23 days of distributing a SaaS. Here's exactly what happened.
I launched ColdCraft 23 days ago. It generates cold outreach sequences that score 8% on AI detectors versus 100% for ChatGPT. The product works. Everyone who tried it liked it.
Zero paying customers.
Here's the honest breakdown of what I tried and what actually moved the needle.
What I tried:
I ran distribution across LinkedIn, Twitter, Skool communities, Discord servers, Quora, Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Threads, and 22 AI directories. I posted daily on most of them. I submitted to AlternativeTo, G2, Capterra, Peerlist, BetaPage, and about 15 other listing sites.
I wrote two Medium articles. Launched a LinkedIn newsletter that now has 20 subscribers. Hit the Indie Hackers front page on day 8.
What actually produced signups:
8 real external signups in 23 days. Here is where they came from.
A beta tester post I ran across every Skool and Discord community on the same day produced the most activity. 12 people on the site simultaneously. Multiple signups that week.
Direct personal contact produced the rest. Not cold outreach. Genuine one on one conversations where I showed someone the product and offered to run it for them on a real prospect.
Directories, Reels, Quora, and Twitter produced zero signups I can trace.
What I got wrong:
I spent too much time on channels that feel productive but aren't. Posting content daily gives you something to do. It doesn't give you customers.
The painful truth is that broadcast distribution only works when you already have an audience. I don't. So every post I wrote went into a mostly empty room.
The only thing that worked was showing up as a human being in a direct conversation.
Where I am now:
Two warm conversations in motion. One with a community admin who runs 24,000 members in the exact target market. One with an agency owner who gave me product feedback that I shipped as a feature the same day.
No sale yet. But the product is real, the signal is positive, and I'm still here.
If you're distributing a early stage SaaS with no audience, I'd genuinely skip the content calendar and spend that time finding 10 people to have real conversations with instead.
ColdCraft is free to try at https://hgsstrategic.com/coldcraft if you do cold outreach.
You’ve collected a lot of signal across different channels in only 23 days.
What made you decide that the direct conversations were the signal to follow rather than just another early distribution experiment?