The Indie Hacker's Playbook for the First 1,000 Users (No Ads, No VC)

VC playbooks don't apply to you. You don't have $200k to burn on ads, you don't have a growth team, and you don't care about vanity hockey-stick charts. You just need the first 1,000 real users so your product has a heartbeat.

Here's what has actually worked for the indie hackers [shipping on ScrollLaunch](/) in 2025-2026. No funnels, no fluff — just the 8 moves that compound.

## Move 1 — Publish before you ship

Not "build in public." Publish the **problem** before you publish the solution. Write a 1,500-word post explaining the pain you're building for, with real examples and a credible claim about why existing tools fall short.

This post does four things simultaneously:

1. Earns you a trust reservoir when you launch
2. Becomes a Google entry point that ranks for problem-space queries
3. Attracts the first 10 people who DM you "I need this"
4. Forces you to clarify your positioning before writing a single feature

**Cost:** 2 days. **Impact:** massive. **Skipped by:** 90% of makers.

## Move 2 — Ship the ugliest working version

Your MVP should be barely presentable. If you're blush-ashamed of your landing page, you're on track. The 2 months you save by skipping "one more polish pass" are worth more than the 5% conversion lift polish would give you.

Launch at "I'd be embarrassed if my mom saw this." Not "I'd be embarrassed if another designer saw this" — that's way too late.

## Move 3 — The 20-person manual onboarding

Your first 20 users get onboarded personally, by you, on a call. 30 minutes each. You'll gain:

- 20 recorded screens showing how users actually fumble your flow
- 20 quotes you can use on your landing page
- 20 advocates who now owe you a favor

Past user #20, onboarding automation becomes worth it. Before #20, automation hides the data that matters most.

## Move 4 — Directory spam (the good kind)

Submit to 25-40 high-DR directories in the first 30 days. We've documented the [full ranked list here](/blog/50-startup-directories-dr-ranked). This isn't about traffic — it's about the **compounding SEO moat** you build.

Most of those backlinks generate 10-50 visitors each per month forever. Do the math: 30 directories × 25 visitors × 12 months = 9,000 extra annual visitors without a single ad spend.

## Move 5 — The ScrollLaunch weekly strategy

Launch on a Tuesday. [Submit to ScrollLaunch](/dashboard/products/new) and get a permanent weekly-ranked page. Your URL will become `scrolllaunch.com/products/your-slug` and will rank on Google for "your product" queries.

Unlike Product Hunt, the rank **freezes** at the end of the ISO week, so the SEO value compounds rather than evaporates. [Read how rankings work](/blog/scrolllaunch-weekly-rankings-explained) if you want the mechanical detail.

## Move 6 — The community compounding loop

Pick two communities. Two. Not ten. Participate daily for 30 minutes for 60 days. Answer questions, share wins, make the space more useful. Don't pitch.

At day 60, your community karma is high enough that a launch post gets 5-10× the engagement it would have on day 1.

The indie hackers who crush this move are boring. They show up 60 days in a row. Nothing exotic.

## Move 7 — Content SEO (the slow-burn half)

Parallel to moves 3-6, publish one SEO-optimized post per week targeting a long-tail query your ICP Googles. Pattern:

- Week 1-4: "How to \[job-to-be-done\] with \[category\] in 2026"
- Week 5-8: "\[Competitor\] vs. \[Your product\]: honest comparison"
- Week 9-12: "\[Related tool\] alternatives" pieces
- Week 13+: Topic clusters around your core keyword

By week 16 you'll have 16 posts each ranking for a specific intent. By month 9 the organic traffic from these compounds past your launch-day traffic permanently.

## Move 8 — Email, not social

Your mailing list is your only owned channel. Every other platform can deplatform you tomorrow.

Send a weekly email from day 1. Even if the list is 40 people. Make it valuable:

- One tactical lesson from building
- One small product update
- One question for the reader to reply to

The 10% of readers who reply become your feedback loop, your sales channel, and your testimonial pool.

## The compounding stack

Here's what the 8 moves look like stacked over 90 days:

| Day | Event | Cumulative users |
|-----|-------|-----------------:|
| 1 | Publish problem post | 5 |
| 14 | Ship ugly MVP | 30 |
| 21 | First 20 manual onboardings | 60 |
| 30 | Submit to 25 directories | 180 |
| 30 | Launch on ScrollLaunch + HN | 350 |
| 60 | Community participation paying off | 650 |
| 90 | SEO content ranking | 1,100 |

The arithmetic works. The reason most indie hackers don't hit 1,000 is not that these moves don't compound — it's that they skip 5 of the 8 and then get discouraged when the remaining 3 don't produce miracles alone.

## What not to do

- **Don't buy ads until you have conversion data from 1,000 organic users.**
- **Don't build a Twitter audience "first."** Your Twitter audience becomes real only after you've launched something they can care about.
- **Don't hire a marketer before 1,000 users.** You are the marketer. You're also the product designer, engineer, and customer success.
- **Don't chase featured-in-TechCrunch press.** Irrelevant to your ICP. Your ICP is on Hacker News or in a niche Discord, not reading TechCrunch.

## The meta-point

Indie hacker growth in 2026 is boring on purpose. The compounding happens *because* you did the 8 unsexy moves consistently for 90 days.

Ship the product. Run the loop. See you on the [weekly leaderboard](/).

## FAQ

### How long does it take to get to 1,000 users without ads?

90-120 days of disciplined execution on the 8 moves above. Some niches (dev tools, open source) compound faster because the communities are concentrated. B2B SaaS in crowded categories (CRM, project management) takes 6-9 months.

### Should I use paid ads if I'm an indie hacker?

Not before 1,000 users. You don't yet have enough data to know who converts, which means paid ads will burn money on the wrong audiences. After 1,000 users and stable retention numbers, small paid experiments start making sense.

### Is launching enough to hit 1,000?

Launches rarely get you past 200-400. The other 600+ come from the compounding loop: directories, SEO content, community, and email. A launch without the compounding loop generates a spike, then a flatline.

### What's the single most important move?

Move 1 — publishing the problem before shipping the solution. Every other move is 2-3× more effective if you did this one first.

### Can I do all 8 moves alone?

Yes, but you need to be disciplined. Block 3-4 hours per weekday on exactly one move at a time. Context switching is the killer. The makers who succeed aren't doing more — they're doing less, in a focused order.