7/27/2025

How I got my first 100 users for each of my 24 startups:

23 tweets

5 min read

John Rush

@johnrushx

How I got my first 100 users for each of my 24 startups:

John Rush

@johnrushx

1. Cold emails: - go for quality, not quantity send to 20 people; if no reply, change the copy and resend. repeat until 2 replies. - make it super short and include the outcome E.g. for @listingbott I'd send this "100 backlinks from relevant directories in one click"

John Rush

@johnrushx

2. Social media DMs (Li, X, IG, FB, RD, etc) - send 15 sec loom with an audit of their biz/site/profile...where the preview makes it obvious it's personalized. - impress them with your quick effort - e.g. for @seobotai it'd be: "SEO audit of their website"

John Rush

@johnrushx

3. Free pilot. - Offer people a free early adopter deal - They get a free yearly plan for trying & give you feedback - Often people find it cool to be approached this way, but make sure to start by explaining why you picked them to be your early adopter

John Rush

@johnrushx

4. Podcasts. - reach out to relevant podcast hosts and offer yourself as a speaker. If you go for smaller pods, they are short on guests, so there is high chance to get in. - while being on the pod, demo your tool as a part of the talk, viewers actually love demos

John Rush

@johnrushx

5. Webinars. - Clickbat title (e.g. for @unicornplatform I'd go for "Master Landing Pages: Boost Conversions to 31% in Just 30 Minutes!" - Create it as an event on Linkedin, invite your network and find one relevant influencer who would invite their network too, if u have none

John Rush

@johnrushx

6. ROI case study - if u had at least 1 customer, create case study, where you convince the readers - if u had no customers, be ur own customer. e.g., I was the first one to build a successful directory ( @allgpts_ ) using @unicornplatform . And it solved the distribution for me

John Rush

@johnrushx

7. Communities on Slack & Discord - find relevant communities - join them and introduce yourself and the product in the Intro channel - do it super short, like a tweet, so that people actually read - when u attach the URL, remove the preview banner

John Rush

@johnrushx

8. Sponsor micro-newsletters - find relevant newsletters below 10k subscribers - it'll cost you a few hundreds dollars only - the ROI from small newsletters is far better than from large ones

John Rush

@johnrushx

9. Launch on @ProductHunt , @devhunt_ and other launchpads - make sure you market your launch - few weeks before launch, upvote other launches and DM them saying "cool product, I upvoted.." - on your own launch day, DM them again just telling them you've launched too now

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John Rush

@johnrushx

10. List on web directories, forums and marketplaces - find your competitors, check their backlinks using ahrefs/semrush/ubersuggest - see what web directories they are listed on - list on the same and find more places to list by asking @grok- (or @listingbott can do it for u)

John Rush

@johnrushx

11. Launch free tools - free chrome extenssion - free AI generator - free web directory - free calculator - use @wrapifai to build such tools using prompts if you dont wanna code them

John Rush

@johnrushx

12. Cross promo - find someone small(10-100 users) - do a cross promo(newsletters, place links to each other, or in social media) - since you and they both are struggling with growth, it'll be a win-win or at least won't make it worse

John Rush

@johnrushx

13. Lifetime deals - you'll have to give them huge discount - the platforms take a huge cut - the users who buy LTDs aren't super nice - but you still move forward by doing this, so it's not bad

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John Rush

@johnrushx

14. Reddit/Quora - find relevant topics - reply with your solution(dont use the link) - people will ask for a link - then place the link, or better just name the tool, so that they google it and find it there (high chance to be banned from reddit for links)

John Rush

@johnrushx

15. Find bad comments about the competitor - enter the comments to share your solution to those problems - dont do it to fellow bootstrappers, only do it to corporations and well funded startups (we must not hurt each other, we fight against the big guys)

John Rush

@johnrushx

16. Guest posts & Blogging - hackernoon - dev to - medium - hashnode - and many other blogging platforms can be used to share your story. Try to go for smaller blogs, that tend to have fewer authors

John Rush

@johnrushx

17. Sponsor hackatons or small events - find those with relevant audience - pay around $500 to sponsor them - ideally they should use your tool during the hackaton - find them on social media, the small players usually respond

John Rush

@johnrushx

18. Paid ads - @tinyadz_ (my own ad network, for b2b). It works pretty well, it's in beta, give it a try - I've tried ads on FB/Google/X and it never worked. Most likely I'm not good at making those banners, so make sure to hire someone who is great at banners if u go for it

John Rush

@johnrushx

19. Introduce your product in social media every day until it goes viral. See other viral product launch posts, copy their templates. Do it 100 days in a row and one day you’ll go viral (if you copy the viral templates). Here is the prompt for grok:

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John Rush

@johnrushx

20. Run an AI SEO agent that generates articles for you every day on autopilot ( e.g. @seobotai ) or build those articles yourself using grok deep research and post them manually one by one (50 articles is a good start). Also make sure to grow your domain rating to at least 15.

John Rush

@johnrushx

21. Buy a tiny free app that already had some users and channel those users into your product. - gonna cost you around $1k-$10k - works best if the audience totally overlaps

John Rush

@johnrushx

22. Integrate products with each other > there is "boost your DR" button in @seobotai that links to @listingbott> all my agents are integrated natively into @unicornplatform The end!

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