How do you get people to discover your SaaS when you don't have an audience?
One thing I'm learning while building FounderDiscover:
Building the product is only half the battle.
Getting people to discover it is another problem entirely.
If you're a new founder with:
0 followers
0 email subscribers
no existing community
a small marketing budget
…it can be surprisingly difficult to get your first few users.
You can build something useful, but if nobody knows it exists, it doesn't really matter.
That's one of the reasons I started building FounderDiscover.
The idea is to create a place where founders can showcase themselves and the products they're building.
Instead of only submitting a product URL, founders can build a profile around themselves:
👤 Who they are
🚀 What they're building
🔗 Their products
🌎 Where they're from
📂 Their categories
🔗 Their social profiles
And the community can discover and support both founders and products.
But I'm still figuring this out.
I'm curious about other Indie Hackers:
How did you get your first 10 users?
Was it:
Personal outreach?
X/Twitter?
Reddit?
Product Hunt?
Indie Hackers?
SEO?
Communities?
Friends/network?
Something completely unexpected?
I'd love to hear what actually worked for you.
I'm currently testing different approaches while growing FounderDiscover from zero.
If you'd like to check it out:
And if you're building something yourself, feel free to share it in the comments. I'd love to discover what other founders here are working on. 🚀
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1I’m dealing with this exact problem right now. What seems to work better for me is not trying to “build an audience” first, but finding a few places where the exact users already spend time. I’ve been testing a mix of: - niche communities - small relevant directories - direct outreach to sites in the same topic - genuinely useful replies without dropping a product link - open-sourcing one small part of the product The biggest lesson so far is that broad distribution feels productive, but relevance matters much more. Ten people from the right niche community are usually more useful than hundreds of random impressions. I’m also trying to separate “places where I can promote” from “places where I should just participate first.” That seems to make community outreach feel much less spammy. For a solo founder with no audience, I’d probably pick 2–3 channels and go deeper rather than trying 20 channels at once.2 days ago Reply
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1You said you’re testing different ways to reach your first users. What was the most recent approach you tried for FounderDiscover, and what happened?2 days ago Reply
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1I'm learning something similar right now. Cold outreach can create a lot of activity without necessarily creating conversations. What seems more promising is finding places where people are already discussing the problem you're solving and contributing there before mentioning the product. For us, that's conversations around client website revisions, scope creep, agency workflows and AI coding agents. I'm also starting to think the useful metric isn't “traffic to the landing page” but whether someone actually puts a real client project through the workflow. Still testing this, but I'd be interested to hear what channels have produced actual users for others rather than just visits/signups.4 days ago Reply
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1I think this is one of the hardest parts for a new founder. Building the product is often easier than getting the first people to notice it. I like the idea of creating a profile around the founder as well, because people are usually more interested when they can understand the person and story behind the product.11 days ago Reply
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1I'm going through the same 0→1 stage right now. One thing I'm realizing is that getting people interested and getting someone to actually use the product on a real project are completely different things. I'm experimenting with going directly after people who already have the problem rather than trying to generate broad traffic. For other founders here who got their first few customers, what was the moment that moved someone from "interesting" to actually using the product?19 days ago Reply
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1hey, your realisation is very true! I remember first reading the issue in the lean startup (i hated ts read honestly lol but it's very popular) or in the mom test (banger), i dont remember which. anyways, i think the biggest trap here is trying to “do distribution” everywhere at once. if I had 0 audience i’d probably pick one channel for a week, track conversations -> signups -> activated users, and manually follow up with everyone who engages. traffic by itself doesn’t really tell you much if nobody reaches the point where they actually get value. Feels like the first goal is finding one repeatable loop, not just getting spikes.20 days ago Reply
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1For the first 10, personal outreach worked best for me, but only the kind that responds to something someone already said in public rather than a cold pitch: a review, a forum post, a tweet asking "does anyone know a tool for X." You're meeting intent that already exists instead of trying to create it, which is a much easier bar to clear with zero audience. SEO and communities are worth starting in parallel since they compound over months, but they're too slow to be where your first users come from. One thing specific to a founder-discovery product: your users are builders who are themselves trying to get discovered, so the ask basically writes itself if you can show them a concrete benefit, a backlink, extra visibility, referral traffic, from being listed, rather than pitching them on joining "a community."22 days ago Reply
