This guide covers how to go from zero to 100 paying users — with a realistic week-by-week timeline, the channels that actually work at zero budget, and the mistakes that kill most products before they get there. Key takeaways: - Your first 100 customers are not just revenue. They are your product development team, your marketing engine, and your validation proof all wrapped into one. Treat them accordingly. ([source](https://infinitysky.ai/blog/get-first-100-saas-customers-guide)) - Most founders fail at distribution, not product. If you don't have 100 users, the problem is almost certainly how you're finding people — not what you've built. - The correct order: your network → direct outreach → communities → launch directories → content. Not all at once. In sequence. - Founders who charged $199/month from day one kept 90% of their first 50 customers past six months. Founders who charged $9/month saw 60% churn within three months. Charge something real from the start. ([source](https://inqodo.com/blogs/how-to-get-your-first-100-saas-customers)) - Don't run ads until your trial-to-paid conversion rate is above 8-10% — the 2026 B2B SaaS median. ([source](https://chartmogul.com/reports/saas-conversion-report/)) Paid acquisition amplifies what's already working. Before that, it just burns cash faster.

## The Real Reason Most Products Never Reach 100 Users **Most products fail to reach 100 users because of distribution, not product. The solution is a specific sequence of channels executed in the right order.** Here's the honest version. This is the hardest phase of building a SaaS. Not the coding, not the design, not picking a tech stack. Getting real humans to pull out a credit card and pay for something you made. ([source](https://infinitysky.ai/blog/get-first-100-saas-customers-guide)) Most founders treat distribution as the thing they'll figure out after the product is finished. That's the mistake. By the time the product is finished, momentum is gone, savings are lower, and the mental energy required to do 6 weeks of grinding outreach has been spent on feature development. The founders who reach 100 users fast start acquiring users before they're done building. They talk to potential customers while they're building. They have 10-20 people waiting to try it before it launches. They've identified the exact communities where their users spend time. Distribution is designed in parallel with the product, not after. If you're already past launch and stuck below 50 users, this guide still applies — you're just starting the distribution phase now instead of earlier. The channels work the same way.

## Before Anything Else: Know Exactly Who You're Talking To You cannot get 100 customers if you don't know who they are. Not "small businesses" or "SaaS founders." Specific. What industry, what size, what role, what specific problem keeps them awake at 2am. ([source](https://inqodo.com/blogs/how-to-get-your-first-100-saas-customers)) Your first 100 users should be nearly identical. Not because you'll only serve this group forever — but because talking to 100 people with the same problem teaches you more than talking to 100 people with 100 different problems. Write down three things about your ideal first customer: 1. **What they do for work** — not just their job title, the actual day-to-day. "Runs a 3-person development agency that does Next.js work for e-commerce clients" is useful. "Small business owner" is not. 2. **The specific problem your product solves** — one sentence, no jargon. "They manually update their task board every time they push code because GitHub and their PM tool don't talk to each other." 3. **Where they already spend time online** — specific communities, not "social media." "r/webdev, the Indie Hackers forum, and the Next.js Discord." Everything downstream — your outreach message, your community participation, your Product Hunt launch — depends on having clear answers to these three questions. Vague targeting produces vague results.

