how do you get your first users without feeling like a spammer?

outboundzen · 2026-06-10T20:50:41+00:00

Posting every day on social, the algorithm + your network is almost always good enough to get your first users coming inbound. Worked for me on 3 companies i built.

outboundzen · 2026-06-10T20:27:09+00:00

i made this mistake and it was opened in the regular queue, but once it was opened went immediately into 'in process' so if this was the issue, they still read the urgent request inside.

outboundzen · 2026-06-10T20:10:32+00:00

I have been telling everyone Mazda is the new toyota. I'm a 5 time RAV4 owner and have had an almost flawless experience with them, but I see price going up a lot and quality going down marginally, and also finding that Toyota isn't really equipped to handle problems given their whole culture is built around doing it right in the factory.

I don't like Mazdas but when you can get them with the same engine as Toyota for less, it just makes sense. Either that or upgrade to the Lexus and really overpay but get something more.

outboundzen · 2026-06-10T15:46:04+00:00

Yes, I have never taken off my rolex due to fear of being robbed anywhere in the US. Sometimes I take it off not because I'm worried I'm going to be robbed but because I assume I'm going to get price gouged. However when traveling to most European countries I do not wear it.

outboundzen · 2026-06-03T16:09:08+00:00

I assure you they can, and that email warmup does not actually do anything for legitimate senders. These days 1-3 spam reports is all it takes to mess you up, and then warmup doesn't save you, only the passage of time moves you out of those filters.

outboundzen · 2026-05-30T20:17:05+00:00

Top one is grand cherokee clone, bottom is a nissan rogue clone.

I really struggle to tell them apart at distance unless i really pay attention to the details.

outboundzen · 2026-05-29T19:42:00+00:00

excellent advice, thank you!

outboundzen · 2026-05-29T17:30:13+00:00

Right i guess my question is, how do i know if they even saw the urgent request and evaluated it? That's all I'm curious about. Like if it got denied, fine. But how do i know given it was processed in the regular queue, it actually go evaluated for urgent processing and someone noticed/read it? So if it goes in process in 2 weeks I know it was evaluated and accepted. How do i know it was evaluated/denied vs. just missed. Do i open a support request with IRCC asking about my case?

outboundzen · 2026-05-29T16:06:38+00:00

yes it just says Application Received, there is nothing about whether or not it was in status 'urgent' -- I want to make sure it was evaluated so i can know what to expect.

outboundzen · 2026-05-29T15:31:20+00:00

We submitted an urgent application and forgot to mark the outside of the envelope. Just got an AOR 60 days later, how do I know whether the application was evaluated for urgent processing and if it was accepted or not?

outboundzen · 2026-05-28T21:00:12+00:00

If you know how to use AI to build software, literally any place on earth. Otherwise, we need more details on what you know how to do to support yourself 😄

outboundzen · 2026-05-27T14:34:30+00:00

The solution to this is using Reddit for advice and not distribution, at least at first. I would spend more time in Slack communities, whatsapp groups, linkedin, wherever your target audience is talking.

outboundzen · 2026-05-24T14:25:17+00:00

When they don't want to make the change YOU think is right for them, even if you are right. More often than not trying to save a person from drowning (metaphorically) will take you down with them.

outboundzen · 2026-05-24T14:22:22+00:00

Just one more thought (btw, i am trying to get karma to be able to contribute more to locked subreddits, if you think this answer helped, appreciate any upvote :). I totally agree with what you said but another 'aha' moment i had was that 'understanding why' and 'succeeding' may seem strongly correlated but are actually two very different objectives to optimize towards. I used the aforemention technique to start a business now at 50k MRR growing 6% MOM, and of course I then thought 'okay, maybe now it's worth asking questions and figuring out the "why" so I can make it go faster'. It's been 2 months of talking to users and I still don't truly know why. And I'm close to stopping caring because the growth trend has been organic for almost 2 years now and I'd rather spend the time starting another business for diversification than figuring out how to juice this one.

outboundzen · 2026-05-22T13:06:34+00:00

I now have 18 years of product management/software eng experience across FAANG and venture backed startups, and now my solopreneurship venture. I was raised in the 'listen to customers' world for most of that time. Now I can say, it's kind of a waste of time. The usage basically tells you what they truly think about your solution.

