Building my app was easier than finding my first users
Everyone talks about MVPs.
Nobody talks about how hard it is to find the first people willing to spend 10 minutes trying an unfinished product.
I’m building an AI-powered Telegram Mini App for family budgeting.
The code isn’t the hardest part.
The hardest part is finding 50 beta testers.
Reddit limits promotion.
X barely shows new accounts.
Build-in-public works only after people know you exist.
And yet those first users are everything.
They tell you:
- what’s confusing,
- what features nobody needs,
- what bugs matter,
- and whether your idea should even exist.
I’m starting to think that early users are not customers.
They’re co-founders you don’t pay.
For founders who already crossed this stage:
How did you find your first 50 beta testers?
What stood out to me is that "I need 50 beta testers" can hide several very different problems underneath it.
Sometimes it's a distribution problem.
Sometimes it's a positioning problem.
Sometimes it's a signal that the people you're reaching don't feel the problem strongly enough yet.
The tricky part is that all three can look identical from the outside.
Completely understand.
Curious if you know of anyone posting their build-in-public journey on TikTok, IG, or YouTube Shorts to attract early testers directly?
I can definitely relate.
I’m realizing that building the product is only half the job. Finding people willing to try something unfinished is a completely different challenge.
Have you found anything that worked better than just posting updates?
I relate to everything you said and I'm also on the sage spot right now, what I've tried so far is sending my project updates little by little to some epople I know, some friends and family that my projects could help them in any way... But honestly it's been hard to find the first users