100 Users!
It took 6 weeks to get the first 50 users and 6 days to get the next 50.
Not everything can be planned. We have a content strategy that involves news articles, Twitter, Reddit etc. which was ticking along at a steady, albeit slow rate, but it was working.
On the weekend, unbeknown to us, we were featured in a newsletter and overnight our user-base doubled. I know we aren't talking big numbers here, but when you're starting out, one user feels like 1000. You put so much effort into getting a single user, every sign-up feels like it should be celebrated. So to wake up to double our user-base was a really great feeling.
So while we thought our content strategy was pretty good, this has highlighted that it can be better. We were looking at a ~3-4% conversion rate from reddit and twitter to articles. But we saw conversion rates ~15-20% from the newsletter traffic.
This makes total sense when you think about it. People coming from reddit to a news article have no idea about our product, they have no context. Whereas if you've come from a niche newsletter and have been introduced to the product already, you're in a much better position to convert.
From here we will be approaching newsletters in our niche (cyber security, web dev) to see if they would be interested in featuring our product.
