Ask HN: How did you get your first 50 users after launch?

I launched a small tool last week to solve a problem I personally ran into: saving articles and never actually using them. So I built something that turns saved content into a reading queue + searchable knowledge base. It's live now, and while I've posted in a few communities (Reddit, HN), traction has been really slow - around 15 signups so far. Right now I'm trying to figure out if it's just early or if the idea isn't clicking with others.

For those of you who’ve been through this:

- What helped you go from 0 to 50 users?

- Did you do cold outreach?

- Did Reddit, Product Hunt, or another channel work well?

- How do you promote without sounding like you're promoting?

Also, at what point did you decide it was time to move on?

What signals helped you decide to double down vs. shut it down?

Curious to hear how others navigated this stage, what worked, what didn't.