I help founders get their first 100 users — here's what I've learned

The "what are you currently doing to solve this problem?" question hits differently when your target users are non-technical small business operators. They've often normalized their workarounds so completely that they don't even frame it as a problem — it's just "how things work." Describing their own process back to them is often what creates the lightbulb moment.

For very niche B2B markets, the "one channel" advice also becomes literal — sometimes it's a single Facebook group or regional industry association where your first 20 users all know each other. The smaller and more specific the community, the faster trust compounds. You stop being a vendor and start being a peer who built something useful.

One signal I've found more reliable than "would you pay?": are they already spending money on a partial solution — a generic tool that sort of works, a freelancer, a manual workaround they've cobbled together? If yes, the conversation shifts from hypothetical to "how much are you currently spending on this?" That's where real buying intent lives.

Talked to 20 people for my last product. Every one said they'd pay. Zero did when I launched. The gap between "would you use this" and "here's my card" is where most validation dies. Now I skip the question entirely and ask what they're spending money on today.

The "first 100" milestone hits differently when you're selling a physical product. You can't iterate in a week — lead time is 6 months. So the first 100 isn't just validation, it's a production commitment. That changes everything about community building: you need people who trust you before the product exists, not after. Build-in-public has been the only thing that's moved the needle for me at this stage.

The "conversations > campaigns" point is the one founders learning paid advertising need to hear most.

I've seen a lot of founders turn on ads the moment organic stops scaling, hoping paid will take over. What usually happens: they discover very quickly that paid doesn't fix a message problem, it just surfaces it faster and with a price tag attached. Every click that doesn't convert is feedback, but it's expensive feedback.

The useful thing about paid at the first-100 stage — if you use it at all — is not volume. It's message testing. Small budgets, five or six different angles, watch which one gets CTR above 2%. That tells you something real about what your audience actually cares about, faster than two weeks of organic posting. Then you take that winning angle and apply it everywhere else: landing page, cold outreach, your IH posts.

The mistake is treating paid like a tap you can turn up once you need users. It doesn't work that way until you know exactly which message converts, which audience responds, and what your economics look like. Most founders who struggle with paid just tried to skip that discovery phase.

Congrats on TempQR — 12,000 links created is a real signal. If you ever want to run a small paid test to validate your messaging, DM me, happy to look at it with you.

"Focus on one channel, not five" is the piece of advice I see founders resist most, and regret ignoring most.

The argument for spreading across channels sounds logical: more surface area, more chances to find what works. In practice it just means no channel gets enough signal to learn from. You end up with 20 Reddit comments, 15 Twitter posts, and 10 cold emails — none of which is enough data to know if the channel works or if your message works.

One thing I'd add from the paid acquisition side: the channel decision for first 100 users is different from the channel decision for scaling. For first 100, the goal is signal, not reach. Paid ads at this stage — if you do use them — should be $5-10/day, running 4-5 different ad angles against a small audience. Not to get users, but to see which pain point gets clicks. That tells you what your organic messaging should be.

The founders I've seen get first 100 users fastest usually do: one outbound channel (cold email or DMs) + one platform where their users already hang out (Reddit, Slack communities, whatever). Two things, not ten.

What kind of product are you helping founders with most often? Curious if the "one channel" rule plays out differently for B2C vs B2B.

The "focus on one channel, not five" advice is something I wish more founders internalized. When I was working on distribution for a dev tool, I spread across Twitter, Reddit, HN, Discord communities, and LinkedIn simultaneously. The result was mediocre presence everywhere and strong presence nowhere.

What actually moved the needle: I picked Reddit (specifically niche subreddits where my target users hung out), spent 3 weeks genuinely participating in discussions before ever mentioning what I was building, and those conversations turned into my first 15 users. Those 15 gave better feedback than any survey would have.

One thing I'd push back on slightly: the "talk to 20 potential users" before building can become a trap if you're not careful about who those 20 are. I've seen founders talk to 20 people who say "yeah, I'd use that" and then build something nobody actually pays for. The difference is usually whether those 20 people are actively trying to solve the problem right now vs just agreeing it would be nice to have.

The question I've started asking instead of "would you use this?" is "what are you currently doing to solve this problem?" If the answer is "nothing," the pain isn't real enough. If they describe some janky workaround involving spreadsheets and manual steps, that's where the opportunity lives.

12,000+ links on TempQR is solid traction. Are most of those from organic search or direct referrals?

The audit-first approach in Step 1 is underrated. Most founders want to jump straight to content creation, but fixing the existing foundation first is what actually moves the needle. The programmatic SEO angle in Step 2 is also solid — repeatable patterns compound far faster than one-off posts. One thing I would add: the AI overview landscape is shifting fast. Being cited in ChatGPT or Gemini responses often correlates with having clear, authoritative answers to specific questions — so structuring content around exact questions (not just keywords) is increasingly important. Thanks for sharing a concrete process rather than vague advice.

Hey, I saw your post about ecommerce. I’m building a Shopify store too. I’d like to connect and maybe collaborate.”