Launching is hard. Building a user base after you launch can be harder.
Most startup founders know that user adoption grows fast after your startup discovers and leverages an online community. To state that plainly: You start talking to the people who care about what you're doing -- bang -- you go ‘viral.’ This is the essence of the ‘overnight success’ enjoyed by Dropbox, Instagram, SnapChat and Uber.
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Gaining users is the pathway to product-market fit. Users give you feedback. You’re able to improve or pivot. You get more users.
In the hunt for new users, many startup founders go back to foundational stuff, turning to books like 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries,'Running Lean' by Ash Maurya, and 'The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Marketing,' by Al Ries and Laura Ries. As good as those books are, the startup landscape is changing too fast to rely on them too much. Also, when you need feedback, inspiration, and daily motivation, let's face it: A book by itself isn't going to cut it.
You need to talk to other founders. You might need a mentor.
Here are some resources to get you on the right path. They are all free.
-Ash Maurya's blog Practice Trumps Theory offers actionable tips every day, but his education program, Spark59 is even better. He offers an online course in Lean Canvas, the startup business planning tool that he pioneered. That course is free, along with another online course on actionable startup metrics.
-Justin Wilcox runs Customer Dev Labs, a super-detailed blog on customer development with loads of how-to. If you're looking to nail down customer personas by doing brilliant customer interviews, Justin's your guy. To get you started, he will give you 30 minutes of guidance and mentoring, free.
-I'm launching an education program for startup founders called Mo'popular. Since I'm in beta, I'm offering a video series for free. It includes videos on how to discover your best promotional channels, how to make a great product or founder video with your iPhone, and tips on landing pages. More info here.
Finding your user base is the key to your startup's success. Not only is a healthy user base the proof of concept sought by investors, your users always have a lot to teach you. Listen to their problems in customer interviews and create solutions. Learn the channels they use and become more popular on them. Build loyalty among users so you can ask them questions to tweak your UX or product usability. Users are gold! Take advantage of these free resources to find more of them.
Photo credit: Heisenberg Media via Creative Commons.
