Finding my ICP on Reddit when my product doesn't solve an obvious problem

Distribution is hard when you are building a vitamin.

WorkBuddy is a work journal with AI summaries. It is not a painkiller. Nobody wakes up at 2 AM sweating because they forgot to reflect on their week. The pain is quieter than that. It is the slow drift. The weeks that blur together. The Sunday evening feeling that you were busy but cannot quite say what moved forward.

That kind of pain is real, but it does not make someone Google "work journal app." Which means most lead gen playbooks do not apply to me.

So I started thinking about Reddit. My ICP, solopreneurs, freelancers, indie hackers, are on there. They complain there. They ask for recommendations there. If I could find the threads where my people are showing up and talking about the problem WorkBuddy solves, I could at least start listening before I start pitching.

Setting up F5Bot

F5Bot is a free tool that emails you whenever your chosen keywords appear in new Reddit posts or comments. Simple, no frills, exactly what I needed to start.

I set it up with a focused keyword list about a week ago. The theory was solid. Watch for a week, see what comes up, then decide if the keywords need expanding.

The reality was more humbling.

Most of what came back was noise. "Work journal" as a keyword pulled in shadow work journals, someone mentioning a physical notebook in a bag, a comment in Tagalog. Clearly not my ICP. A few other keywords I tested were even further off. Completely out of context.

But there was some real signal in there too.

One thread, "Which Productivity Apps Have You Actually Stuck With Long Term?", had someone mention an iPhone app called Briefly. Daily prompts, weekly AI summary. That is essentially WorkBuddy's core loop. Good to know it exists. Also good to see someone recommending it unprompted, because it confirms the behaviour I am building for is real.

The bigger problem

The challenge is not really F5Bot. F5Bot is doing what it is supposed to do.

The challenge is that there is no generic problem statement I can monitor for. Someone who needs WorkBuddy is not searching "work journal app." They are posting about feeling scattered, or asking how to stay accountable without a manager, or wondering why their weeks feel full but unproductive. The pain shows up in many different forms, none of them tidy enough for a keyword alert.

Most lead gen tools assume you know what your customer is searching for. When you are building a vitamin, you do not always get that clarity. The person who needs WorkBuddy most might not even know they need it yet.

That is the wall I am currently looking at.

Where I am now

Beta is live. F5Bot is running. I am treating this as week one of a longer experiment in finding my people, not a quick fix.

If you have built something in the vitamin category, something that improves how people work or think rather than solving a crisis, I would love to know how you found your ICP. Especially on Reddit, but not limited to it.

What actually worked for you?