The Real Challenge Isn’t Shipping. It’s Getting People to Care.
I used to think the hardest part of building a product was… building the product.
Turns out, creating superfans is harder.
The real challenge is getting people to love your product:
To talk about it without being asked
To recommend it without an incentive
To feel proud using it
I’ve seen a shift over the last few weeks with Pretty Prompt:
People posting about it in public
Sharing why they love it and inviting others to try it
Explaining how they actually use it
Talking about the product, the website, and our journey
If there’s one thing I’ll never get tired of, it’s listening to customers.
Because you don’t get superfans with marketing.
You earn it by doing unscalable things.
And I’m grateful for every Pretty loud voice out there. 💪
This one’s for all 25,000 of you!
💬 How did you turn your users into superfans? What small, unscalable things actually worked for you?
Replies
Lovon AI therapy
@ilaiszp How did you get the very first people to care about Pretty Prompt and talk about it?
Pretty Prompt
@ponikarovskii to be honest it was because of Product Hunt! The first launch kicked it off (https://www.producthunt.com/products/pretty-prompt/launches/pretty-prompt) That launch alone had 509 comments!
I agree, the first steps are really hard. Once you have people to listen to I think it gets much easier, because you are not isolated anymore. Congratulations to 25k 🥳
How did you get your first people outside friends/family?
Pretty Prompt
@derheissenberg We got the first few people actually outside of friends/family! Launched on Product Hunt, and then I had friends reaching out saying: "I saw your face on a video on Product Hunt"!
This is such a refreshing take in the era of automate everything! I recently watched a YC video where they explicitly advised founders to do things that don't scale in the beginning.
I feel like users have developed a sixth sense for automation, they know when a founder actually spent time on them vs when it's just a clever workflow.
Do you think it's even possible to build true superfans with AI tools today, or is human inefficiency (spending real time) the required ingredient?
Pretty Prompt
@valeriia_kuna It's a great question, I do think AI tools and agents probably help doing it at scale, and comes a point you can't just do it manually probably (we didn't reach that point yet).
But I think there's a point where the human needs to take over, especially when needs to be super personal and the user needs to be taken care by someone.
Huddle01 Cloud
Thank you for sharing this! I think listening and iterating for customers is the best because people see that you are listening and then they share more of their good and bad that they feel. Do you think you reached to superfans with just iterating? Once you iterated, how did you reach your customers again that you have dropped changes?
Pretty Prompt
@krupali_trivedi Great questions!
Do you think you reached to superfans with just iterating?
I don't think there's a one-shot formula, but iterating is probably not enough. I constantly shared updated with them.
I think this consistency makes 50% of the iteration. Every little update, I shared it with our users. Every feature, change, and whenever someone said they had an issue and we fixed it, I message them personally. I don't do any mass emails for now regularly. I think this 1:1 experience is something most companies don't do, and this care usually translates into superfans.
Once you iterated, how did you reach your customers again that you have dropped changes?
Super simple message back to the user who asked for that.
I keep a Notion board with the feature requested or bug, the user, and the channel where it was submitted (email, support, feedback form, etc.)
Once we push the update, I let them know one by one.
I also have a Slack community for our users (not super developed, but an important channel), and our Substack. So whenever possible, I make our users the heroes of their own story. In the end, they are the heroes of every product!
you still need something real for people to sink their teeth into before the superfans emerge. Pre-product hype can work for big names, but for most of us it's ship first, love follows. Curious from you: what's actually been the biggest trigger so far?
Pretty Prompt
@viktorgems I agree 100%.
For us it's been consistently post across channels. PH, LinkedIn, Substack, etc.