How to Get Your First 100 Users for a Startup or SaaS

Most founders spend months building in silence, then scramble to find users on launch day. Flip that. Set up a simple landing page the week you start building, put a one-field email form on it, and start sharing it in conversations.

You do not need a fancy design or a polished pitch. You need a single sentence that says what you are building and a way for people to say "I want to know when this is ready." That is it. Even 50 emails before you launch means you have 50 real people to reach out to on day one.

Tools like Beehiiv, ConvertKit, or even a plain Notion form work. The point is to start before you think you are ready.

There is a subreddit, a Discord server, a Slack group, or a forum for almost every niche imaginable. Your first 100 users are already in one of them. Before you launch, spend two weeks just reading and participating with no agenda.

Answer questions. Share things you know. Comment on posts with genuine insight. By the time you share your product, people will recognize your name and care what you have to say.

For SaaS founders, good starting points are r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, Indie Hackers, and niche communities specific to your problem space. If you are building a writing tool, find writing communities. If you are building for developers, find developer Discord servers.

When you do post about your product, make it a genuine story not a sales pitch. "I built this because I kept running into this exact problem" converts far better than "check out my new tool."

This sounds obvious but most founders skip it because it feels uncomfortable. They think their product needs to be perfect before they tell people they know. It does not.

Write a short, personal email to 50 to 100 people you actually know: old colleagues, university friends, people you have helped in the past. Tell them what you built, who it is for, and ask one specific thing, whether that is signing up, giving feedback, or forwarding it to one person who might benefit.

Do not use a mass email tool for this. Write it like you are talking to a real person because you are. Something like: "Hey, I have been working on something for the past few months. You probably know someone who deals with this problem. Would you mind taking 5 minutes to look at it?" That kind of ask gets a real response.

A warm intro from a mutual connection is worth ten cold signups from a directory listing. Use your network before you exhaust every other channel.

Hacker News Show HN posts and Indie Hackers launches still work in 2026, but only if you approach them correctly. The posts that flop are the ones that read like ads. The ones that take off tell a real story.

For a Show HN, the title format that works is: "Show HN: I built X because Y (brief context)." Then in the post body, explain the problem honestly, what you tried, why existing solutions did not work, and what you built instead. Be specific. Mention what you would love feedback on.

On Indie Hackers, write a launch post that includes numbers if you have them: how long you spent building it, how many people you have talked to, what you learned from early conversations. The community responds to transparency far more than polish.

Time your posts for Tuesday through Thursday, between 8am and 10am US Eastern. That is when these communities have peak engagement. And stay active in the comments for the full first day because momentum lives in replies.

Cold DMs and emails still work when they are genuinely personal. The problem is that most people send the same template to a hundred people and wonder why nobody replies.

Here is what actually works. Find 20 people who are clearly experiencing the exact problem your product solves. Look for people complaining about it on Twitter, asking about it on Reddit, or posting about it in forums. Reach out with a message that references their specific situation.

Something like: "I saw your tweet about [specific problem]. I spent six months trying to solve the same thing and ended up building a tool for it. Would you be up for trying it and telling me what you think? Totally free, no pressure." That is a message a real person actually reads and responds to.

Twenty well-researched, personalized messages will get you more users and more valuable feedback than two hundred generic ones.

Building in public is one of the most counterintuitive growth strategies because it feels like you are giving away your failures. In practice it is one of the best ways to build an audience who genuinely wants your product to succeed.

Share weekly updates on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn. Include real numbers: revenue, user count, churn, what broke this week, what you learned. People gravitate toward honesty because they rarely see it from founders.

You do not need a big following to start. Post consistently for 90 days and engage with other founders doing the same. The Indie Hackers build-in-public community and the #buildinpublic hashtag on X are where these conversations happen.

Every update you post is also a chance to mention your product without it feeling promotional. When people follow your journey, they want to try what you are building.

Newsletter operators are always looking for interesting products to share with their audience. The key is that they need to believe their readers will actually find value in what you built, which means you have to show them you understand who their audience is.

Find 10 to 15 newsletters in your niche. Read them for two weeks before reaching out. Then write a short pitch that explains specifically why their readers would find your product useful, not just that your product exists.

For smaller newsletters (under 10,000 subscribers), a direct and honest email works well. For larger ones, many accept paid sponsorship placements, which can be worth the investment if the audience is a strong match.

Some places to find newsletters in your space: Beehiiv's directory, Substack, and simply Googling "[your niche] newsletter" to see what comes up. Indie Hackers and Morning Brew Accelerator also have lists of founder-focused newsletters.

Paid traffic stops when your budget stops. SEO traffic compounds. If you write one genuinely useful article that ranks for a keyword your potential users are searching for, that article keeps sending you traffic for years.

The mistake most founders make with SEO is going after broad, highly competitive keywords. The better approach when you are starting out is to find specific, long-tail queries that exactly match what your early users are searching for.

For example, if you built a tool that helps freelancers send invoices automatically, do not try to rank for "invoicing software." Instead, write about "how to automate invoices as a freelancer" or "best invoice tools for solo consultants." Those searches have lower competition and the people searching them are much closer to buying.

Write two to three articles per month targeting specific questions your ideal user is asking. Use Google's "People Also Ask" section and tools like AnswerThePublic to find real queries. Be genuinely helpful, not just keyword-stuffed.

Paul Graham famously wrote about doing things that do not scale, and it is one of the most practical pieces of advice for early-stage founders. When you only have 20 users, treat each one like a VIP.

Offer to hop on a 15-minute call with every new signup. Help them set up their account personally. Ask what almost stopped them from signing up. This kind of direct contact gives you information you can never get from analytics and it creates users who tell other people about you.

When something breaks for a user, fix it immediately and follow up personally. These early users who feel genuinely taken care of become your loudest advocates. Word of mouth is still the highest-converting acquisition channel for most B2B and indie products.

This does not scale to 10,000 users and it should not have to. But it absolutely makes sense for your first 50.

You do not need a formal referral program with payouts to make word of mouth work. You just need to remove friction from the moment a user thinks "I should tell someone about this."

The simplest version is a share button with a pre-written tweet or LinkedIn post that links back to your product. Users who are already happy will actually use it if it takes two clicks instead of having to write something themselves.

For B2B products, a "powered by" link in the footer or export watermark creates passive referrals at scale. For consumer products, a simple "invite a friend and both of you get one month free" is enough to kickstart a referral loop.

The key insight is that your referral channel is only as strong as your product satisfaction. Fix retention and reduce churn first, then activate referrals. Sending a leaky bucket to recruit more users just accelerates the problem.

Once you have 10 to 20 active users, reach out to the ones who have seen real results and ask if they would be willing to share their story. A short case study does not need to be a polished marketing document. Even a two-paragraph quote on your landing page with a real name and company moves the needle.

Ask them three specific questions: What problem were you dealing with before? What changed after using the product? Would you recommend it and why? The answers almost write the case study for you.

Video testimonials convert even better. A 60-second Loom from a real user explaining what they liked is more persuasive than a page of features. And it costs you nothing to ask.

These case studies do double duty. They improve your conversion rate for new visitors and they give you content to share on social media, in newsletters, and in outreach emails.