First 100 users for your AI Product: Lessons from our 2 YC Portfolio Companies
Wed Jun 11 2025
Getting first 100 users for your AI Startup is not easy, it’s a battlefield. Why? Because market is too flooded. Everyone’s selling the next big AI SaaS.
Forget what every glossy Product Hunt success story tells you. In reality, everything’s super hard and you face reality once you launch your product and you get punched on face because no one tries. Its because they’re skeptical, they’re busy. And they don’t care about your tech until it solves a very real, very painful problem.
This blog is a practical map from my journey of working at 2 YC startups and launching multiple products while leading their GTM. Lets get started and talk about how we hacked our way to the first 100 real users — the kind who use your product, not just sign up and ghost.

Before we start, Remember
“To every great thing that disrupts, its hard to adapt by society”
Now, Lets dive into the 5 practical strategies to get the first 100 users:
1. Small Niche Communities hold the value
Most founders go wide too early. You need to go deep. Think Reddit, Slack groups, Discords, weird Telegram channels, places where your people already hang out and complain. Here are some examples:
Specialised Subreddits
Reddit is a goldmine, if you’re willing to mine it the right way.
- If you’re building AI tools for legal teams, hit r/LawFirm, r/LegalTech, or even r/Ask_Lawyers.
- Building an AI for YouTubers? Dive into r/NewTubers or r/VideoEditing.
Tools you can use: Use redditsearch.io, Pushshift or Reddit Answers to find relevant threads and timing patterns.
Take Care: Reddit is a super moderated platform. So don’t promote. Instead, answer questions. Share solutions. Be the nerdy friend who always has a good link.
Now we will write a complete separate post on how to select communities for posting so stay tuned :)

Now in this photo, see how smartly we plugged in our product in our entire conversation. Below are the numbers from this post.

Private Slack & Discord Communities
These aren’t easy to get into — and that’s the point.
You’ll find incredibly focused groups with 1,000 or fewer members, often early adopters. Slack Examples:
- Non Tech: FounderSlack, AIProductBuilders, NoCodeDevs, Latent Space Discord
- Tech: Langchain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face
Tools you can use: Slofile to find active Slack groups.
Take Care: Don’t pitch. Start by commenting on others’ projects or sharing unique findings.
Industry-Specific Forums
Find out where your users go to rant. Be there.
If you’re building AI for accountants, hang around the Going Concern forums. AI for indie hackers? Join the Indie Hackers community but go niche — look for threads with 0 likes and 1 comment. That’s where the real pain lives. Examples for tech folks:
- Open AI Forum
- Github Issues
- Hugging Face Forum
You’ll know you’re on the right track when people reply with “I thought I was the only one facing this.”
2. Trend-Hack + Relevance Pivoting
The internet is a current — not a pond. Ride it.
Instead of cold-launching and trying to create a demand, insert yourself into existing conversations. For example, we used the Fifa worldcup to introduce our AI product for sports commentary. During Athina’s launch of Dialog, we framed our pitch around how a new captain for Indian Cricket Team was not the right choice and it clicked hard.
Look for seasonal or pop culture trends and create content that links your product to that narrative.


3. Build a Pattern Story Series
Humans love stories. But we obsess over patterns in stories.
Start creating content in the form of a public series around your niche. Now smartly and subtly plug in your product in the content for people to know.
Keep in mind, the intention of the post should be to help people and not promote your product. Saying by experience Everything will follow.
For example if you are a AI Dev Company (for Vibe Coding), start something like:
- “5 Day Series: Day 1 of building X product with {your} tool”
- “Day 1 of recommending the best tools for {superpower of your product}”
One post each day. Format it like a post on LinkedIn, or a thread on Twitter/X. If you do it right (this comes by experience) , after 5–6 posts, people start recognising your voice and congratulations people will start using your product now if its good.
4. Don’t try to be the Hero always. Be the Guy Who Shows Up
Too many founders build in public but don’t comment in public.
Want attention? Earn it by showing up on your competitors’ posts. See what they’re sharing, then:
- Comment with a relevant insight.
- Message people who comment on their launch post with “Hey, saw you were into XYZ. We’re building something similar but for [specific niche]. Want early access?”
It’s time-consuming, but these are not just users — they’re context-aware users.
Bonus: Use tools like PhantomBuster or Bardeen to semi-automate your DMs and follow-ups. I dont recommend it though
5. Create Lazy-Friendly Content (Compilations + Curations)
People are lazy and they don’t like to dig in and do the hard work. So dig for them. Subtly include your product.
Create curated lists:
- “Top 10 AI Tools for [Target User]” — include yours, of course.
- “Best 5 Startup Pitches Using GPT-4”
- “3 AI Startups Doing X Right”
Post them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, or in niche groups. They don’t feel like self-promo. They feel like value. And that’s what makes them work.

Final Words
Its hard. Don’t expect it to be easy. But its crackable and repeatable. Remember you need velocity and not speed. Your first 100 users are earned — comment by comment, post by post, DM by DM and then everything flows if the product is good.
If there’s one rule: Be everywhere your users are complaining, and be the one who listens.
We at Varnan help high growth startups with their GTM end to end so that they don’t have to scratch their head thinking about distribution and other pipelines.