How to get your first 1,000 users in 2021 [with screenshots]

In this case study, I’ll show you how we got the first 1,000 users to an app we launched.

It’s not just inspiring to see how other famous companies got their first 1,000 users. You can also identify some common elements to help you grow your startup or business.

The details below are interesting but here’s a summary of the process:

1. Identify who are your users and what’s the best way to get to them (online or offline);

2. Find their contact details;

3. Reach out to them (cold emails are great), try to make a personal connection. It’s extremely valuable;

4. Present your company and what it has to offer and constantly talk to them. They will help you find product-market fit.

5. Learn what works and what doesn’t and iterate the way you reach out to them;

How we got Bits’ first 1,000 users

Bits was an app for watching and creating short comedy videos that are based on prompts we provided.

We had to find content creators before driving traffic of content consumers, but it’s hard to convince people to create content on a platform with no fans. Classic chicken and egg problem many startups experience.

We decided to reach out to comedians, improv players, and comedy actors/actresses in LA.

Our initial goal was to get > 50 content creators and then start driving traffic. We did some cold emailing, trying to get people on-board, but it wasn’t fast enough (we didn’t have too much cash and we had to show results to ourselves and our investors).

We thought events/meetups will enable us to get many people in one room (which will give a sense of success to all attendees too), onboard them faster, and form relationships that will enable us to get constant feedback.

We started by efficiently collecting leads to which we can email an offer to attend. We targeted actors with comedy and/or improv background.

We used Mixmax to create an email sequence of 3-steps (the next step is sent only if the recipients didn’t reply to the previous step).

This is what we mostly sent

This was the event page we created using Eventbrite

The results of the emails:

We sent 4,000 emails, got 700 people to register and 250 to attend. We had an overall email stats of 82% open rate, 32% click rate, and 25% reply rate.

We started with one event and added 4 more due to high demand (this enabled us to do some A/B testing with the event page as well).

But we still needed to make sure people attend

The events were free and we knew this will cause a drop-off in attendees.

We are based in Israel so many preparations were conducted remotely, but we were in touch with a few LA-based actors/comedians who told us LA actors had a ‘flaking/no-show tendency’ more than usual. Especially if it’s raining (which of course, it did for the entire week, the only week it rains in LA;).

Many of them need to react fast to auditions, change of shifts in their jobs (which in many cases are temporarily and project-based), and in addition, they need to drive and avoid traffic.

We picked a central place in Hollywood and tried to start as late as possible so they can avoid the traffic. We also made sure there is enough parking around.

Before each event, we sent a two-step reminder emails to which we had a 90% open rate, 25% click rate, and 30% reply rate (replies were mostly ‘looking forward’, ‘can’t show up’, ‘can I bring friends?’):

Did people show up?

The first event went very well, and for those who didn’t show up we sent another email offering them to join another event, but it wasn’t that effective (80% open rate, 8% click rate).

The second event, however, went bad (attendees-wise) and we had to solve it fast before the third one. We came up with a very efficient hack.

The Spotify Hack

We sent this prior to the third event, asking people to choose a song for the event’s playlist. This was a way to have people “invested” in the event.

Here’s the email:

32% on average replied with a song and almost 100% of those who chose a song actually showed up (we asked them to raise hands before the meetup started).

Driving traffic to the actors

Our startup equation was:

Active users = creators (which we had) + Fans.

We needed to get fans and since we almost didn’t have money (here’s more about starting a business with no money), we decided to try and get media coverage ourselves.

We did so successfully (you can learn how to get media coverage here, including screenshots].

And that was it :)

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