How I got 30 founders to launch on BetaBloom in the first week: Meet them where they are + give way more value upfront
My side project BetaBloom just won $1,000 in Replit credits as a Week 2 winner in the Replit Buildathon (5,000+ people racing from idea to launched product in 3 weeks with Replit Agent 4).
I built BetaBloom because every side project I've shipped ran into the same brutal wall: finding those first real users who will actually test and give actionable feedback. I focused hard on user acquisition from day one. Here are the two biggest lessons that got me to 30 founders launching products in the first week:
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Meet your users where they're at.
Find a place to engage with the people who have the pain point you are solving. I went into the Replit Buildathon community (and a couple other active maker spaces) where founders were already feeling the pain of "I just shipped… now what?" I showed up in conversations, tried their projects, and offered help before ever mentioning my tool. -
Offer significantly more value than you're asking in return.
For the first batch of founders, I didn't just say "try my platform." I reviewed their projects, wrote out structured feedback with clear improvement suggestions, and even pre-drafted a full BetaBloom product page for them (description, screenshots, everything). They could publish with just a couple clicks if they liked it. Many did and then started suggesting improvements on other products.
BetaBloom now has 32 live products, suggestions rolling in, and a few already implemented. It's been rewarding to watch the community turn into a flywheel. Founders are trying other products and giving actionable feedback because it boosts the visibility on their own product and gets them more feedback in return.
Check it out here: https://betabloom.app
Happy to answer questions below. I'm still iterating fast during this last Buildathon week.
Curious - did you try solving this in other ways before building your own app?
Good strategy! I'm in the development and implementation phase of my product, and I'll consider using this strategy in the near future. Who knows, maybe it will work for you too... Good luck on your journey!
This is a great example of how much leverage there is in actually doing the work upfront.
What stands out is that you're not just “giving value” — you're removing thinking for them.
They don’t have to figure out what’s wrong or what to do next.
Feels like that’s why it works.
I’ve been seeing something similar — the biggest unlock isn’t better explanations, but showing people exactly what to fix in their own context.
Curious — how far do you think this scales?
At what point does it break (or need to become something more automated)?
There are 2 problems I need to solve for BetaBloom to continue scaling up.
I'm focused on #1 right now. If I don't solve this, the whole community flywheel won't work. After I solve that, I'll move to problem #2. With both of these, I may be able to step away from direct outreach.
That makes sense — especially the first one.
Feels like that’s the real bottleneck in a lot of these systems:
not getting users in, but getting them to participate enough for the loop to work.
Curious — have you seen any cases where that behavior becomes natural over time,
or does it always need to be actively pushed/incentivized?
Also building in the Shopify ecosystem (app rating monitoring for developers). The honest numbers are refreshing — most people skip straight to the success post.
One thing I'd add to the cold outreach vs community mix: before I built my outreach pipeline, my first paying user came from commenting in community threads where Shopify devs were already venting about the problem I solve. No pitch, just adding to the conversation. That person DM'd me weeks later. I didn't even remember the comment.
Cold email is great for volume (I just launched mine too — 10/day, plain text, separate domain, 2-min spacing). But community threads convert differently — the people there are already problem-aware, so you skip the whole "why should I care" step.
Since you're targeting ecom brands using Gorgias, I'd bet there are Reddit and Facebook threads where store owners complain about their support tool. Showing up there with genuinely helpful answers might get you your first 1-2 users faster than cold email.
Keep posting these updates.
30 launches in week one is the kind of activation number most paid acquisition channels can't touch — congrats. The "give value upfront" angle is also where indie founders accidentally solve their pricing problem before they even think about pricing. Goodwill earned by showing up, trying someone's product, and leaving actionable feedback converts later at much higher rates than cold traffic ever does. On my own indie productivity app, users who came from communities where I'd been genuinely helpful for weeks had ~4x the conversion rate of users from a paid ad test, and they churned about half as much. Curious — did you see a clear retention or willingness-to-pay difference between the founders you'd built rapport with vs. ones who came in cold?
This is the clearest writeup of the "give value upfront" playbook I've seen on here in a while, and the specifics are what make it useful most growth posts stop at the principle and never name the actual moves. Saving this.
I want to push on one thing, because it's the exact question I'm stuck on and I suspect I'm not the only one reading this wondering: how much of this translates when your target users aren't other founders?
My context: I'm solo-building a community-driven music rating and review site. Think Letterboxd but for albums. My target user isn't a founder, isn't on IH, isn't on Product Hunt — they're a person who listens to 40 albums a year and wants somewhere to track and rate them. The "meet them where they are" part is great in principle, but where they are is /r/letterboxd, /r/Music, /r/indieheads, Discogs forums, and RYM itself — all communities that are openly hostile to any form of self-promotion no matter how much value you lead with. You can get banned for mentioning your product even as a reply to someone asking for recommendations.
