Founders Stop Manually searching for your target users online. Let Soya do it for you.
Founders,
We all have gone through this, come up with a idea, realize you need to validate it. Then you go of to find your target users and that takes a while. And if you do not have the right outreach strategies you'll outright fall on your face.
So I decided to build Soya a platform where founders find exactly where there target users are with a click, and for each community tailored and actionable outreach strategies.
This is the link if anyone is interested in using it. We are also here on IndieHackers. https://soya-platform.vercel.app/
Let me know your feedback.
I like the idea. I did two searches, the results were interesting but seemed to be targeted enough. I ran my chatgpt account at the same time to do side by side and chatGPT gave me a much more comprehensive list of groups and subredits. Also when I asked for the strategy - I read a little then I did something else. When I came back I could recall my discovery, but the strategy was gone. Then I got: Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).
I got that twice, and there is not even a way to click to go back. So you basically have to open a new tab and start from the beginning. Again I like the idea and I will try some more, but just wanted to mention the few roadblocks I ran into. What is price point that you are looking at for Soya?
Thanks for using Soya, for the client side application I went through the logs and I noticed the problem so that is fixed. As well as the thing with chatgpt is in my personal experience and other founders I have discussed with it basically never wants to displease you so It will always say stuff to make you happy. You can verify this with others as well. That makes it somewhat inaccurate more importantly it hallucinates often whereas Soya is specifically trained on finding communities so hallucinations rates are nearly zero. Does that clear up? Yeah also we have the errors fixed and yeah check it out and let me know.
Ok went back to my account. It shows me 2 searches, 15 communities, 1 strategy. But I found no way to get to that strategy. If I go back to the community which I created the strategy for, then it's not there and says no strategy created. When I click on playbook/template. I can see that there is something there but it doesn't let me scroll down to actually see it. I'm on a Chromebook. I have screenshots, but its not possible to post them here.
right well work to fix this. Anything else?
I just saw the demo. Even r/saas is very generic. Why can't I just go on Google or ask chatgpt about communities that would be a fit for me?
Right, did you actually use Soya? Because in the demo there were a lot more communities that aren't so generic as well as chatgpt hallucinates a lot. From personal experience and from what other founders tell me. Also Soya provides specific and actionable advice for outreach based on each community. So just give it a try.
The community Discovery is decent, but the "custom" outreach strategies are pretty generic. Even when I selected communities that I've seen startups manage pretty successful campaigns managed through that community, the AI still just ran a generic "here's the rules, so..." summary. It would be much better to provide case studies to show exactly what has worked in this community.
Right so more specific strategies makes sense. Would you pay for this as a founder also anything else feedback wise?
I've run campaigns on Reddit (completely unpaid) that have brought in $1k in revenue, but lightning never strikes twice. After being unable to reproduce my success with free organic content, I had to go with paid ads, but still never managed to get that jump in revenue the way I did that I did that one time for free.
The biggest problem is that each community is only so big. Once I saturate a community and pretty much everyone in it has already heard of my service, I need to move on, so I'm running out of fresh eyes to see my content.
Paid ads are the only solution I've found that continues to work, but if your service could help me find a steady stream of free eyeballs, I'd gladly subscribe for $200/month.
What I'd love is a service that could analyze my successes and failures, then help me figure out how to consistently reproduce my success. I'd prefer it to help me run free campaigns... but I'd even use it if it could optimize paid ad campaigns.
P.S. Do you have experience running campaigns? It's going to be impossible to make an AI that helps you unless you know how to actually do it yourself manually first. I don't know why so many tutorials tell you to slip into comments and avoid direct self promotion because that's just garbage. I've never made more than $100 in revenue from a comment, but I've made bank by bending subreddit rules ever so slightly. I've also made my share of mistakes that have cost me hundreds of downvotes, but that comes with the terrain.
Here's an example of a post I made in a strictly moderated subreddit that forbids self promotion: (grr, I can't post links, but do a search for "I analyzed the habits of 200 writers to answer the question: Should you Just Write?")
hey we were just iterating cuz your right a lot of feedback we got is that advice is generic check us out now.