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đ„ 5 Ways to Find Your First 1000 Users
What are you waiting for? Check 'em out already.
Good Morning, this is Napkin Notes: the startup newsletter that wakes up and decides to give away a $100 Apple Gift Card to one of you because giving cool shit to founders is our #1 love language.
Wanna win the card? Itâs going to the reader who refers the most people in 7 days. You read that right.
You see, our boss wants us to grow this puppy. And since we didnât have enough sway to give you a ticket to Appleâs Wonderlust event, weâre giving one of you $100 to spend on any Apple product.
Hereâs a photo of the card to prove we ainât bluffing.
All you gotta do is:
click below to share the newsletter
between now and next Thursday, Sept 21st 10 PM PST
then weâll tally up the names
and announce a winner in our next newsletter
Little hack to keep in mind: you donât have to email one friend at a time. You could drop it in your team Slack, spin up a LinkedIn post, or even riff it into your own newsletter.
One cleverly worded tweet may just win you $100. In the great words of Ms. Katniss Kernal Everdeen, âmay the odds be ever in your favour đ€
Todayâs Newsletter Line-Up
đ News round-up
đž Apply to pitch at our first demo day
đ 5 ways to find your first 1,000 users
đŠ Startup memes of the week
đ» Get you back to your Friday inbox
đ°Â Business News You Missed: iPhone 15 had its big debut. Mexico found alien mummies. 82% of us were sad we missed the All-In Summit. Databricks raised $500M. Birkenstock, the swanky sandal all your cool friends wear, filed for an IPO. Starlink made $1.4 billion last year. TikTok launched in-app shopping. And your pals at Kernal are hosting our first-ever demo day. đ„ł
You heard us. Weâre getting the gang together for a big pitch day. And if you wanna pitch on centre stage all you gotta do is apply today by midnight.
Now letâs quit the blabbering and talk about hacks to land your first 1,000 users.
đ€Â How to Land Your First 1,000 Customers
Playbooks are critical. And so are customers.
So we put 2 and 2 together and sourced a playbook that teaches founders how to land your first 1,000 customers.
Itâs written by a founder named Noah Kagan. He built a cool website called AppSumo.com that over 1 million people use. Itâs a software website that gives entrepreneurs deals on everything under the sun.
But before they had 1,000,000 users, they had 1,000. And before 1,000 they had 0. My goal today is to:
Remind you that every founder starts at 0 users
Show you some hacks to get your first hundred users
Then spill the beans on how you can get to 1,000 users and beyond
Sound like itâs worth 3 mins of your time? We sure flipping hope so.
1. đ Hand To Hand Marketing | 0 -50 users
Noah recommends âmeeting your customers where they are at and introducing them to the product one by oneâ in the early days.
This could be on Instagram, in the LinkedIn comments, deep in the subreddits of a niche, or even a pop-up shop in NYC.
Find out where your customers are hanging out, what they read and who they follow
Chat with them: email, text message, commenting, group chat, slack
See how/if/when your product can help them with a problem they have by bringing them into a beta group/early product offering
Example: When Tinder started, the team went to different sororities/fraternities to land their first 15,000 users.
2. đ„Â Buffet Marketing | 50 - 100 users
The focus of part two is: "Test, test, test, and collectâ as Noah says. âTest everything. Collect the data. Determine what works best.â
Example: When Kernal first started, we posted on 20 different Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups and Slack groups to see which one got the best reply. We then learned the Trends Group (made by Sam Parr) was our highest converter with the most engaged users in that group. So we doubled down and did a follow-up blog with their team.
This is where âBuffet Marketingâ got itâs name.
Because you wanna test as many bites as possible to see whatâs gonna reel in the best return on your investment.
3. đ Refine, Block & Tackle | 100 - 500 users
And as you eat, you figure out the curryâs better than the pasta. So for your next dinner at the restaurant, you skip the spaghetti and focus on the curry.
Locking down your first 100-500 customers is no different.
Noah recommends founders âfind and tackle the 1-2 things that have the potential to 10xâ. Then double down on them.
Example: For Kernal, itâs been our newsletter, posting on Twitter, and giving invite codes to community managers.
4. đ Scale | 500 - 1000 users
For the next step, Noah suggests âtaking whatâs proven to work and 10xâing itâ.
So anything thatâs not bearing fruit, you drop. Anything thatâs distracting, you let go of.
Focus on the 1-2 channels that are crushing it for new users and after youâve seen it work, pour some gasoline on the fire.
Example: For Noah at AppSumo, this was focusing on email marketing and hosting daily giveaways. This took âem from 500 customers to 1000 in a week.
5. âžïž Flywheel Marketing | 1000+ users
Youâve found your niche, youâve generated demand and now youâve crossed the 1,000-user mark.
Firstly, congrats.
Secondly, time to focus on the flywheel, fam.
A good marketing flywheel is only as good as its business model.
After you know where your users hang out and youâre actively solving a problem for them, itâs time to bake acquisition loops, referral loops, and affiliate loops into your product.
Then, spin that flywheel again and again until youâre dizzy.
When you do that right, it creates a system that feeds itself.
And when you have that right, investors will be all over you to book a meeting.
Now, all you have to do now is:
Take your startup idea
Test a few of these strategies
Then pitch your momentum at our Startup Event Sept, 27th.
âïž Interesting Finds
Kacper Staniul just made offmarket.so, a site that collects data from marketplaces like WordPress, Shopify, Figma and Indie Hackers to lets you find untapped acquisition opportunities with no competition.
YCâs biggest rival nobodyâs talking about. Hint: it rhymes with Feel Thellowship
7 big announcements from Appleâs WonderLust event
1,000 VC firms to pitch for on your big startup idea
Nvidia CEO runs his company in a wild way
đ· Swipes of the Week
*The only thing better than memes is winning a $100 Apple Gift Card. Refer a few friends to the newsletter before itâs too late.
Thereâs a new set of AirPods with your name on it đ
đ The Kernal Fam
P.S. Donât forget to apply to pitch at our Startup Idea Teardown event.
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