viral. That's how I was able to get 30k views and 16 reposts for my launch video.

3. Reddit and Hacker News

These two websites are very popular with people launching their products. Although I've used them both and haven't had much success with them, I've seen many people use them to get a lot of traffic, especially Reddit.

Both websites essentially work the same way: you announce your product launch, and if people upvote your post, you get more views. If you get a lot of upvotes, you go viral. So there is a chance that you'll get way more traffic than Product Hunt, but it's not that reliable. It depends on your luck, product, and messaging.

The key to making these websites work is to understand the users' lingo and avoid being seen as someone who's trying to sell them something. Instead, try to give them value.

If you manage to get a successful post, you can expect to get 100k+ views.

Conclusion

These are the ways to get your initial users that I'm most familiar with, but you don't need to limit yourself to these two. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube can work too, especially TikTok, as there is potential for viral growth.

If you liked the article and want to get more startup tips and follow me on my journey, you can find me on my blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Also, tomorrow I'm doing my second launch. It's for my app Intentional. So if you're interested, check that out.