How did you get your first 100 genuinely active users?

I’ve built a SaaS for a pretty specific student niche. The product is working and I’ve started getting early users, but I’m realising distribution is probably going to be the harder part.

My goal right now isn’t loads of signups that never come back. I want to get to around 100 genuinely active users and figure out which acquisition channel is actually worth doubling down on.

So far I’m experimenting with:
short-form content
Reddit/community posts
direct outreach
partnerships
reaching organisations that already have access to my target users

For people who’ve already been through this stage, what actually got you from basically zero to your first 100 active users?

And how did you decide when a channel was working well enough to focus on instead of trying everything at once?

Author: mediocremod