Harnessing social listening to hit
$11k/mo
Kyle Gawley built a SaaS boilerplate back in 2018 and it's still bringing in $11k/mo. Now, he's looking to diversify with a social-listening app, Alertly — it launched last week and he's already at $400 MRR.
Here's Kyle on how he's doing it. 👇
15 years of building
I've been programming since I was a kid and building products and startups since 2011.
For the past six years, I've been running a SaaS boilerplate called Gravity that does $11k/mo. Revenue has come down a bit lately because the market is being disrupted by AI. I'm also building an AI sales hunter called Alertly that's currently at $400 MRR — I just launched it a few weeks ago to a small group of founding customers and opened up full access last week.
Gravity started as kind of a happy accident. I wanted to test out new product ideas quickly in 2018, so I built a UI kit that would let me prototype interactive UIs quickly. Then, it expanded to include a backend as well. A friend, who I met at a coworking space in Thailand, suggested I sell it. I thought that was a silly idea because developers would never pay for code, but I posted about it on Indie Hackers and got my first 3 customers in a few months! It kept growing from there.
For Alertly, I wanted to solve a problem I've had for years. I just wasn't 100% happy with the existing solutions I'd found. The problem is a painful one we are all aware of as indie hackers — finding customers.
I was using social listening tools to monitor social networks for keywords like 'saas boilerplate' so that I can jump into conversations and generate leads. But I wanted to create something that was a bit more focused on finding customers, specifically. So, I started Alertly.
Get paid before you build it
I always try to focus on building 1-2 core features. It's difficult, though. I end up falling down rabbit holes and building for problems I don't have yet.
To determine those core features, I like to run an initial test — just a landing page with the core features listed — to see if there's demand for what I'm planning to build.
Usually, I just use this landing page to build a waitlist. But I've launched a bunch of products that got decent waitlists and no actual signups at launch. So, I tried something different with Alertly. I added a waitlist plus an option to jump to the front and get access to an exclusive group of founding members by paying for the first month's subscription up front.
Seven customers pre-paid in the first week, so now I am an advocate of the idea that the only way to validate demand is to get people to pay before it's built.
Use a stack that you know
For both products, I built an MVP in 2-4 weeks. The Gravity MVP was much more embarrassing than the Alertly one because I used the Gravity boilerplate to build Alertly, so the MVP was built on top of six years of hard work. The first version of Gravity used Handlebars and jQuery, which is crazy thinking back now.
These days, I always use Node.js + React + MySQL. I've used Node for 15 years and MySQL for as long as I can remember.
Audience, SEO, and social listening
I grow my products with a mixture of things:
Audience: I've invested a lot of time into building an audience on X and LinkedIn. This brings new boilerplate customers and has also been great for testing new ideas quickly and getting feedback or paying customers. I think X is less useful for this lately, but it was a great opportunity five years ago. Right now, I'm focusing more on Reddit marketing than X.
SEO: I'm constantly trying to improve this. People say it's dead because of AI, but I think it's more important than ever. The tactics are just changing.
Social listening: I always monitor social media platforms for people looking for my products and then jump into the conversation. This is exactly why I've been building Alertly — so I have a tool that does this exactly how I want, and I can solve the problem for others too.
Diving deeper into social listening
I track various buyer problem keywords like 'find customers' — then I get a daily email digest of posts where people have posted about this online. I'll then reply to the post with a helpful tip or link to my free guide on how to find customers.
I also monitor buyer intent keywords like 'alternative to XYZ' or 'best social listening tool' so I can jump right in with my products. These are great leads because the person is in a buying mindset right now.
Finally, I monitor more generic industry keywords to monitor discussions and trends like 'SaaS boilerplate' so I can be visible in all of these conversations.
A caveat to social listening
Limit social media consumption. Use it to distribute content, build connections, and build a support group, but don't consume much of it.
There's so much noise and BS now in this space, it creates unrealistic expectations, especially for people starting out. You're probably not going to build a $10k MRR business in three months on your first attempt.
You may need to ship a lot of failures first before getting anywhere. I see so many people get demotivated or give up because their experience doesn't match up with the stories they see online. You have to commit for the long haul and focus on your own results — not what everyone else claims to be doing.
I severely limit social media use. I have no apps on my phone, I scroll for a few mins a day to find the top conversations to engage with.
The only exception is the posts surfaced during social listening. These are more about lead generation and sales rather than random social media consumption.
Diversify your products
The biggest challenge for me has been changes in market trends. I've been doing this for so long now, I've seen two big changes in the market for two different products in different industries. Both happened around the seven-year mark.
I've always been focused on one product at a time, but now I can see the danger with that strategy. You'll still never see me building 100 products at once, but I think diversification over a 5-7 year period is important.