## The Week-by-Week Playbook Here's a realistic timeline. Not optimistic. Not pessimistic. What actually happens when a founder does the work consistently. ### Weeks 1–4: Your Network (Target: 20–30 users) **This is where your first paying users come from.** Everyone starts here, whether they admit it or not, whether they admit it or not. Your network — former colleagues, university friends, people you've helped, people who know your work — is the only group that will respond to a cold message from you with genuine interest. Write a short, personal email to 50 to 100 people you actually know: old colleagues, university friends, people you've helped in the past. Tell them what you built, who it's for, and ask one specific thing — whether that's signing up, giving feedback, or forwarding it to one person who might benefit. Do not use a mass email tool for this. Write it like you're talking to a real person because you are. ([source](https://www.everfeatured.com/guides/how-to-get-first-100-users)) The ask should be small and specific: "Would you be willing to try it for 20 minutes and tell me what's confusing?" Not "please subscribe." Not "check out my product." A small specific ask gets a real response. The goal of these conversations is not just signups — it's warm introductions to people who actually have the problem. Every person in your network who doesn't need your product personally might know two people who do. A warm intro from a mutual connection is worth ten cold signups from a directory listing. ### Weeks 3–8: Direct Outreach (Target: 20–30 users) **Direct outreach is the fastest channel once your warm network is exhausted.** It's uncomfortable for most founders. It's also what works fastest for B2B SaaS. Send 10 personalized emails or LinkedIn messages per day to people who match your ideal customer profile. ([source](https://inqodo.com/blogs/how-to-get-your-first-100-saas-customers)) Not template-blasted. Personalized — reference something specific about them, their company, or a problem they've publicly mentioned. The anatomy of a message that gets a response: ``` Subject: Saw your post about [specific problem] Hey [Name], Saw your post in [community] about [specific pain point]. That's exactly the problem [Product] solves. [One sentence on how]. We've had [X] founders using it over the past month — happy to share what they're finding. Worth a 15-minute call this week? [Your name] ``` Set realistic expectations for outreach. The average cold email reply rate in 2026 sits around 3.43%. A 5% reply rate is top-decile performance. Measured all the way to a closed deal, cold outreach converts at roughly 0.2% — one customer for every few hundred well-targeted contacts. ([source](https://www.progeektech.com/post/how-do-saas-startups-get-their-first-100-customers-2026)) This is why your first 20-30 customers come from your warm network, not cold email. Cold outreach gets you to 50-100 — not 0-20. Three rules for outreach that works: - Reference something specific (a post they wrote, a company they work at, a problem they mentioned publicly) - Make the ask small (15 minutes, not "sign up") - Follow up exactly once, three days later, if no reply. Then move on. Where to find the right people to reach out to: LinkedIn for job title targeting, Twitter/X for people posting about the problem you solve, communities for people asking the exact question your product answers. ### Weeks 4–10: Communities (Target: 20–40 users) **Communities are where your users already are, talking about the problem you solve.** There is a subreddit, a Discord server, a Slack group, or a forum for almost every niche imaginable. Your first 100 users are already in one of them. ([source](https://www.everfeatured.com/guides/how-to-get-first-100-users)) The mistake founders make: joining communities and immediately posting about their product. That's spam. Nobody cares about your product announcement in a community they joined to get help. The approach that works: spend two weeks lurking and participating before you mention the product at all. Answer questions. Share knowledge. Comment on others' posts with genuine insight. By the time you share your product, people recognize your name. The communities worth investing in: - **Reddit:** r/SaaS, r/entrepreneur, r/webdev, r/indiegames, r/startups — and niche subreddits specific to your problem space - **Indie Hackers:** active, supportive, full of founders who understand early-stage products - **Hacker News:** high quality, high trust. A "Show HN" post from a genuine founder still drives real signups in 2026 - **Discord and Slack:** niche communities around your specific domain often have the most concentrated target audience - **LinkedIn groups:** less active than Reddit but works well for B2B audiences in regulated industries The rule for every community: give ten times before you ask once. ### Weeks 6–12: Launch Directories (Target: 10–20 users) Launch directories are where you submit your product for permanent listing and recurring discovery. They compound over time — a directory listing you submit today will still drive signups a year from now. The ones worth doing: - **Product Hunt** — still the highest profile launch for developer and SaaS tools. A well-executed Product Hunt launch can drive 50-200 signups in 24 hours - **Hacker News Show HN** — post "Show HN: [Product] — [one-line description]" on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning EST - **BetaList** — reaches early adopters specifically looking for products to try - **Uneed** — newsletter exposure to indie makers - **Startup Fame, Turbo0, F6S** — smaller directories that contribute to SEO and steady discovery For Product Hunt specifically: the launch requires preparation. Gather 20-30 people who will upvote on launch day (friends, your waitlist, your network). Post at 12:01am PST so you have the full 24-hour cycle. Your first comment should be a founder story, not a features list. ### Weeks 8–16: Build in Public (Ongoing) Building in public means sharing your journey — numbers, decisions, failures, learnings — as you build. It's one of the highest-leverage things a solo founder can do because it costs nothing and compounds indefinitely. Posting something like "Just hit 27 users on our pre-launch SaaS, here's what's working and what's not" can spark genuine curiosity, feedback, and even new signups. Use hashtags like #buildinpublic, #SaaS, and #indiehacker. ([source](https://beyondlabs.io/blogs/how-to-get-your-first-100-saas-users-a-step-by-step-guide)) What to share: milestone numbers (first user, first $1k MRR, first churn), decisions you're wrestling with, things you shipped, things that broke, things users said that surprised you. Authenticity and specificity get engagement. "Our user retention is 70% after 30 days — here's what we changed" outperforms "excited to share our latest update" every single time. Platforms: Twitter/X and LinkedIn for professional audiences, Indie Hackers and the Indie Hackers podcast for fellow founders.

