I was about to open my waitlist. Almost nobody was asking for it. So I am doing 2 more weeks of building instead.
Quick honest update on Pulseboard, the marketing analytics tool I have been building in public for six weeks.
The plan was textbook. Spend weeks showing what the tool catches, build resonance, then open early access and let the audience convert. So this week I was going to flip the switch and open the waitlist.
Then I looked at the actual demand. Organic signups for early access right now: basically zero. Not low. Zero.
I had two options. Push harder on a signup CTA and try to manufacture urgency, or treat the zero as data and listen to it. I am going with listen.
A zero like that is telling me one of two things, probably both:
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I have shown people an interesting build, but I have not made the problem hurt badly enough that they want the cure today.
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The people enjoying the build-in-public posts are not the people who would actually pay to fix this. Builders like watching builders. That is not the same as buyers.
Pushing a waitlist into zero demand just gets you a public launch with no line outside the door. So I am pushing the waitlist and the Product Hunt plan back two weeks. I am using that time to talk directly to service business owners and agencies who feel this problem, and to make sure the thing I open is something a buyer actually asked for, not something a builder found neat.
For the folks here who have launched: what actually created your first real demand? Did the waitlist signups come from the build-in-public audience, or from somewhere completely different? I would rather learn this from people who have done it than guess for another two weeks.
Good call. Waitlist signups are a fairly noisy signal this early. They mostly measure landing-page copy, not whether the problem is real. Two things that helped me more than a waitlist number: talking to ten people who actually have the problem and watching whether they lean in, and committing publicly to a concrete proof-point on a date so there's a reason to pay attention before there's a product. I'm building in a space where everyone claims results and nobody shows their work, so I went the other way — no metrics at all until a public, pre-committed reveal, good or bad. "Here are the receipts on date X" has pulled more genuine interest than any "join the waitlist". Two more weeks on real conversations beats an empty waitlist every time.
The pre-committed reveal idea is really good. 'Here are the receipts on date X' is a much stronger pull than a waitlist page because it promises accountability, not just access. I might steal that. The two weeks of conversations ended up being the best decision I made in this whole build. Almost every feature priority shifted after those calls.
This is a mature call. Zero before waitlist is data, not failure.
To your question — my first real demand rarely came from the build-in-public audience. They're builders watching builders, exactly like you said. Helpful for feedback, weak for "I need this today."
What moved the needle when it did move:
→ Talking to people who already had the pain (not people who found the build neat)
→ Showing up where they complain about the problem — forums, Reddit, niche communities
→ Leading with the outcome, not the product
For a marketing analytics tool, the buyer might not be on Indie Hackers at all — they're a service business owner drowning in "which channel actually works," not another SaaS founder.
Two weeks talking to agencies/service owners directly sounds right. I'd ask each one: "walk me through the last time you tried to figure out if your marketing was working" — before showing Pulseboard.
Good luck — the pause is smarter than a public waitlist to an empty room.
You nailed the core problem. The IH audience is builders watching builders. Great for feedback, terrible for 'I need this today.'
Your suggestion to lead with the outcome instead of the product is something I had to learn the hard way. When I started asking agency owners to walk me through the last time they tried to figure out if their marketing was working, the conversations completely changed. People stopped being polite and started venting. That is where the real product insight lives.
The diagnosis is right. Build-in-public audiences and buyers are different populations. Other builders follow because they appreciate the craft — that's not the same as feeling the problem badly enough to pay.
On your question: from everything I've seen and what I'm doing myself right now, first demand almost always comes from direct conversations, not broadcast. Not BIP, not Product Hunt. Someone who messages ten agency owners and asks "how do you currently handle X?" finds the ones whose frustration is real. Those become customers.
One thing I've found useful in early user research: the strongest signal isn't "I'd pay for that" — it's whether someone has already tried to solve the problem and failed. If they have a list of tools they abandoned, they're a buyer. If they're just curious about the solution, they're probably not.
What have the agency owners said when you've spoken to them directly?
The abandoned tools signal is a really sharp insight. I started asking that exact question, 'what have you tried before,' and you are right, the people who have a list of tools they gave up on are the ones who actually convert. They already know the problem is real because they have been burned. The people who are just curious never make it past the demo. That filter alone saved me from chasing the wrong conversations.