Create an IRL support network
Having a support network is huge. When I built my first VC-funded startup 13 years ago, I had a lot of support from co-founders, investors, our team, and advisors. They helped me develop quickly.
Now that I've been indie hacking solo for years in a foreign country, I've kind of lost the support network, and I can feel it sometimes — usually when I am facing a problem. Online communities can help, but it's not really the same thing; people don't want to air their real problems in a public forum.
What's next?
I want to try something different with Alertly. I've always been against hiring and wanted to build a solo lifestyle business, but sometimes I find it boring. It might be more exciting for me to work with other people again. And I want to have a bigger goal, like building a business to sell rather than just focusing on building a lifestyle business.
Follow me on X or join my newsletter where I share my wins and failures every month, along with what I'm doing.
Leave a Comment
I like your idea of charging upfront to validate demand.
I’m currently working on a small BI desktop tool, and I’ve been thinking about how to validate if people really want it.
Would you suggest testing it with a simple landing page first, or directly asking for pre-payment?
Really appreciate the honest perspective on the 15-year journey! The pre-payment validation with Alertly is brilliant - getting 7 customers to pay upfront in week one is solid proof.
Your point about social listening resonates with me. As a freelancer who became a SaaS founder, I've been manually tracking keywords for my niche, but it's time-consuming. Alertly sounds like it could solve this exact problem.
For the pre-payment validation, how did you frame it to customers? Was it positioned as early access pricing or founding member benefits. Also curious about your Reddit marketing shift - are you finding better engagement there compared to X lately?
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That is super impressive. Social listening is something I have not explored deeply yet, but it clearly works when done right. Was there one platform or type of conversation that gave you the biggest breakthrough early on?
Really appreciate your thoughtful questions! On the pre-payment framing - I positioned it as 'founding member benefits' rather than just early access pricing. It feels more exclusive and gives customers a sense of being part of the journey, not just getting a discount. For Reddit vs X - I'm finding Reddit conversations tend to be more genuine and less saturated with self-promotion. People actually engage with helpful responses rather than just scrolling past. The key is finding the right niche subreddits where your target audience already gathers to discuss problems you solve.
Great story! The idea with paid community to start with is spot on. I'm actually getting on the same path going solo after founding vc-backed startup, so would love to read more of your journey..
I love the part "Get paid before you build it". This is such a valuable lesson.
Great story, congrats! How did you identify your customers' core problems before building Alertly?
Really inspiring journey Kyle! Getting paid upfront before building is such a smart validation strategy - it cuts through all the noise and gives you real proof of demand. I love how you're using your own experience with social listening to build Alertly and solve that customer discovery pain point. The 15-year perspective you bring from interviewing hundreds of founders is invaluable. Looking forward to seeing Alertly grow - this could be a game-changer for indie hackers trying to find their first customers!
I really liked the idea to have users pay for the first month ine xchnage for additonal perks. This is a great idea to validate your product! nice work!
Great read Kyle. Love the idea of validating by pre payment because it really cuts through the noise
Kyle, love how grounded this is, especially the “get paid before you build” bit and the realism around market shifts at the 7-year mark.
A few observations from trying to market a very different product (AI-assisted, app-specific dating photos):
Pre-payment > waitlist absolutely tracks. I ran a tiny test with “jump the queue” pre-orders and learned more from 7 paid users than 700 signups. It also forced me to define the first two outcomes customers actually care about.
Your take on social listening feels underrated. My best leads appear when I monitor problem language (e.g., “Hinge profile review,” “photo looks fake,” “Tinder verification failed”) rather than product keywords. Those people are in an action state, not just browsing.
On diversification: the way you framed it—over a 5–7 year horizon, not “100 projects at once”—is a helpful reframe. It’s easy to overcorrect toward “become a studio” and then ship nothing.
If it’s useful, two ideas that might compound Alertly’s value:
Buyer-problem lexicon: curate a living dictionary of problem phrases per niche (“alternative to X” is great, but so is “stuck at 0 signups,” “vercel deploy keeps failing,” etc.). Let users import the lexicon and score mentions by buying readiness (recency + verb intent like “recommend,” “migrate,” “paying for”).
First-mention SLA: expose a lightweight “hit this webhook when a high-intent match appears” + an email/SMS nudge so users can reply within 10 minutes. In my world, being first into the thread is the whole ballgame.
Loved this, Kyle! Getting paid before building is such a smart move. Excited to see where Alertly goes next!
"Over the last decade writing for Indie Hackers, I’ve interviewed hundreds of founders. One thing I’ve learned: success isn’t about avoiding failure — it’s about learning faster than the competition. Curious — what’s one lesson you’ve learned the hard way in your startup journey?"