The founder-to-founder version of this playbook works because both sides speak the same language and there's an implicit "we're all trying to build stuff" social contract. Consumer-to-consumer in entrenched niches doesn't have that contract. The "give value upfront" move tends to read as marketing no matter how genuine it is.
A few things I'm curious about:
Have you tried this approach for anything consumer-facing where your target user isn't another founder, or is this specifically a founder-to-founder playbook?
When "meet them where they are" points you at a community that forbids self-promo, what's the move? Is there a way to participate without the product ever entering the conversation, and then hope they discover it through your profile? Or is it a "find a different pond" situation?
What's your honest take on cold DM vs. public participation for early user acquisition? My gut says public participation compounds and DMs don't, but I haven't actually A/B'd it.
Great post regardless 30 in the first week is the real metric, not the MRR people love to flex.
Great questions. Thank you for asking. I'm not an authority here because 30 sign ups is my largest success as an indie thus far. I'll give my take though.
User acquisition is way easier when the pain point you're solving is super painful. For BetaBloom, I'm going to places where people are literally asking for something (feedback) and I'm giving them the thing they're asking for. For your project, are you able to easily identify the people who are asking for the thing you're providing? Is there a way to give them what they want in a non-promotional way? Hit me up on X (@tommymcglynn) and I can bounce some ideas with you.
A combination of public participation with DM worked well for me. I provide value in public channels to build up more community trust. When someone engages with me directly, I take it to DM but still leading with value and careful about asking for anything too soon.
cool stuff I'll take a look at the app!
Really great product. I'm in the buildathon too and loved your project when I saw it. It "called" to me, so to speak. You're definitely right about meeting people where they are.
Thank you. Shout out your project so I can take a look.
The "meet them where they are" part is underrated. A lot of early founders post their product in general communities and wonder why traction is slow. Going into the Replit Buildathon where people were already in build mode and already feeling that pain of "where do I find beta users" is the right move.
30 in week 1 through community presence and real engagement is a solid start. The harder part is usually week 3 and 4 when the organic community energy dies down. What's the plan to keep the pipeline moving after the buildathon crowd moves on?
You're spot on. I'm starting to engage other communities where creators/founders are looking for users and feedback. I'm starting with Reddit communities like r/SideProject, r/alphaandbetausers, r/SaaS. Initially, I veered from my own playbook – trying to blast my product out there before providing upfront value and building relationships. That did not go well – had to remind myself of the strategy I know works. So I'm in there now trying peoples products and writing out structured reviews with no mention of BetaBloom. Waiting for the relationships to develop organically before I mention my product.
"meet them where they are" is underrated advice. most platforms expect the user to adapt to them. the ones that grow fastest do the opposite, especially early. what was the single highest-leverage thing you did in week one?
Outside of what I mentioned in the post, the other high leverage thing I did was develop an adjacent product for a super narrow slice of my target audience which helped build up an email list that I leveraged once BetaBloom launched.
The adjacent product was relatively simple and I knew it would be short-lived. It was targeted specifically at the founders who were in the Buildathon competition alongside me. It could take their ideas or product URL and score it against the official scoring criteria of the competition. It gave them an estimated score and some actionable feedback on how they could improve or pivot their product. 100+ people used this early in the competition to validate/refine their product ideas. It was a solid email list of potential BetaBloom users.
smart move — building the adjacent product specifically for the buildathon community is textbook distribution before product. you didn't just collect emails, you collected emails from people already pre-qualified by context. the scoring tool also did something subtle: it made people feel invested in the outcome before BetaBloom even existed. that's a different kind of list than a waitlist. did the conversion rate from that list to actual BetaBloom users end up being significantly higher than your other acquisition channels?
I didn't even measure conversion rate. Didn't feel that high. It helped with the cold start problem though. I already had some users with published products (from the email list) by the time I started engaging with people in Discord. It gave my platform some minimal amount of trust.
that's actually the more interesting insight — the conversion rate wasn't the point. you solved the cold start problem, which is the real killer for most platforms. arriving at launch with published products already live is worth more than a high conversion rate from a cold list. it creates the illusion of traction before traction exists — and that illusion is what makes real traction possible. did the people from that email list end up being more engaged than users who came in later through other channels?
Tommy reviewed GrandMoments ( https://grandmomentsapp.com/) for me this week and gave genuinely thoughtful, structured feedback , exactly what he describes doing here.
He didn't just skim it, he engaged with the actual product and told me what would make it better. It was great advice that I updated in my build.
BetaBloom is a real solution to a real problem. If you've shipped something and don't know how to get your first honest users, it's worth checking out: https://betabloom.app
Congrats on the Week 2 win, Tommy — well deserved!
Thank you! GrandMoments is one of the products I look forward to using more. As a dad of 3, I like the idea of generating fun activities around my kids and my own interests. I especially love that this is NOT focused on corporate activites (for lack of a better term). This is not showing me ice cream shops, arcades, Disneyland deals, etc. These are activities that you can do anywhere and genuinely bring you closer to your loved ones.