Building products is easy. Finding early users isn’t.
I kept running into the same problem while building side projects - I could build products, but I struggled to find early users who actually had the problem I was solving.
Most of my launches felt like guessing. I would build something, publish it, and then try to “find an audience” afterward - which usually didn’t work.
Signal Hunt started as a small internal experiment to flip this process.
Instead of building first and hoping someone cares, I wanted a way to surface real conversations where people are already expressing frustration or needs around a topic.
The goal is simple: help founders validate ideas earlier by finding real signals of demand instead of assumptions.
I’m building it because I personally needed it - and I suspect other solo builders and early founders face the same problem.
This is exactly the right order — find the frustrated people first, then build. I'm doing manual version of this right now for a client vetting tool for freelancers: spending a week in communities where freelancers complain about bad clients before writing a single line of code. It's slow but the signal quality is way higher than a survey. Curious what sources Signal Hunt pulls from — is it mainly Reddit or broader than that?
Right now I’m mostly focused on Reddit, yeah.
Mostly because of the volume + activity. Big communities, constant stream of new posts, and real discussions happening all the time.
This is the real problem nobody talks about enough. You can build anything in days now with AI but distribution is still as hard as it's always been. What's worked best for you so far for finding those first users?
Honestly? Still figuring it out.
So far the only thing that kind of works is exactly this jumping into threads where people are already talking about the problem and trying to start real conversations.But it’s super manual and inconsistent. Some threads feel like gold, others just die with no replies.
That’s actually why I started digging into this deeper
Same boat — doing exactly this right now for a client vetting tool for freelancers. The threads that convert seem to share one thing: the person posting has active pain, not just curiosity. Someone venting about a bad client converts better than someone asking theoretical questions. Have you noticed the same pattern?