So you’re set on being an entrepreneur. You have an idea and a plan for execution and all you need now is to get people to use your product. But how in the world do you go about doing that?
Vinicius Vacanti, first-time entrepreneur and founder of Yipit, wrote a two-part series on how to get and keep your first 1,000 users. The idea is that it’ll be hard to strictly emulate how other startups/companies are currently managing their userbase because they’re most likely at a different stage of operation than you are. Everyone has to start somewhere and having a solid plan for your initial userbase is a good idea.
Many of the tips he gives may seem like common sense or “DUH, WINNING!” to you. Good. It means you’re in the right mindset and some reminders of what you need to do never hurt. But dollars to donuts, there’s probably going to be a couple of actions you haven’t thought of doing yet.
Getting your first 1,000 users first involves getting a domain name and splash page:
You should set up your splash page today. Not tomorrow, today. In terms of the domain name, it’s okay if you don’t love your domain name; you can change it later though it’s always easier to pick a good one from the start.
Once you get your domain name, you should use a service like unbounce to create a simple splash page. You don’t need a programming background to create this page.
The goal of the splash page is to collect email addresses from visitors. How do you do that? The splash page tells a user very clearly what problem your site will solve for them.
Once you get enough users, the next goal becomes to keep those 1,000 users around. Vinicius has several tips for doing that, but the one that stood out to us was:
Wow Users. Your goal is to get 1,000 happy users and that means you can do some things that won’t work for users after 1,000
- Flickr used to email every user that signed-up to find out what their experience was like
- At Yipit, we personally over-responded to every customer service and unsubscribe (one of those got us featured on CNN)
- Yelp threw ridiculous parties for their first users. They still throw them today for their best users but not for all users
- Even though Foursquare is more about tips and friend-finding, it added a game layer of points and badges so that the early users could use the app even though their friends weren’t on it yet
Too many companies get lost in the noise for being “just another service.” Don’t let that happen to you.
Read more: How To Get Your First 1,000 Users | Vinicius Vacanti
