I built a tool that finds your first customers by searching Reddit threads with real buying intent (+ Playbook)

When I was trying to get my first customers, I kept running into the same problem: I was always too late.

Someone would ask on Reddit:

“What are you all using for X?”
“Alternatives to Y?”
“How do you solve this problem?”

By the time I saw it, the conversation was already done. The buyer had already chosen something. I missed the moment.

So I started doing something different.
Every morning I spent 45–60 minutes manually browsing a handful of subreddits (r/SaaS, r/startups, r/sales, r/marketing, r/devops, r/analytics, it varies by niche), looking specifically for evaluation language, not just general discussion. Things like:

“looking for a tool that…”
“evaluating alternatives”
“has anyone replaced X?”
“how do you choose between…?”

These are decision-stage phrases, someone is not learning, they are choosing. That's where customer acquisition happens.

This manual workflow actually worked. I had real conversations. Not pitches — conversations. And a few of those turned into early users.

But it was time-consuming, easy to miss posts, and I couldn’t consistently keep it up.

So I built Leado.co to automate the part where Reddit gets monitored and intent-heavy threads surface when they happen, not days later. It highlights the user’s context (pain / timeline / what they’ve tried already), and then I still do the human part, replying like a real person, adding something useful, and mentioning my product only when it makes sense.

To be clear: the system works manually. The tool just makes it easier to do it consistently.

The takeaway:

If you're early, you don’t need “reach.”
You need to show up at the moment someone is making a decision.
That’s where trust compounds.

If anyone here wants to see the exact evaluation queries or reply structure I use, I’m happy to share. Just comment and I’ll write them out.

Also open to feedback on the tool itself. I built it for myself first, and I know founders here think deeply about distribution, so I’d genuinely appreciate thoughts.