1.5 Months In: Reflection on How We're Doing & Getting Our First Users

To preface, it's still so early to make any conclusions at all at this point but I wanted to make a post to share with y'all our approach and what has/hasn't worked out for us thus far in the past 1.5 months. Apologies in advance for such a long post...

To provide some context on our startup:

We're building a platform called Infisical(https://infisical.com) that helps Node.js dev teams sync their environment variables by pulling and injecting them from our platform into their local processes securely with 1 line of code; it's a simple dev tool that replaces .env files aimed to:

1. Prevent devs from leaking .env files to GitHub
2. Prevent devs from sending keys/configs across unsecure channels to sync up .env files
3. Ensure devs stay in sync with the latest environment variables at all times.

In terms of our progress:

1.5 months ago: Started writing first lines of code for the MVP (took roughly 2-3 weeks to make).

1 month ago: Launched with first users being our SWE friends who had side-projects; they didn't really use it. We tried various initial channels including IH but didn't really gain many organic users — we'd get depressed getting 1 new organic user per 4 days and spend a good chunk of time continuing to refine the rough MVP we had before.

10 days ago: After enough refinement and realizing that we had only reached 700 page views or so and that we just needed to get in front of more developers, we started more formally experimenting and applying various strategies to drive more traffic and increase signup conversions. Finally, we started getting 1 new organic signup per day, mainly freelancers and solo-devs.

Today: We're hitting roughly 3-4 new organic signups per day which is a win over 1 new signup per 4 days just weeks before with some of our new signups being dev teams that are actually using our product.

How we're going about acquisition + retention:

1. Acquisition: In the last 10 days, we've aggressively started cross-posting content across platforms like YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. to raise awareness of our startup and teach them how to use it; we even posted a set of tutorials on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgHJe5TlfQzqhbR0soyK2g). Doing so consistently has generated a lot more chances for people to see our website + signups — acquisition.

2. Acquisition: We made our CLI codebase on GitHub (https://github.com/Infisical/infisical-cli) public which has now reached 32 stars many of whom we've never met. Doing so instilled greater trust in our platform and secured more traffic + some more signups

3. Acquisition: We reflected on whether or not our website was clear and improved the wording of it to make sure that people could understand exactly what we're doing within seconds of seeing our landing page. Doing so increased chances of people staying to read more about our service and signing up.

4. Acquisition: We've tried cold-emailing to no avail so far; to be honest, we haven't done this nearly enough so will stop it at here and leave that for another update in the future.

5. Retention: We reached back out to users who signed up, talked to them to see why they were/were not using the platform, got their feedback, and build exactly what they want. Doing so allowed us to connect and even befriend some of our users and in the process work on make meaningful iterations on our product (changing UX, patching issues, and introducing features); many users came back to our platform realizing that we'd actually implement their changes.

If I were to sum up what we're doing briefly, it would be synergizing awareness about our service across many channels and connecting + listening to our users to guide product development.

We've a really LONG way to go but I hope this post is useful to people here. I'd love to spark some discussion on your early growth stories and also get your advice whether it be on what to try/how to improve or feedback on our landing page.