My busiest post yet, has me wondering where my actual users hang out!
My last IH post had over 40 likes and 200-plus comments at last check, including my own replies. After months of things being pretty quiet, it’s been good to have people asking questions and coming back to continue a conversation!
One reply stuck with me. A founder building daily games said a listing on a site specifically for daily games brought more visitors than all his other outreach.
People there were already looking for something to play.
I build BubbaCode, a group of apps for small businesses—contractors, field crews, rental hosts, and other owner-operated businesses. I enjoy talking with founders here, but I don’t want to assume interest in the building process means someone needs one of the apps.
A contractor looking for help with estimates might ask another contractor or their supplier before ever browsing a startup site. I don’t yet know where those conversations happen most often, or how to join them without showing up just to sell something.
I’m glad I posted. The discussion has given me something more specific to figure out than just “do more marketing.”
If you build for people outside the startup world, where did you first have a useful conversation with someone who actually needed your product?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
I didn’t cover the tech stack in this one! The question I’m working through is where to find the small business owners who needs my apps, rather than which tools to build them with! Sites are built!
Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?
A few months of fairly quiet posting before the conversations started picking up recently. That’s encouraging! If you mean signups I can trace back to these posts, I don’t have that result to share yet!
Makes sense. Are you planning to charge for it, or keep it free for now?
The apps already have paid plans! This post is about figuring out where the small business owners who need them look for tools, rather than launching something new.
Interesting take. