How did you get your first 100 users for your product or startup, what did you use? which book did you read? What was your experience like? what local experiment did you try acquiring new users, i have read the Traction book so don’t tell me to read it.
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My first 100 users were myself, my team and my very close friends. I used Facebook and Twitter to invite them to like our product page, DM’ed them personally to check it out.
I received a cold reception. Our first 100 users were not as enthusiastic about the product as we were. Nevertheless they tried it out, but abandoned it in the first 100 days too. However, with more persistence and consistence, we our subsequent users. Hope that answers your question.
For my platform I created a list of 20 friends I thought would definitely use my product then called them individually… Only 3 gave me a positive nod. One even wanted me to pay him.
Then I went on Justfrom5k.com a freelance platform to request for beta testers. I told the testers that they won’t be paid, but highlighted what they will gain by using the product.
About 10 people signed up. After they signed up, I created a WhatsApp group for them so we could discuss the product and collected their feedback…
After several iterations, when they were happy, I announce in the group that I will pay them N1000 per referral.
After that , I quickly achieved 100+ users .
I continued the referral until I got 1000 users then discontinued it.
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Meaning you spent a million?
Yeap! Yes I did…that was my budget
Is that not too much cash to pay for a thousand users
Maybe yes… but also maybe no…
The way I see it, its a question of personal objective versus budget
Until you find out what those 1000 new sign ups are worth, that N1m na flush.
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Like I said, “Personal Objective is what matters?”… How much do you think big companies pay focus groups to try out new products before these products are released into the mainstream markets ?
For some the objective is to get diverse feedback…for others it is to kick start a project… for me it was to test the viability of an idea by measuring
- What percentage of that 1000 people would remain as continuous users
- What percentage loses interest
- How long did it take for people to lose interest
- What caused the loss of interest
- Those that remained… why did they remain
Another question you may ask is why 1000 people… its basically a margin of error thing. Most polls use 1000 people as the sample size… theoritically, the margin or error is computed to be about 3.02%
And why N1000 ? it was a balance between what I felt will motivate people to refer others and what I felt the information gathered was worth to me.
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You are defending your sample size of 1000 and nature of objective, I am simply criticizing your alleged spend of N1m for all that.
In between, your viability test spells nothing new, pretty standard stuffs for any startup, surely you would have been able to test for all that for much less than N1m.
That you had 1m to spend on it like you did, doesn’t mean its the best way to go about it. Not even remotely.
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That does not mean it’s the worst way to go about it…
If you’re one of those big companies then accept my apologies.
If not, then know that for an online business anywhere on the continent that simply want to test retention N1m for (1k) user signups will raise a lot of dark brows.
NB: also keep in mind how you acquire a user goes a way in determining retention. Let’s not even get into how many of those new users were fraud.
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Sometimes, it is difficult to make the judgement call on the best way to acquire new users.
Should you spend N1Million on adverts (Facebook, Google or traditional ads) or give the money away to users when they recommend your product?
I believe it boils down to knowing your numbers (Cost of acquisition, i.e CAC and Lifetime value of customer, LTV).
A lot depends largely on what @easibor users are worth to him.
Are there better ways to get the job done? Yes, possibly.
Yes, its possible that I may have gotten it for much less but there is a saying that goes _“soup wey sweet, na money kill am”… If you remember the first part of the process started with calling up friends…[quote=“87_chuks, post:12, topic:12523”]
If you’re one of those big companies then accept my apologies.
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I wish I was one of those big companies oooo, but alas I am not… but I have worked for four(4) multinationals and that has affected the way I see things
There is a difference between defending and explaining a rationale…I dont have any need to defend… the money has been spent and its gone… As with any meaningful conversation, sometimes its worth it to throw more light to one’s perspective and that is what I was doing…not defending
Well I beg to differ… its not so much about how you acquire, but how relevant the user is… For my case, I was targeting bloggers… and the people I paid where bloggers who where members of various whatsapp and facebook groups. They knew the channels where the bloggers communicate with each other much more than me
We fear fraud too much in Nigeria especially when they are simple ways to filter fraudulent users out. For my case the blogger must have an active blog which is at least 3 months old and must have a history of daily posts. All these are very easy to verify
Thanks brother… you could not have said it better.
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Refer to my first reply -
We pretty much said the same thing.
But conversations evolved into how “personal objective” matters more and to be prioritized at cost.
Which is all fine until you consider how much was spent to measure a personal objective. My every reply has simply been an interjection; that there’re more effective and definitely cheaper way to reach same conclusion.
OP’s real defense is that it was within budget. But looking for better and particularly cheaper ways of doing things, isn’t that the base tenet of your growth hacking community?
@easibor when you pay people to use your service, it’s a whole different parallel.
Incentivized leads are treated very differently and priced at a fraction of organic users. If you’ve played in the CPA/CPL - lead generation market you’ll appreciate user value weighed against acquisition channel and type.
Local Experiment: Boli Strategy
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Find out what neighbourhood members of your target market works.
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Find nearest Boli woman in the area. (Must be walking distance.)
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Develop cordial relationship with Boli woman.
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Ask Boli woman if you can supply her papers to wrap her Boli.
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Print a very few lines about your product/service on 50 papers. (Obviously including contact details.)
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Give paper to Boli woman. (Tell Boli woman to sell to only people in your target market.)
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Wait for results.
Q&A
Q: How will boli woman know people in your target market?
A: You describe them to her.
Q: How do you track this? And what’s the incentive for people to check out your service (website).
A: Offer one free Boli for everyone that signs up. (People like free food. Especially people on *** *** street.)
Possible results:
- 42 out of the 50 people sign up, and you retain 40 over time.
- You fail woefully, come back to this topic and insult me.
Ps. Don’t offer free Boli if you can’t afford it o. Lol!
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Jeff Bezos was fond of saying that the person that spend the most to acquire the customer wins.
That makes me to “think” that no amount is too big to spend to acquire your ideal customer, especially when you know what you are doing based on hard facts about LTV.
For example, PayPal gave $20, $10, $5 real cash as referals to seed usage in early days. They gave more than $70million away before they stopped.
In @easibor case, I will assume the startup in question is an ad network targeted at bloggers.
In that case he would need a lot of incentives to woo bloggers to use his network.
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I knew someone would bring up PayPal.
A closer look at how they gave away those 10 bucks for signups reveals a much more binding proposition.
That $10 was available in your PayPal account and you were naturally incentivized to try out payments with PayPal, they weren’t funding your bank accounts. In effect, there was $70m in a pool ready in 10s and 20s for people to spend and online merchants had to beat down PayPal’s door to serve PayPal checkouts throughout the web.
That is a world of difference paying people to sign their friends up. Admitted @easibor target market is a tricky segment. But 1m is still lavish. Very.
Yippee. That person is me 
The real question is, could @easibor grow his users to 1k without giving 1 million naira away? Absolutely YES.
As you noted, his target market prompted his strategy at that time.