For me, the fastest way to 100 users isn’t a growth hack – it’s just talking to people.

Early on, solving one specific problem for a few people who really love it beats SEO or paid ads.

Those first users also show me who my real customer is and where to find them. Often my best channel isn’t the one I planned, it’s referrals from those first happy users.

For early users, I feel direct outreach and referrals can work better than trying to build traffic first. Getting a few people to actually use the product gives you feedback and makes the next users easier to reach. A lot of the time, the channel that works best is probably the one where your target users already spend their time.

For us, it was direct outreach. We found communities where our target users were already active and just started conversations. Not pitching, just helping. That led to the first few users, and then referrals did the rest. SEO and ads came later. The first 100 are always about people, not channels.

One thing I’d add is that the first 100 users can be more valuable as a learning network than a growth milestone. Their questions, objections and usage patterns can reveal not only who the product is for, but also what message makes the next 100 easier to acquire.

For me there’s no one playbook for early SaaS growth. How I get to my first 100 users looks totally different for a $10/mo dev tool vs a $1,000/mo enterprise platform.

There’s no single playbook for early SaaS growth. What works depends on whether you’re B2B or B2C, your ACV, and your audience. And from real founder stories on r/SaaS, manual, hands-on tactics beat traditional marketing in the 0 to 100 phase.

A different way to look at the first 100 users is that sometimes the product itself can do part of the growing for you. If people naturally have to invite a teammate, share a report, send a link, or bring someone else into the workflow, one user can easily lead to another without much extra marketing. That kind of growth might not be something you planned from the beginning, but once you notice it happening, it can be more useful than trying every channel at once. For the first 100 users, I’d pay attention to how people are already sharing the product and build around that.

Another way I think about the first 100 users is that the product itself can drive a lot of the growth. If a user has to invite a teammate, share a report, or send a link to get work done, then one user naturally brings in another without me having to do extra marketing. I might not have planned for that loop at the start, but once I notice it, it’s far more effective than spreading myself thin across every channel. So for the first 100, I watch how people are already sharing it and double down on that.

The first 100 users may seem to come from a much more focused approach than trying every growth channel at once. Finding a specific audience with a clear problem and getting those early users through direct outreach, communities, referrals or personal networks can be more effective than chasing traffic at scale. The interesting part is whether the channel that brings the first few users is also the one that can consistently bring users beyond 100 or whether founders usually have to change their strategy once they find some initial traction.

From what I’ve seen, getting the first 100 users is usually more about being willing to put yourself out there than finding some perfect growth hack. Talking directly to people, asking for referrals, sharing the product in the right communities and learning from early users can go a long way. I also think the unexpected channels are often the ones that end up working best you start with a plan, then your users show you where the real opportunity is.

I think the first 100 users are often more about finding the right small audience than finding the perfect growth channel. For early SaaS, I’d focus on getting close to the first users, understanding why they signed up, and turning those conversations into referrals or repeatable outreach. Sometimes that ends up being a community, direct outreach, or referrals rather than the channel you originally planned. The interesting part is figuring out what those first users have in common. Once you see a pattern, it becomes much easier to build a repeatable acquisition process instead of constantly testing random channels.

• This reply was modified 4 days, 5 hours ago by  Chiamaka.

I think the interesting part is that the channel itself isn’t always the real advantage. It’s whether the founder finds where the right users already gather and gives them a reason to care. Sometimes one strong referral can outperform months of trying different channels.

I think the biggest difference will come down to context, not just AI capability. If an AI-native help desk can understand the full customer history and act on it without making agents reconstruct everything, that could genuinely change the workflow rather than just adding another AI layer.

For us, the first 100 users came from direct outreach, user feedback, fixing obvious problems, and asking early customers for referrals. Our expected channel failed. Instead, a few early users referred others because the product solved a specific problem.

For me, the biggest lesson is that the first users usually come from actually talking to people, not just posting everywhere and hoping they sign up. Getting a few real users, listening to what they struggle with, and improving the product around that feedback can snowball into referrals pretty quickly. It’s not always the fastest looking approach, but it feels more sustainable.