Getting Your First Users
30 forms of marketing founders overlook
Marketing is closing the gap between what you're building and the people who'd care about it. Most founders think it starts with a hire or a budget — but a lot of it is things you're already doing, or could do tomorrow, that you're not calling marketing.
One warning before the list
The right channels depend on your motion. If you're product-led, your users are already hanging out somewhere — go there. If you're sales-led, you go to them directly. The list is grouped accordingly, plus a third bucket that works for either. Don't try to do all of it.
Go where your users already are
If you're product-led
Your users are already hanging out somewhere. Show up, be useful, and let the product do the rest.
- 01
Launching more than once
Founders treat the launch as a single event. Every major feature, milestone, or rewrite is another shot at Hacker News, Product Hunt, or a community post. The companies you see "everywhere" are mostly just launching repeatedly.
- 02
Your GitHub repo README
For developer tools and open source projects, the README is usually the first real impression. Most are technical to the point of being cold. The ones that explain why something was built — not just how to use it — convert better.
- 03
A free tool that solves a sliver of the problem
A calculator, a checker, a generator — something small, free, and genuinely useful that lives next to your actual product. It gets shared and linked because it's useful on its own, and it reaches exactly the people with the problem you solve.
- 04
Answering questions in threads that already rank
Reddit threads, Stack Overflow questions, and forum posts about your problem space sit at the top of Google for years. A genuinely good answer in one of those keeps sending you the exact right people long after you wrote it.
- 05
A "powered by" loop in the product itself
If your product produces anything a user shares — a page, a report, an embed, an export — a small credit line on it turns every user into distribution. Calendly and Loom grew on this. Most founders never build it in.
- 06
Getting into curated lists and directories
"Best tools for X" lists, ecosystem pages, community wikis — these get traffic for years and the people reading them are already looking for something like what you built. Most founders never submit themselves.
- 07
Discord and Slack communities
Not to drop links — to genuinely participate. Answering questions, sharing what you've learned, being present over time. People who do this build reputations that convert to users without ever making a pitch.
- 08
Showing up in communities before you have something to sell
Founders who participate in a community for months before they launch are treated completely differently when they do. You're not a stranger dropping a link — you're someone people already associate with being useful.
- 09
Commenting on other people's launches
When a company in your orbit launches on Hacker News or Product Hunt, being an early, thoughtful commenter puts you in front of an audience that is, by definition, interested in new tools.
- 10
Tutorials that solve a real problem — not just yours
Not "how to use [your product]." A tutorial that solves a problem your ICP already has, where your product is the natural tool. These rank, get shared, and reach people who've never heard of you.
- 11
Demo videos that show the problem first
Not a feature walkthrough. A short video that opens with the specific pain, then shows the fix. These spread because people share things that articulate a frustration they've had — not because they love your UI.
Go to them directly
If you're sales-led
Your buyers won't stumble into you. Pick the rooms — physical and digital — where they already are and earn time with them.
- 12
Cold emails written like a human
Not a sequence. One email, to one person, that shows you read their work and have something specific to say. Founders underestimate how much goodwill a well-written cold email creates even when the answer is no.
- 13
Speaking at events your users attend — not your peers
Founders default to startup conferences full of other founders. The more valuable bet is the industry-specific event your ICP goes to, where they've never heard anyone talk about what you're building.
- 14
Hosting a small, curated event
Not a webinar. A dinner or roundtable with 12 of exactly the right people. The relationships built in rooms like this often drive more pipeline than months of content.
- 15
Podcast appearances on small shows
Everyone wants the top 10 podcasts. Nobody wants the one with 800 listeners — which is a mistake. Smaller audiences convert better, hosts prep more, and the shows your buyers actually listen to are usually the niche ones anyway.
- 16
Niche newsletters in your space
There are newsletters with 5,000 deeply engaged readers in almost every vertical. A mention or guest slot in one of these often outperforms a campaign with 10x the budget on a general platform.
- 17
Getting quoted in other people's writing
Journalists, newsletter writers, and researchers need expert sources constantly. Being available and useful when they ask means you end up in publications you couldn't buy your way into.
Works for both motions
Either way
These compound regardless of whether you sell or wait to be found. Most of them cost nothing but attention and follow-through.
- 18
Answering questions publicly instead of privately
When someone asks you something in DMs that others probably have too, answer it in a post instead. Same effort, but now it's findable and it positions you as the person who actually explains things clearly in your space.
- 19
Replying to other people's posts
Not "great post!" — actually adding something. A useful reply on X or LinkedIn puts you in front of an audience that already trusts the person you're responding to. It's borrowed distribution and it compounds.
- 20
Teardowns of things people already know
Analyzing how a well-known company does the thing you're an expert in borrows their search volume and name recognition. People who'd never click on your product will click on a breakdown of something famous — and now they know who you are.
- 21
Your internal processes, made public
Your hiring rubric, your decision-making framework, your values — publishing these tells strangers there's a real company behind the product. PostHog's public handbook did more for early credibility than most of their campaigns.
- 22
Founder takes with an actual argument
When you have a view about your industry that isn't the consensus, write it out as a reasoned argument. Not a hot take — a position. People share things they disagree with almost as often as things they agree with.
- 23
The "why we built this" story
Not homepage copy — the real version. The specific frustration, the moment it clicked, the first hacky version. Written once and distributed in multiple places, this story does more work than most campaigns.
- 24
Serial founder blogging about what's actually happening
Not a press release cadence. The behind-the-scenes posts — what you learned from a failed pivot, what raising a round actually looked like, what surprised you. A big company can never write this way. Being small is an advantage here.
- 25
Writing about the category, not just the product
Posts about the broader problem you're solving reach people who don't know your product exists yet. Most founder content is too product-forward too early. Write about the pain first and the solution becomes obvious.
- 26
Building in public
Sharing the metrics, the decisions, the failures as they're happening — not as a retrospective. It's uncomfortable, which is why so few founders sustain it, and why it stands out when someone does.
- 27
Co-creating content with adjacent tools
Most tools your users use aren't your competitors. A joint post, a comparison guide written together, a co-hosted workshop — earned distribution from someone else's audience with trust already attached.
- 28
A genuinely useful reference resource
Not a gated PDF. An actual guide someone would bookmark and come back to. These accrue inbound links and reputation over years without further effort.
- 29
Repackaging one thing across formats
A blog post becomes a thread becomes a short video becomes a newsletter mention. Most founders write something once and abandon it. One idea distributed five ways reaches five different audiences.
- 30
Doing things that don't scale, publicly
Manually onboarding your first 50 users, hand-writing migration scripts for switchers, personally setting people up on a call. The service itself wins users, and writing about doing it wins the next wave who want to be treated that way.
What to actually do with this list
Not all 30. Not even 10. Pick two.
01
Define success first
Write down a yes-or-no question — "did more people who look like our ICP sign up because of this?" Not a metric target.
02
Run each one for six weeks
If the answer is clearly yes, drop the other and go deeper on the winner — post more, email more, write the next one.
03
Kill what doesn't work
If the answer is clearly no, great: you've learned something. Kill it and pick the next candidate from the list.
The only bad outcome is "I'm not sure." That's how founders end up six months later with a pile of half-working marketing nobody can justify turning off.
None of this requires a strategy document, a brand agency, or a paid budget. It requires deciding that every public-facing thing you do is a chance to close the gap between what you're building and the people who'd care about it — and then doing more of whichever one starts working.