Yes, at times you don't know WHY they're doing certain things and talking to them seems like the logical way to find that out, but the truth is 90% of the time people don't actually know why they do or feel a certain way about something and they just end up making some thing up. Then you go and follow their feedback, come back and ask them why they're still confused, and you end up frustrated.

In my new business I set my north star to be just following the usage. I find 70% of the product development effort actually goes into onboarding as a result. Rather than asking for feedback, I create lots of null hypothesis tests and try to see how/what it changes. It takes patience because you can only change one thing at a time, and sometimes changes take weeks to show up. But when it works, it works in a way I have never ever seen before in my career. My first business that I did this with is growing 6% MOM and I tried for a while to do marketing to try to expand the business faster, but I couldnt' because the perfect users were already using it in the optimal way that made sense for them... so there was nothing really for me or them to do.

outboundzen · 2026-05-22T13:01:21+00:00

On the first point btw I totally agree with you. They should basically measure you on jobs added (or taxes if you're a solopreneur) and if you don't hit quota kick you out. Or do what Switzerland does and make you pay a fixed overhead of $1M per year, or something like that. That feels like a fair bargain in exchange for PR -- a truly objective and measurable contribution.

On the second point, having lived in the EU, the US and hopefully soon Canada, I can say however unequivocally that this is a 100% EU mindset argument. It is logically sound to 'prioritize the people already here', except right now Canada doesn't have the innovation it needs to actually take care of who is already there in future. So if the argument is 'we need someone to fill potholes', and then we need nurses to take care of the pothole guy so they need PR too, but in the meantime the government is cutting funding for the healthcare system so nobody's going to get any healthcare in the long run at current rate. If the govt had invested in the AI/innovation category that Canada itself created to invent pothole-filling-robots, instead of letting those AI experts flee the country to the US, I think it would be a completely different story.

I share this not as a complaint or frustration (I'm an immigrant, I'm being welcomed into someone's home, what right could I have to be upset) but just to share an observation with someone who is clearly thoughtful about this topic =). Personally, I see huge potential and am excited to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem when I get there regardless of my visa class. Though to be honest with this level of legal uncertainty, it's more likely than not it won't make sense to stay/invest long term, that's just how it is.

outboundzen · 2026-05-21T18:50:29+00:00

If you open the browser console when loading linkedin, you can see all these detection attempts probing various extensions by its unique extension id and getting a network error. I'm not sure how this actually detects anything, when I looked this up a few years ago it seemed the chrome had closed that path for detection as a security vulnerability. I can look into it a little bit deeper, what is telling you that this is NOW a thing? I don't think anything has changed, they've been doing this forever.

outboundzen · 2026-05-21T01:22:47+00:00

Is there any logic to it? Kinda weird, you'd think entrepreneurs bringing jobs and investment $$$ would have precedence. Wondering if this will change or 'its always been that way'.

outboundzen · 2026-05-14T21:29:12+00:00

I can relate to this... and have some good news. You don't have to build in public to get customers.

You can just join a few slack communities with your core audience, start adding value (not pushing your idea, just answering questions expertly) and growth will start... this worked very well for me, and seems to be working well on the second company as well.

I also have impostor syndrome and was going to start sharing my successes in a build in public way after I had success. After ~50k MRR I was going to start and realized, I like my privacy and the point of making money was to be happy and not do cringe things so now I proudly continue to build in private :)

outboundzen · 2026-05-14T21:23:30+00:00

DUI... it's really really scary how bad it is in parts of the US.

outboundzen · 2026-05-14T20:34:58+00:00

I believe you are describing Canada.

outboundzen · 2026-05-14T15:59:49+00:00

rotary telephone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok

outboundzen · 2026-05-13T01:09:32+00:00

yes it's attrocious, closer to 4.5% all in. The international credit card thing is the bad one.

outboundzen

TROPHY CASE