I think referrals can be a big help early on, especially when the first users really like the product. SEO and social media can work too, but they usually take more time. For me, the main thing would be finding one channel that brings in the right users and focusing on it.

For me it was consistently posting on Reddit that got me a thousand plus users. They were days were i had no turnout at all and i would just stare at my screen waiting, hoping for someone, anyone to just add to my traffic but nothing was happening. I got the idea through a sub i came across and started initiating discussions about the solutions my product offered and would eventually integrate my product as an answer and voila, worked like magic.

The first 100 users most times of a saas products often come from referrals and direct conversations with other users who have been in contact with the products directly. A scalable growth channel is good but there’s the issue of trust on the part of the said user. When you’re still figuring out who needs your products and why they care about it, contacting users directly is a better alternative because sometimes those first users you encounter would teach you allt about your product that months of marketing wouldn’t.

For my first 100 users, cold email worked best. I scraped a list of niche ecommerce owners, sent personalized audits showing exactly where their sites leaked revenue, and offered a free trial fix. About 40 percent replied, and 15 converted. It was manual, tedious, and completely unplanned. I expected SEO or content, but direct outreach beat everything. Timing mattered too. I hit them right before Black Friday.