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asked on Ask HN, 16 October 2024

Founders, what was the major sourcing channel for your first 100 users?

Rarely one channel for all hundred. The first ten or twenty come from people you can name: your network, a list you already have, messages written one at a time. The rest come from the one place your buyers already gather, a subreddit, a forum or a newsletter, where you answer questions for weeks before mentioning the product.

By The Marketinque TeamReviewed September 2026

What did people in the thread say?

  • One founder got the first clients by emailing friends of friends, the next fifty to a hundred by cold email, and everyone after that by word of mouth. source
  • A maker of three niche apps found the first hundred users in the matching subreddit each time, because the audience was already gathered there. source
  • For enterprise buyers in the United States, cold email worked; the same commenter stressed that the right channel depends entirely on who you sell to. source
  • The founder of a marketing tool for SaaS companies met the first twenty in person and set them up over coffee, and warned that the channel changes once the personal network runs out. source
  • Several answers credit collecting emails on a landing page, while another points out that asking for an email in a Show HN post drives readers away. source

What would we do?

  1. Write down the twenty people you could message today, and write to them one at a time.
  2. Find the one place your buyers already ask for help, and answer questions there for two weeks before you mention the product.
  3. Put a waitlist on the landing page, so a visit from that place can become a name.
  4. Launch once where your audience reads launches, and reply to every comment.
  5. Write down where each of the first hundred came from: that answer picks the channel for the next thousand.

Where does marketinque help, and where not?

marketinque’s launch plan starts here: the network list, the communities and the waitlist come before any directory or ad, and the agent drafts the replies and posts for you to approve.

Where it does not: It does not post in communities on its own, and it cannot build the relationships the first twenty come from. That part is you, in person or by message.

We build marketinque, so weigh this section accordingly. It is free while projects open by waitlist.