Great read Kyle. Love the idea of validating by pre payment because it really cuts through the noise. I’ve been experimenting with small niche tools myself, and what you said about social listening really resonates with me because finding the right conversations has been the biggest driver of organic growth for me too.
Great article. It's not easy to have payments upfront but you set a good example.
Really inspiring journey! Love how you validated Alertly by getting paid upfront such a strong lesson for indie hackers. Also agree that diversification and social listening are huge. Excited to see where Alertly goes next solving real customer discovery pain is a big opportunity.
Congrats, the way you work hard definitely gives you the results
good idea
This is informative
Loved this playbook; treating social listening as useful outbound (jumping into real buyer conversations) and pairing it with a paid “founding member” lane is a smart way to validate without burning months. I also like the focus on a familiar stack and the discipline of limiting social scroll so you can stay in build/ship mode.
Two things I’m curious about:
Which keyword buckets end up driving the most paying users, buyer problems (“find customers”), buyer intent (“alternative to X”), or industry terms?
On distribution, do you see Reddit compounding (like SEO) or spiking (unlike X) once you systemize it?
P.S. I’m with Buzz; we build conversion-focused Webflow sites and practical SEO for product launches. Happy to share a tight 10-point GTM checklist if useful.
Really insightful! Totally agree that combining no-code with traditional development gives the best balance of speed and scalability.
Loved reading this — especially your point about getting people to pay before you build. It’s a bit like booking a Hydrafacial at a spa: people commit upfront because they trust the value they’ll get, even before the actual experience. That kind of validation is way more powerful than just collecting names on a waitlist. Excited to see how Alertly grows!
Very useful tips! The "Use a stack that you know" is very important though. I always end up falling in trying to learn a new stack for my projects, only because I see it someone saying that "is the best stack for ..."
Thanks for sharing your feelings on building a solo lifestyle business. I always fantasised about working wherever I want and whenever I want. Sounds like building with a community with low commitment might be nice. Hope you upgrade to a lifestyle you enjoy better and looking forward to find out more about it!
Love how Kyle breaks down social listening, pre-selling, and using a familiar tech stack—super actionable for indie hackers.
Adding systematic tracking of metrics from these interactions could make refining product-market fit even faster and more effective.
Kyle, this was a fantastic write-up — really appreciate how you broke it down so honestly.
A few things that stood out to me:
Getting paid before you build is such a strong takeaway. A lot of us spin up landing pages, but asking for money upfront is next-level validation.
Love how you’re scratching your own itch with Alertly. Social listening as a lead-gen engine feels massively underutilized right now.
Your reminder about limiting social media consumption hit home. It’s so easy to get lost in the noise instead of focusing on signal.
I had a question for you: You mentioned Reddit marketing is working better for you than X lately. Do you see Reddit as a long-term growth channel for SaaS (kind of like how SEO compounds), or more of a short-term way to spark conversations while you scale SEO/social listening?
Really looking forward to following how Alertly grows — feels like a painkiller, not a vitamin. 🚀
Good work dear..impressive..
amazing milestone! keep it up
good knowledge
That’s an impressive track record! Interviewing founders for a decade gives you a rare perspective on what actually works (and what doesn’t) in the startup grind. Pairing that with your own projects like dbrief and LoomFlows shows you’re not just an observer but also a builder. And on top of that, running two very different newsletters—one niche to SaaS and the other on archaeology/anthropology—highlights both your range and consistency as a writer. Sounds like you’ve carved out a really unique space at the intersection of startups, storytelling, and curiosity.
With lovable bolt replit etc why would you build with Gravity?
Incredible insights, 👏
Love the focus on getting paid before building, using a stack you know, and leveraging social listening for lead generation. The reminder to limit social media consumption while still engaging strategically is so underrated such a practical approach for sustainable growth.
Diversification and building an IRL support network are lessons many indie hackers overlook, but they’re crucial for long term success. Thanks for sharing such actionable advice!
This is a very informational detailed article loved every second of it.
Harnessing social listening can be a game-changer for reaching $11k/month. By tracking conversations, brand mentions, and trending topics, businesses can understand audience needs and respond with relevant content or offers. This builds trust, boosts engagement, and drives conversions. Using tools like Hootsuite or Brand24 ensures real-time insights, helping brands refine strategies, identify opportunities, and outperform competitors turning online conversations into consistent revenue growth.
Absolutely agree! Social listening truly changes the way businesses connect with their audience. By monitoring real conversations, you’re not just gathering data — you’re building trust and timing your offers perfectly. I’ve seen brands grow faster when they combine social listening with clear design tools for branding. For example, the helps people quickly create on-trend visuals that tie in with audience conversations, making content more engaging and shareable.