The first 100 users are the hardest you will ever get. You have no reviews, no word of mouth and probably no money for ads. The good news is that at this stage, ads would not help much anyway. What you need is people who will actually use the product and tell you what is wrong with it.
Here are the approaches that tend to work for early founders, roughly in the order worth trying them.
1. Start with people you can name
Write a list of everyone you know who has the problem your product solves. Friends, former colleagues, people from your course, the person at the gym who complained about exactly this last month. Message them individually, not with a group email.
This feels small and slow, which is the point. Your first users should be people you can talk to. A product with ten people who use it every week is in a far better place than one with a thousand who signed up and left.
2. Go where the problem is discussed
Your future users are already talking about the problem somewhere: a subreddit, a Facebook group, a Slack community, a forum, a LinkedIn thread. Find those places and spend a week just reading.
When you do post, help first. Answer questions properly. Share what you have learned. When it is relevant, mention what you are building and ask for feedback rather than sign-ups. Communities are good at spotting people who only turn up to promote themselves, and most have rules about self-promotion, so read them first.
3. Do things that do not scale
Offer to set the product up for people personally. Jump on a call to walk them through it. Send a handwritten note to your first ten customers. None of this is sustainable at a thousand users, and that does not matter yet. It gets you feedback you would never get from analytics, and it turns early users into people who want you to succeed.
4. Write about the problem, not the product
A short, genuinely useful article about the problem your users face can keep bringing people in for years. Think "how to handle X" rather than "introducing our product". Write in plain language, answer the questions people actually search for, and link to your product only where it naturally helps.
One good article a week adds up. Search traffic grows slowly, but it compounds, and it costs nothing but time.
5. Build in public
Share what you are building as you go: what you shipped this week, what went wrong, what you learned from users. Indie Hackers, LinkedIn and X all have audiences that enjoy following a founder's progress. It builds trust, and people who have watched you work are far more likely to try what you make.
6. Borrow other people's audiences
Newsletters, podcasts and communities in your niche are always looking for interesting stories. A founder solving a real problem, with honest numbers, is a good story. Offer to write a guest post or share what you have learned. One mention in the right newsletter can bring more good users than months of posting into the void.
7. Make referrals easy and worthwhile
Once a few people like what you have built, make it easy for them to bring a friend. A simple link and a small reward for both sides is enough. People share things they are proud to be early to.
8. Join communities that want to discover new startups
Some communities exist precisely because their members enjoy finding new companies early. On MeWeBe, for example, startups in the network are listed in a fantasy league where members back them with virtual coins, follow founder updates and visit their sites. It is a way to get in front of people who are curious about new ideas, and founders can share their league page to bring their own supporters along. You can see the current league or apply with your startup.
What to measure
At 100 users, ignore vanity numbers. The questions that matter are simple.
- How many people came back in their second week?
- Can you name the five who use it most, and do you know why?
- What do people complain about when they do use it?
If people are coming back, you have something. Then the job becomes finding more people like them, and by then you will know exactly where they hang out.