Your first 100 users come from outreach to people with the problem, communities where they ask, a launch spike and content. Each channel, ranked by effort.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
Your first 100 users come from four places, in this order of effort per user: direct outreach to people who already have the problem, communities where they ask about it, launch platforms and directories for a first spike, and content that answers what they search. Outreach costs the most per user and starts the same day; content costs the least per user and takes the longest.
Tag every link from the first day so you know which channel produced users who stayed. Below is each channel with the exact steps, what to expect from it, and how to measure it.
Which channels bring the first 100 users?
Four channels do most of the work for a new product, and they differ in how much effort each user costs and how soon they start. Use all four, but start with the ones that teach you the most per user, because the first 100 users are as much about learning what to fix as about the number.
Channel
Effort per user
When it starts working
Best for
What to measure
Direct outreach
Highest: one conversation per user
Day one
Learning why people sign up or don't
Replies, signups, activation per message sent
Communities
High: an answer or a post per handful of users
Within days, if you help first
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
How do you get your first 100 users?
Reach out directly to people who already have the problem, answer their questions in the communities where they ask, use launch platforms and directories for a first spike, and publish content that answers what they search. Tag every link so you know which channel worked.
02
What is the fastest way to get the first users for an app?
The order matters. Outreach and communities tell you what to say on launch day, and launch-day questions tell you what content to write.
How do you find users through direct outreach?
Make a list of people who have the problem your product solves, then contact them one at a time with a short, specific message. This is the slowest channel per user and the most useful, because each reply tells you whether the problem is real, how people describe it, and what stops them from trying your fix.
Write down where people with the problem show themselves: job titles, tools they use, questions they post, companies of a certain size.
Build a list of 50 named people from those places: people who posted about the problem, customers of a tool you integrate with, contacts in your own network.
Write a message of three or four sentences: who you are, the problem you noticed they have, what you built, and a low-pressure ask ("Would you try it and tell me where it's confusing?").
Send ten a day, not fifty at once, so you can answer every reply properly.
Offer to set them up yourself on a short call. Watching someone use the product for 15 minutes shows you more than any analytics.
Record every reply in one sheet: interested, not now, not the problem, and why.
Expect most people not to answer. The replies you do get are your first users and your first product feedback, and the objections become the FAQ on your site.
Where do you find users in communities?
Go where people already ask about the problem, answer their questions well, and mention your product only where the community's rules allow it, with a disclosure. Communities give you users who have the problem right now and the exact words they use for it, which your homepage should borrow.
On Reddit, each subreddit sets its own rule. Some welcome project posts: r/SideProject is built for sharing side projects for feedback, and r/alphaandbetausers takes products ready to test. Others, such as r/startups, allow promotion only in a stickied thread. Reddit's spam policy asks anyone whose posts are mostly links to their own business to "be thoughtful about the frequency of posting." The guide on promoting an app on Reddit has the rules sub by sub.
Beyond Reddit, look for forums, Slack and Discord groups, and Q&A threads in your niche. The method is the same everywhere:
Read the rules and a week of posts before you write anything.
Answer questions with real detail, without linking your product, for the first couple of weeks.
When a question is exactly what your product solves, answer it fully, then add: "Disclosure: I built X, which does this."
Post your own launch or feedback request once, where and when the rules allow.
Reply to every comment on it.
How do launch platforms and directories help?
They give you one concentrated day of attention from people who like trying new products, and a listing that stays up afterward. A launch is a step in getting the first 100 users, not the whole plan: it produces a spike of signups, and the follow-up after it decides how many of them stay.
The main platforms differ on price, wait and what they require:
Product Hunt is free and runs on a 24-hour cycle starting at 12:01 am Pacific Time. You can ask people to visit and comment, but "you cannot ask people directly to upvote."
Show HN takes "something you've made that other people can play with," ideally without signups, and nothing that is only a landing page.
Uneed puts a new batch live every day; its free line assigns a date between 30 days and 5 months out.
BetaList features pre-launch and recently launched startups; every submission is paid, with a full refund if you aren't selected.
LaunchScaler scans your site against 156 checks before listing it, and lists you free from the day its queue reaches you or on the day you pick with Premium.
Give each dated launch its own day so you can answer every comment. The comparison of product launch platforms covers costs, waits and links side by side, and the list of ways to promote an app for free adds the no-cost options.
How does content bring users after launch?
Content brings the users who search for the problem after launch week is over. Write pages that answer the questions people asked you in outreach, in communities and in launch threads, in their words. It's the slowest channel to start and the cheapest per user once pages rank, so begin during the first month rather than waiting.
Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether a page shows "first-hand expertise" and serves "an existing or intended audience." For a new product, that means:
Answer one real question per page, with the steps, settings and numbers someone needs.
Write from what you know first-hand: how you solved the problem, what you measured, what didn't work.
Put the answer in the first two sentences and the detail below.
Link each page to the part of the product that does the job, without turning the page into an ad.
A comparison page for each competitor your users mention and a how-to page for each common task are good first pieces. Track which pages bring signups, not only visits.
How do you measure each channel from day one?
Tag every link you share with utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, record the first source on every signup, and judge each channel by users who reach the product's core action, not by visits. Google Analytics recommends always setting those three parameters, and notes that values are case sensitive, so pick lowercase names and keep them.
A naming scheme that stays consistent:
Channel
utm_source
utm_medium
utm_campaign
Outreach email
outreach
email
first-100
Reddit post
reddit
community
first-100
Show HN
hackernews
launch
launch-week
Your newsletter
newsletter
email
launch-week
Two sources you can't tag still show up. Product Hunt's submission form doesn't accept tracking links, so its visits appear under the producthunt.com referrer. And since May 2026, Google Analytics groups visits referred by AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude into an "AI Assistant" channel automatically, with the medium "ai-assistant". The guide to naming UTM parameters has the full convention.
Once a week, count signups and activated users per channel, and move effort toward the two channels whose users stay.
How do you turn 100 signups into 100 users?
Follow up with every signup who hasn't reached the product's core action, one person at a time. A signup who never reaches that action isn't a user yet. Send a short personal email asking what they were trying to do, with one specific next step, and answer every reply yourself.
Then fix the step where most people stop, and tell the ones who stopped there that it's fixed. At 100 users, you can still talk to all of them; the guide on getting your first paying SaaS customers covers turning them into payers.
Launch on the day you pick with Premium
A launch is the one step in this plan where the date matters, because you want outreach contacts, community posts and your own network all pointing at the same day. LaunchScaler's Premium launch is $29 one-time: it books any open day, today included, writes your listing for you from your own scan, and puts nothing on your site because paying skips the badge. The listing stays in the permanent curated index after its standing decays. Every listing starts with a 156-check readiness scan across 6 of 7 categories, and the 1 dofollow link to your site is earned by passing it. Get Premium to fix the date, or choose the free launch on the same page, which gives you "your listing from the day the queue reaches you."
Direct outreach to people you can name who have the problem. It costs the most effort per user, but it starts the same day and every conversation teaches you something the other channels can't.
03
Can Reddit get you your first 100 users?
It can help if you follow each subreddit's rules: answer existing questions, disclose that you built the product, and post launches only where they're allowed, such as r/SideProject or the designated threads in larger subreddits.
04
Do launch platforms bring your first users?
They bring a spike of visitors on one day, and some of them sign up. Treat a launch as one step in the plan, not the plan, and follow up with every signup afterward.
05
How do you track where your first users came from?
Add utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to every link you share, record the first source on each signup, and compare channels by activated users rather than visits.
