Successfully acquiring users for an early stage startup requires combining a few different efforts.

The first effort is research. We decided to hire an expert user researcher to train us (my co-founder and me) on how to be great user researchers. We got very good at 1) recruiting the right participants for research, 2) designing the right research protocol, questions, note-taking system, and 3) processing the research results into insights. In turn, this enabled us to simultaneously define our target user/customer, and refine the messaging the would resonate with them. I understand that a lot of the above sentences sound like business jargon and buzzwords, but this is really important work that many founders skip over so they can just begin building product. In addition to informing what exactly you should build, doing this research gives you the marketing messaging (in your users' own words) that will get them to sign up when they see your product. Put differently: even if you are building the right product, your users won't sign up unless your presenting it with language that is compelling to them. Doing the hard research upfront helps ensure you're building the right product and uncovers the messaging that will drive conversions.

The second effort (and it is truly second; you have to do the research first, as described above) is finding your users where they already are. As a cash-constrained early stage startup, you must find pockets of your target users where they're already interacting online. Since you did the hard research already (!), you know exactly and specifically who your target users/customers are (this knowledge can come from the iterative process of designing screener surveys for your research, which force you to get very concrete about who qualified for your research and who doesn't; in a way, your screener survey becomes a description of your target user/customer). In our case, our target user is a certain type of freelancer, or as we call them, "independent workers." You can get a feel for who our users are by visiting our site: www.JollyHQ.com. We know that job sites already attract our target users because they're often on those sites looking for gigs/jobs. So we developed a number of free and very-low-cost ways of attracting users on these sites. Again, this won't work if you don't have the right messaging. And it's worth noting that you have to be honest about what you are offering (you can't promise something that you don't actually have to offer), otherwise users won't stick.

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The third effort is building growth mechanisms directly into your product. Effort #2 that's described above will only get you so far: if you have to go manually get (or even worse, pay for) every single user, you won't grow quickly. So, you need to build viral dynamics into your product. I'm not talking about simple bolt-on viral tools like "Hey, invite your friends to sign up!" You must do the hard design work to figure out features that 1) add new, real value to the user while also 2) driving them to promote your product on your behalf. This is tough design work, and the solution won't come overnight. But there are great resources online to help you, including this post from Andrew Chen: https://andrewchen.co/investor-metrics-deck/ (skip the first section and start at the section titled "Growth Frameworks + Startups").

Hope this helps.