🦄 First User Fridays Issue #4 - How Satvik went viral and got 18,000+ users when he launched Darkmodes.com
The story of how Satvik used free communities and social sites to launch darkmodes.com, a niche directory, and how he got its first users.
Hey all! 👋
Welcome, glad to have you!
Let’s kick it off! 🔥
First, can you tell us a little about yourself? 😁
Satvik: Sure, I'm Satvik, I do full stack JS/TS work mainly, been working on some products and learning some languages. Current project is a 6 month full time self-learning program, I've been teaching myself Rust, advanced React/TypeScript, machine learning, Flutter, and (for good measure) data structures and algorithms in Leetcode.
I'm doing this cause I'm a freelancer and I finished a big client project a few months ago and decided to spend some time on upgrading skills, eventually to launch new products and hopefully make money from them.
What is the product you want to talk about today?
Satvik: Darkmodes.com, a curated collection of the best dark mode implementations on the internet.
How did you come up with this product idea?
Satvik: I had been collecting dark mode sites that I thought were interesting, and I decided to share them with my friends, but they said it's too much of a hassle to click every link and that they'd wanna see it all on one page, like other website directories like Awwwards etc.
How did you find your first customers?
Satvik: I built the site in 24 hours, launched on HN, Reddit, Indie Hackers etc and got 18k users since then.
Main thing was I always had ideas for projects but I kept procrastinating them because I was a perfectionist, so I gave myself a 24 hour deadline and shipped it. It was very janky and some people said it froze their computers lol, because I didn't optimize it correctly, but I got a lot of feedback and was able to make it run by the end of the day.
Dante: Dude nice. Did you lose any users due to the "jankyness"?
Satvik: I'm not actually sure I lost any users, some might have bounced for sure but I'm not exactly sure how to measure a bounce from poor performance versus a regular bounce from disinterest.
Dante: Since it's a niche directory, did you have a certain group of people in mind that might wanna use this before launching? Top of my head are designers, and other solo devs?
Satvik: Yeah designers and solo devs (indie hackers, bootstrapper) were the target I had in mind, basically myself.
I'm thinking about making an email newsletter that dissects each site and goes through design and dev pros and cons.
However I should note that I didn't make the site based on a preconceived idea of showing it to a particular demographic, I just made it for myself and thought, oh this could be useful to others.
Dante: That's awesome dude, it's a diff. perspective from, "make something people want" mentality BUT it still worked!
Satvik: So I host on Vercel, with NextJS, I actually got an email from them saying I used like 150gb out of a monthly 100, due to me using iframes which downloads every other site, so I'm thinking I'll convert them into images rather than have them as iframes. Basically I don't want to be booted from Vercel so I'm biding my time haha.
Do you have any tips for how to launch on HackerNews, IndieHackers, and Reddit?
Satvik: Ah yep learned a lot from launching, so basically:
On HackerNews: Don't be a lurker. Don't use your account just for self promotion. I got like 200 upvotes for my submission while my friend, who has like 50x more followers than me, got shadowbanned.
Dante: Oh dang bad for him dude...
Satvik: He got shadowbanned because he only posted stuff from his blog, i.e., self promoted only.
Dante: Understood, i'll keep that in mind.
Satvik: So their bots can detect that and when he emailed the mod that's what they told him.
Also, make the story more personal, I made it about my procrastination and perfectionism moreso than the actual site I developed, and since I commented a lot on HN, I knew that this topic would be a hit, and it was.
Dante: Awesome I haven't thought about framing it like that…
On Reddit: Same thing, it's a delicate balance. /r/InternetIsBeautiful is a good site for free stuff like this. Got like 1.5k upvotes there.
Dante: Okay noted, I'm on there too hahaha, it's great for discovering quirky projects, sometimes really useful ones too.
Satvik: Again because I knew the community and I knew they liked shiny things like dark mode sites that were designed well.
Dante: That probably brought in a significant amount of traffic?
Satvik: Yeah looked like it.
On IH: The traffic was pretty low, very low even. To be honest, I think the quality of IH is going down compared to HN or even certain parts of Reddit.
Dante: Actually I agree that that's the case also.. maybe because it's like a niche community? And everyone's building/not on forums most of the time?
Satvik: Yeah but also there's a spam problem plus everyone shills their product. Also, drive by link posting, like post a link, no discussion, no comments.
Dante: Exactly.
Satvik: So I actually think the Slack communities are better, I'm on NomadList and IndieWorldWide, by far better conversation there because people aren't generally shilling, also it's a paid community.
How do you find your customers today?
Satvik: For customers today, I'm just posting online mainly, I'm thinking of writing to blogs to help make the site more well known.
After I posted on Reddit and HN, a few people on Twitter shared it with their audience which was nice, but I think design focused sites might enjoy the content too.
Underrated tip IMO, cold outreach to blogs for placement in their articles.
Dante: Same! I'm thinking of doing it for the project I'm working on too, they need content and you need the traffic haha win-win.
Satvik: I'm more concerned with consistent users now rather than paying customers, the plan is to turn it into a paid community for designers and devs I think, similar to what Anthony did.
But give out as much value for free first, similar to how IWW is free until recently.
Can you share an approximate of how many users you currently have?
Satvik: Users is hard to say, I get at least a couple hundred every day or so. The 18,000 was from launch so usually that kind of traffic doesn't stick around. But I'll have to continue growing it, that's the slow grind of startups I suppose.
Dante: Yeah it's a really good launching point man, for people like me, I'm still trying to find initial users, others are too.
Can you share some current revenue numbers?
Satvik: It's all pre revenue haha, just launched it a month ago, gonna be free for the foreseeable future, then turn it paid.
Dante: Gotcha 😄
Do you have advice for other founders that are just starting today?
Satvik: Biggest advice I have is…
Just launch that shit. 🚀 I spent too long procrastinating and being a perfectionist and I know many other startup founders who are the same way
Just launch it, and start doing marketing.
Dante: Hahaha love it, I'll take that advice too.
Where can we go to learn more about you and your projects?
Satvik: Follow me on Twitter @satvikpendem and you'll see my projects I'm working on there.
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That’s it thanks for reading everyone! See you next week! 👍