How to get your first 100 users for a SaaS or side project

Your first 100 users come from channels you can work by hand: people you already know, the two or three communities where your exact problem gets discussed, one well-prepared Hacker News or directory launch, and personal outreach to people who'd genuinely want what you built. Each one takes effort, not budget. Skip anything that promises scale before you've proven anyone wants the product.

Which channel should you try first?

Start with the lowest-effort, highest-signal channels before you spend time on anything that takes weeks to pay off.

None of these scale on day one. That's the point.

Why does "doing things that don't scale" actually work?

Because your first users don't need a system, they need you to show up. Paul Graham's essay Do Things that Don't Scale makes the case plainly: "You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them." He points to Airbnb, whose founders went "door to door in New York, recruiting new users and helping existing ones improve their listings" when the company was still fragile enough that a month of that manual work was the difference between surviving and not.

The math backs up why it's worth the effort even though it feels slow. Graham's example: if you have 100 users and get 10% more every week, "after a year you'll have 14,000 users, and after 2 years you'll have 2 million." Getting the first 100 by hand is what makes the compounding possible later.

Being small is also an advantage here, not just a constraint. As Graham puts it, a big company "can't" send a hand-written note after a purchase, "but you can. That's one advantage of being small: you can provide a level of service no big company can." Reply personally. Fix the bug while they're still on the call. Remember their name. None of that scales, and none of it needs to yet.

Who should you ask first?

Before any public channel, work through people who already trust you:

1. Message people who've mentioned the problem to you directly — in a Slack channel, a comment, a DM, even in passing. They're pre-qualified.
2. Post in alumni and professional groups you're actually part of — university lists, past-employer Slack groups, meetup chats. One honest post, not a pitch.
3. Ask the 10–20 people closest to your work to try it and tell you what's confusing — not to be nice about it, to actually use it.
4. Follow up individually with anyone who shows interest — a one-line reply beats silence, and it's the first thing that won't scale that you'll be glad you did.

This stage rarely gets you to 100 on its own, but it gets you the first honest feedback and the first handful of users who'll tell others.

How do you get users from Reddit and other communities?

Go where the problem is already being discussed, not where you want to post. Search for people describing your exact problem in the last few threads, reply with something genuinely useful, and only mention your project when it's the natural answer — not the opener.

Reddit treats self-promotion as a specific, bannable category, and most subreddits have their own stricter rules on top of it. We cover exactly how to post without tripping either in how to promote on Reddit without getting banned: which subreddits tolerate it, how to read the sidebar rules before you post, and the ratio of helpful comments to project mentions that keeps accounts in good standing.

The same logic applies to Discord servers, Slack communities, and forums built around your users' profession or hobby: read for a week before you post anything, answer questions with no link attached, and let people ask what you're building instead of announcing it.

How do you launch on Hacker News or a directory?

Hacker News has one specific, well-documented format for this: Show HN. The guidelines are strict about what qualifies — "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with," it needs to be interactive (not a landing page or a blog post), and you need to be available to answer questions in the thread. The guidelines are also blunt about what gets you in trouble: "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN," and the general site guidelines add that using HN "primarily for promotion" rather than curiosity is against the spirit of the site. Post once, pick a title that describes what it does rather than selling it, and be in the comments all day.

Startup directories are lower-stakes and repeatable: most just need a listing, a short description, and sometimes a backlink to your site in return. We keep a checked list of the ones still worth the ten minutes it takes to submit in free startup directories that still send traffic — most send a trickle of traffic at best, but a few are genuinely still active.

How do you reach people directly without it feeling like spam?

Personal cold outreach works when it's actually personal: you name the specific page, post, or product the person made, and you say why you're reaching out to them and not someone else. A message that could be sent to a thousand people unchanged gets ignored or reported; one that proves you read their work gets a reply.

The people worth reaching this way: bloggers and newsletter writers who cover your space, maintainers of tools your project integrates with, and early users of competitors who've publicly said what's missing. Keep the list small — a few a day, not hundreds — and follow up once if you don't hear back.

This is also the part of the process that's hardest to keep doing by hand once you're also trying to build the product. Larvabot automates the research and drafting: it reads your site, finds the specific blogs, newsletters, and threads where your project fits, and drafts a personal email naming the exact page — nothing sends until you approve it (how Larvabot works).

Can content and SEO get you to your first 100 users?

Eventually, but not first. Writing the pages that answer the exact questions your future users are typing into Google or asking an AI assistant works, but it takes months to rank, and a brand-new domain has no authority to start with. Treat content as something you start in week one and expect to pay off later, not a channel for this week's signups.

The fastest way to speed it up honestly is backlinks: the more credible pages that link to you, the faster search engines and AI assistants trust that your site is worth citing. Directory listings are one source; so are guest posts, resource-page mentions, and unlinked mentions of your project you track down and ask to be linked. We cover the realistic version of that process — what actually moves a brand-new site, and what Google's own spam policies rule out — in how to get backlinks for a new website.

Until then, content's real job is different: it's what a curious person finds after they hear about you from Reddit, Hacker News, or a cold email, and it's what convinces them you know the problem. Write for that moment first.

What should you avoid when chasing your first 100 users?

• Mass DMs and unsolicited bulk messages. They get reported, and a few reports can get an account banned from a platform you'll want to use again.
• Buying followers, upvotes, or fake engagement. Every platform above explicitly bans it, and it tells you nothing about whether real people want the product.
• Posting the same pitch in every community you can find. Communities compare notes; a copy-pasted pitch is the fastest way to get flagged as spam everywhere at once.
• Asking for upvotes or shares directly. Both Reddit and Hacker News treat vote manipulation as a specific violation, not just bad etiquette.
• Chasing volume over fit. A hundred signups who never open the product tell you less than ten who use it weekly and complain when it breaks.

How long does it realistically take to get 100 users?

There's no fixed timeline, and anyone who gives you one exact number is guessing. It depends entirely on how many of the channels above already have an audience who wants what you built. A technical tool with an obvious Show HN angle can get there in days. A niche B2B product with no existing community to tap might take months of outreach and content before it clicks.

What's consistent is the shape of the curve, not the speed: slow, manual, one-person-at-a-time growth in the early weeks, which is exactly what makes the later compounding possible. Treat the first 100 as the stage where you're still learning who wants this and why, not the stage where you optimize for speed.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an existing audience or following to get my first 100 users?

No. Most of the channels here — communities, Show HN, directories, personal outreach — don't require a following. They require finding the specific people already looking for what you built and showing up where they already are.

Should I pay for ads to get my first 100 users?

It's rarely the right first move. Ads without a validated product and messaging mostly teach you that your targeting or landing page needs work, at a cost. Manual channels are slower but tell you directly whether real people want the product, for free.

Is it okay to ask friends and family to sign up?

Asking them to try it and give honest feedback is fine and useful. Asking them to sign up just to inflate your numbers, or to upvote a launch post, crosses into the fake-engagement territory every platform bans — and it tells you nothing real.

What's the fastest channel for getting your first 10 users?

Usually your own network: people who've already mentioned the problem to you, or who trust you enough to try something unfinished. It won't get you to 100 alone, but it's the fastest honest signal.

Do directory listings actually help with getting users?

Mostly indirectly. A directory listing rarely sends a flood of visitors on its own, but it's a real, credible backlink, and those compound: they help search engines and AI assistants find and trust your site over months, which is a slower version of the same goal.

How many channels should I try at once?

Two or three, not all of them. Spreading effort across every channel on the list at once usually means doing all of them half-heartedly. Pick the ones that fit where your specific users already spend time, and go deep before you add another.