Race to 100

Hi BHW. The forecast today is mild, sunny with a 70% chance of Covid, so stay indoors...
And strap yourself in for thread #2

Thread #1 was a very interesting 1k article hack that had me sweating bullets into the keyboard until I stumbled on a lovely little AI hack. The results were well above expectations. Now that algo is on the way to production and $$$.

This brings us to thread #2
It was going to be about hacking ProductHunt. But I'm in a bit of a conundrum. Recently, RHoover has joined our investor mailing list. Which means I definitely can't be talking about screwing with PH and expect to get any money... besides we actually need some paying customers before launching on...

And that is what thread #2 is all about: A race to 100!
Let's set the scene. My startup is so close to breakeven BUT we got to get a few more paying customers before that happens. So what is the product we're talking about. Well I can't give too much away on BHW, because I don't want to get a ban for trying to sell shit. But let's just say we take A LOT of social data do a little AI twerking and leads come out the other end!

Now I have a few strategies to grind to 100 paying customers. BUT I'm not sure which will be more successful:

A: Strategy 1 Slingin free hits AKA 'pilots' in Slack groups and converting to paid at 30 days when they're cravin some more.
B: Strategy 2 Pimpn my arz - I mean skillz - on Upwork, Fivwork, Wework or wotevathefurk the small contracts are. Doing them cheap and then introducing the clientele to the product of their dreams.
C: Strategy 3 Preaching the answer to the Reddit and Quora folks and converting them once they feel the divine.
D: Strategy 4 Sneaky Spamming Social - like FB groups
E: Strategy 5 Boring old affiliate/referrals. not very fun but. potentially good money.

It will amuse me to see the dim-witted BHW mice navigate the maze.. So tell me, what do you think will convert best to paying customers over a 60 day period??

So far, I have to say affiliate/referrals are winning. I need to extend this to include converting people from myself and my team's network of contacts.
Grinding slack groups is delivering decent results as well
Also, getting fairly consistent results is converting freelance contracts
And if I'm brutally honest, I haven't yet had the opportunity to spam FB and other social groups. Yet I feel this will deliver strong returns.
What isn't performing is answering issues on Reddit/Quora - it's taking a lot of time with little results to show for it. I might have to drop this one in favor of spamming social.

So let's go through a bit more detail on the why and how I'm executing each strategy.
Starting with

Affiliate/referrals/existing network:
1- Trust! Most will know, yet some won't appreciate, how important trust is when making a sale.

I certainly didn't appreciate it. In a previous pivot, I had no existing network in the market I was exploring.
The problem I was looking to solve is real and I was grinding to build my network yet I was getting nowhere with the problem because I didn't have trust. And this is why market is THE most important factor when it comes to startup

FACT: Winning trust is the origin of the term con man.

Anyway BHW losers... the point is, you can't sell shit without trust.

This is obviously why I keep posting to you jokers so that later I can convert you to customers... kidding not kidding!

2- economies of scale! It's easy to sell to channel partners who onsell your product to existing clients that trust them. Simple as that.

catch ya later losers.