## On Charging From Day One We've worked with founders who underpriced their MVP at $9/month and attracted customers who churned at 60% within three months. We've also worked with founders who charged $199/month from day one and kept 90% of their first 50 customers past six months. The second group built a business. The first group built a leaky bucket. ([source](https://inqodo.com/blogs/how-to-get-your-first-100-saas-customers)) Free users give you a false signal. They sign up out of curiosity, not need. They don't complete onboarding because they have no skin in the game. They don't give useful feedback because they're not committed to solving the problem with your tool. And they don't tell you what's broken because when it breaks, they just leave. Paying users, even at $29/month, behave completely differently. They complete onboarding. They send support tickets when something is confusing. They tell you when a feature is missing. They're invested. The practical approach for your first 100: - Charge something real — at minimum $29/month, ideally $49-99/month depending on your target customer - Offer a **founder's discount**: "First 100 customers get [X]% off forever / locked in at this price." Creates urgency. Rewards early risk. - Use a 7-14 day free trial, not a 30-day trial. 7-day trials achieve the highest conversion rate at 40.4%, while trials over 60 days drop to 30.6%. ([source](https://www.artisangrowthstrategies.com/blog/saas-conversion-rate-benchmarks-2026-data-1200-companies)) Thirty days gets forgotten. Fourteen days forces a decision. - Make cancellation instant. No calls, no guilt trips, no hoops. The customers who stay are the ones who see value. Pricing is also a filter. If someone says your product is too expensive at $49/month, they're either not feeling the problem acutely enough or they're not your ideal customer. Let them go. Follow up in three months when their current workaround breaks again.

## What Not to Do **Run ads before you have a conversion rate.** Paid acquisition amplifies what is already working. If nothing is working yet, ads just burn cash faster. ([source](https://infinitysky.ai/blog/get-first-100-saas-customers-guide)) The 2026 B2B SaaS median trial-to-paid conversion rate is 8% across 200 products. ([source](https://chartmogul.com/reports/saas-conversion-report/)) Don't run ads until you're at or above that threshold. Before that, you're paying to send people to a product that isn't converting them yet. **Target everyone.** "Our product is for anyone who manages projects" is a positioning death sentence. Pick a niche. Own it. Expand later. The narrower your focus, the faster you find the people who need you badly enough to pay. Broad positioning resonates with no one. The narrower your initial focus, the faster you find the people who need you badly enough to pay. **Build features instead of selling.** If you don't have 100 customers, the problem is almost certainly not a missing feature. It's missing distribution. Stop hiding behind your IDE. The product you have today is good enough to sell to the right people. Go find them. **Ignore churn.** If your first 20 customers sign up and 15 leave within a month, you don't have a customer acquisition problem — you have a product or onboarding problem. More acquisition won't fix a leaky bucket. Pause the outreach. Talk to the people who churned. Fix what they tell you. Then resume. **Do too many channels at once.** By month 4, focus only on your top 2-3 acquisition channels. Some channels will outperform. Double down on what works. Stop what doesn't. ([source](https://techfoundersociety.com/blog/how-to-get-first-saas-customers.html)) Spreading thin across seven channels means seven channels that never get enough consistent effort to show real results.

## The Honest Timeline Getting to 100 paying users takes most founders 3-6 months. Most early-stage SaaS startups reach 100 customers in 3 to 6 months, though it depends heavily on how clear your positioning is and how focused your niche is. A sharp problem for a specific buyer moves fast. A broad "everyone can use it" product moves slowly. ([source](https://www.progeektech.com/post/how-do-saas-startups-get-their-first-100-customers-2026)) The founders who get there fastest share three traits: they started before the product was done, they charged real money from the start, and they picked one or two channels and did them consistently instead of trying everything and doing nothing well. Your 100th customer is not a viral moment. It's the 100th person who saw your product mentioned somewhere, clicked through, and decided it was worth paying for. Get in front of people consistently. Make it easy to sign up. Charge enough that the customers you get are the right customers. That's the whole playbook.

