Your first SaaS users: how to choose the right channels

Your first hundred users will not come from one big launch. They come from a few channels you chose on purpose and worked on by hand, long before anything scales. The good news: you do not need to guess which ones. Every channel has a price, a speed and a type of product it suits, and those three facts are enough to pick a short list. This article gives you a channel matrix to make that choice, six dated public examples of how well-known products found their first users, and a four-week test to find the two channels worth your time. It makes no promise about a number; nobody honestly can. What it gives you is a way to spend the next month on the channels most likely to answer.

Three questions before you pick

Answer these first. They remove most of the options on their own.

1. Where do your users already spend time? A developer tool, a Shopify add-on and a tax app for freelancers have almost nothing in common here. Name the actual places: a forum, a newsletter, a marketplace, a conference, a job title you can search for.
2. How fast do you need a signal? Some channels answer within a day, others take months. If you are still testing whether anyone wants the product, you need fast answers, even if they do not scale.
3. What can you spend: time or money? Most early founders have more hours than budget. The matrix below shows which channels trade one for the other.

The channel matrix

Each row is a channel you can start this month. “Time to first signal” means how long until you learn something: a reply, a sign-up, a comment. It is not a promise of results.

Channel	Cost	Time to first signal	Best fit	Watch out for
Personal network and 1:1 messages	Time only	Days	B2B tools with a clear buyer; anything you can demo	Friends are polite: count usage, not compliments
Communities you already belong to	Time only	Days	Products that solve a problem that community talks about	Rules against self-promotion; give before you post
Show HN on Hacker News	Free	Hours	Developer tools, open source, anything people can try right away	Strict rules; sign-up walls cost you feedback
Product Hunt launch	Free	One launch day	Polished products with a clear visual and a ready audience	One day of attention; preparation takes weeks
Startup directories	Mostly free, some paid upsells	Weeks to months	Any product with a public website	Review queues; a listing is discovery, not demand
Content and SEO	Time, later money	Weeks to months	Problems people search for in words you can name	Slow; needs consistent publishing
Other people’s audiences	Time	Weeks	Topics with established blogs, podcasts or newsletters	Pitching takes many tries
Marketplaces and integrations	Time for building	Weeks	Add-ons for a platform your users already run	You follow the platform’s rules and review
Paid ads	Money	Days	Products with a known price and a measured conversion path	Expensive before you know who converts

Read the matrix from left to right. If your answer to question 3 was “time, not money”, cross out paid ads for now. If question 2 was “fast”, keep the rows with days or hours and treat the slow rows as background work you start in parallel.

Match the rows to your product

The same channel can be excellent for one product and useless for another. A few pairings that follow directly from the matrix:

• Developer tools and open source: a Show HN post with something people can run, plus the communities where your language or framework is discussed. The Hacker News profile summarises what the platform expects.
• B2B tools with a narrow buyer: 1:1 messages to people with that job title, and a short demo. Slow to scale, fast to learn from.
• Consumer and prosumer apps: a Product Hunt launch once the product looks finished, plus content around the problem it solves.
• Anything with a public site: directories as a steady background channel, started early because their queues run for weeks. The list of free startup directories shows where to begin.

If you are building for a specific group, the pages for SaaS founders and vibe coders go further into what that audience needs; this article stays with the channel choice itself.

Six public examples, dated

These are well-documented cases from primary sources. They show which channel a product used first, not a formula to copy. Each worked because the channel matched where the users were.

Product	Channel	What they did	Source
Stripe	1:1, in person	When someone agreed to try it, the founders asked for their laptop and set them up on the spot	Paul Graham, “Do Things that Don’t Scale”, July 2013
Airbnb	1:1, in person	Went door to door in New York to recruit hosts and help them improve their listings	Same essay
Pinterest	Community event	Noticed early users were into design and went to a conference of design bloggers to recruit more	Same essay
Dropbox	Hacker News	Posted a demo video in April 2007; the post shows 104 points on 30 September 2026	HN item 8863
Product Hunt	Email list	Started in November 2013 as an email list thrown together one morning; hundreds subscribed in the first week	Ryan Hoover, “Making Product Hunt”
Buffer	Other people’s audiences	Leo Widrich wrote around 150 guest posts in nine months	Buffer blog, 8 May 2014

Three patterns stand out. The earliest users were recruited by hand, one at a time. Paul Graham calls this “the most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start”. The products that went to communities showed something people could try or see, not a pitch. And the content example is about volume and consistency over months, not a single viral post.

