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Ask HN: Has anyone launched their startup remotely in a foreign country?

13 points by timtran303 ↗ HN
I'm trying to launch my SaaS product (ecommerce store builder) in the US, while living in another country (Vietnam). From alot of the advice I see on the internet, acquiring your first customers is best done through your network. While I did go to highschool in the US, that was a long time ago and I don't have any network there. Some advice on how to get my first customers would be greatly appreciated.

I know it's a big climb, but startups and software in general don't exist in Vietnam unless you are willing to stay unprofitable. The market leader in my product category has been unprofitable for 13 years, running on VC money. So this is not just a move out of the blue, but rather necessary for our survival. Thanks for reading.

4 comments

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muzani
Do you need a launch? I just put up a site and Americans find it on Bing. I never really targeted anyone, but 60% of visitors are American. It might not be a good idea to target anyway, it could well be that your main market is Canadian for some reason, like lack of competitors.
timtran303
Yes I'm looking to launch. Could you share your experience? I agree with the targeting part. Just happens that most of the English-speaking audience for tech products are American, so it's just a generalization.
muzani
Well, I just made a site and shared it on some forums and Reddit for feedback. Sometimes it's those "what are you working on" threads on HN. It was never really good enough for me to judge as marketable.

2 years later, there's regularly 2000 visitors/month. Returning users are very poor, but it's a good amount of user acquisition for something I've actively avoided marketing.

I started another startup before this, and got 1200 users in 24 hours just by posting it in an active Facebook group. Most of the users came from people sharing my post. It didn't really "click" the first time though. Specifically, it was a diet app, I did calorie counts, but it was to low carb dieters who only cared about carb counts. So we had to overhaul the app to show carbs and it got 3000 users on the second "launch".

I'm still not sure you should hard launch because of things like this - it's very likely you've done something wrong or missed. And when you do launch, make it very easy for them to give feedback. I set up a public chat for feedback the first time, a survey form this time. The public chat was better, but you have to moderate it.