## Wrap Up The path from zero to 100 users is the same for almost every successful SaaS product in history: find your specific target customer, reach them directly, solve their problem clearly, and charge enough that the relationship is real. The channels change. The core doesn't. If you're a developer founder building a SaaS and you want your project management, GitHub integration, deployment tracking, and analytics in one workspace so you can spend more time on distribution and less time context-switching between tools, check out [AdeptDev](https://adeptdev.io). Free for 7 days.

## How long does it take to get the first 100 SaaS customers? Most founders take 3-6 months to reach 100 paying customers with consistent effort across the channels that work. The timeline compresses significantly when you start distribution before the product is done (building a waitlist, doing customer interviews, participating in communities), charge real money from day one (free users rarely convert), and focus on one or two acquisition channels rather than spreading thin across everything. Founders who treat distribution as an afterthought typically take 9-12+ months or never get there. ## Should I charge from day one or offer my SaaS for free? Charge from day one — even at a reduced early-adopter price. Free users behave fundamentally differently from paying users. They sign up out of curiosity, not need. They don't complete onboarding, they don't give useful feedback, and when something breaks they just leave rather than telling you. Paying users, even at $29/month, are invested in making your product work for them. They give better feedback, complete onboarding at higher rates, and tell you when something is confusing instead of silently churning. ## What is the most effective channel for getting first SaaS users? Direct outreach to your ideal customer profile is the fastest channel for getting first users because it requires no audience, no budget, and no existing reputation. Start with your personal network (former colleagues, friends, people who know your work), then move to LinkedIn and Twitter outreach to people who match your ICP. Communities come second — spend two weeks participating before mentioning your product. Launch directories (Product Hunt, Hacker News Show HN, BetaList) come third and provide compounding discovery over time. Run paid ads last, only after your trial-to-paid conversion rate exceeds 5%. ## How do I find communities where my SaaS users hang out? Search Reddit for subreddits about the problem you solve, not about your product category. If you're building a project management tool for developers, search for "GitHub workflow," "dev team tools," and "engineering productivity" — not "project management." Check where your ideal customer asks questions: Indie Hackers for founders, Stack Overflow for developers, specific Discord servers for niche professional communities. Spend a week just searching the communities for threads about the specific pain point your product solves. Where those threads exist with active discussion is where your users are. ## When should I start running paid ads for my SaaS? Start paid ads only after you have a 5%+ trial-to-paid conversion rate and at least 20-30 paying customers from organic channels. Paid acquisition amplifies what's already working — it doesn't fix a product that isn't converting. Before that threshold, ads just send people to a product that won't retain them, burning budget without building a business. When you do start, begin with a small test budget ($500-1,000), focus on one platform (Google Ads or LinkedIn for B2B), and target the most specific possible audience — the long-tail keywords and narrow job titles that describe your exact ICP. ## How do I do a Product Hunt launch to get my first users? Prepare for at least 2 weeks before launch day. Gather 20-30 people (network, waitlist, online friends) who will upvote in the first hour — early momentum determines your final position. Schedule your launch for 12:01am PST on a Tuesday or Wednesday to maximize your full 24-hour cycle. Your first comment should tell your founder story, not list features. Reply to every single comment on launch day. Product Hunt can drive 50-200 signups in 24 hours for a well-executed launch, but most of that traffic is curious rather than highly qualified — expect 5-15% to convert to active users. ## What mistakes kill SaaS products before they reach 100 users? The five most common: targeting everyone instead of a specific niche (leads to messaging that resonates with nobody), building features instead of selling (if you don't have users, the problem is distribution not the product), ignoring churn (if your first 20 customers are churning, more acquisition won't fix it), running ads before product-market fit (amplifies a broken conversion funnel), and doing too many channels without mastering any (spreading thin means nothing gets consistent effort). The founders who reach 100 users pick one or two channels, do them consistently for 8-12 weeks, and double down on whichever shows early traction.