Run it as a four-week test

The book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares (2015) lists 19 channels and suggests the same discipline: brainstorm widely, test a few cheaply, then focus on the one that works. A practical version for your first users:

1. Pick three rows from the matrix: two fast ones and one slow one you start in parallel.
2. Write down the signal in advance. For example: 20 replies to 1:1 messages, 10 sign-ups from a community post, or 5 people who use the product twice. Decide what counts before you look at results.
3. Give each channel real effort for four weeks. One post is not a test. Ten conversations might be.
4. Keep the one or two that answered and drop the rest without regret. Start the next test from the matrix.

A launch plan template with dates and owners keeps the test honest, and the SaaS launch checklist covers the groundwork before a public launch day.

When you launched and nobody came

A quiet launch is common, and it usually means one of three different things. Each needs a different fix:

• Nobody saw it. Check your analytics: were there visitors at all? Then the fix is distribution. Go back to the matrix and add a fast channel.
• People saw it but did not sign up. The message or the offer is unclear. Rewrite the first screen, show the product working, remove steps before the first value.
• People signed up but did not come back. That is a product question. Talk to the users you have; ten conversations teach more than a second launch.

Do not relaunch the same post into the same place to try again. Hacker News, for example, asks you not to delete and repost, and Product Hunt asks that a relaunch within 6 months be a major update. Fix the cause, then pick a channel you have not used.

Where directories and LaunchRepo fit

Directories are one row in the matrix: slow, mostly free, and useful as a steady source of discovery and links while you work on the fast channels. Their review queues often take weeks. Google’s own starter guide says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months, so start early and measure calmly.

LaunchRepo automates exactly this row. It is a repository your coding agent runs to prepare and submit your product to a catalog of 299 directories and launch platforms, with a tracker that tells a real listing apart from a pending one. It does not replace talking to users, and it does not promise traffic, rankings or sign-ups. It frees the hours you would otherwise spend on forms, so you can spend them on the channels that need you in person. Details are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get my first 100 SaaS users?

Pick two or three channels from the matrix that fit where your users are, how fast you need an answer and whether you can spend time or money. Work them by hand for four weeks, measure a signal you defined in advance, and keep what worked. There is no guaranteed number or timeline.

Which channel is best for a first SaaS launch?

There is no single best one. Developer tools often start with Show HN and technical communities, B2B tools with 1:1 messages, and polished consumer apps with a Product Hunt launch. The best channel is the one where your users already spend time.

Is Product Hunt or Hacker News enough on its own?

Rarely. Both give one concentrated moment of attention. They work best as a start, followed by channels that keep bringing people in, such as content, communities and directories.

How long before a channel shows results?

The fast channels, like 1:1 messages and community posts, answer within days. Directories, content and SEO take weeks to months; Google says some changes can take several months to show. Judge each channel against its own speed.

What should I do if my launch got no users?

Find out which step failed: nobody saw it, people saw it but did not sign up, or people signed up and did not return. Each has a different fix. Do not repost the same launch; add a channel or fix the message.

Sources, checked on 30 September 2026: Paul Graham, “Do Things that Don’t Scale” (paulgraham.com, July 2013); Hacker News item 8863 via the public HN API; Ryan Hoover, “Making Product Hunt” (ryanhoover.me); Kevan Lee, “How to Become a Columnist”, Buffer blog, 8 May 2014; Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, Traction (Portfolio, 2015); Hacker News guidelines; Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide; the LaunchRepo catalog snapshot of 24 September 2026.