Where do you go for alpha users?

Dakota L.
17 replies
Is there anywhere in particular you like to post your application that is good for finding early stage users? (Maybe like ProductHunt but pre-release)

Replies

Xavier Coiffard
When I want to soft launch a product I usually use:  - Twitter, if you have an audience there it's pretty efficient - Online chats, pick a specific channel and ask for feedback. You won't get a lot of traffic but it's enough for alpha testing - Some specific or targeted sub-reddit - IndieHacker, it's a pretty big community but they're super friendly! I curated a list of 400 places where to post your startup at different stage of growth → https://spreadtheworld.net
Fabian Maume
Indie Hackers Community can be a nice place to get alpha users. Personally I prefer to use LinkedIn and cherry pick some people to outreach. Another way is too look at video about your industry on yourtube. On the channel detail page you can get the email of the youtuber to contact them.
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Tatiana Kukova, PhD
Indie Hackers and Hacker News (from YCombinator)
John Flynn
I’d second the direct outreach approach e.g. LinkedIn. Can be very useful especially for b2b or trying to identify a smaller number of core early adopters
Dakota L.
@john_flynn_son Personally with this project I'm probably going to spend a good amount of time on this route. Since my main audience is tech professionals.
Gerald Crescione
Did a lot of direct outreach approach on linked in with extremely precise profiles and started by proposing a 1o1 chat to get live feedback. It works and naturally converts the interviewees into qualified alpha users.
Jason Curry
https://betalist.com is good. I got about 150 email signups in 24-48 hours for https://betalist.com/startups/co... Also, FB, Slack and Discord groups related to my target market. I am seeing things I did not know about in the comments below, so glad I found this discussion!
Artem Romashihin
@jasonacurry Really? I saw in projects just a few likes. How is it possible?
Jason Curry
@jasonacurry @tiistars Good question. Perhaps more people click to go through to the website itself. To like one needs a Twitter account. Also, when you click / tap on the heart to like, it changes to liked but then also shows a message to login with Twitter. Not sure if everyone realizes that the like does not stay if you do not login with twitter. Regardless, I am grateful I got the emails!
Miriam Dorsett
Thanks, this is a great discussion. Saving these resources for future reference!
Yocheved B
Great ideas listed. There’s also www.launchingnext.com
Dhruv Bhatia
What I've observed is that the various online communities have a certain niche of followers and so I would launch it on all (with a small gap between launches) - BetaList, HackerNews, producthunt, Twitter
Varun Nair
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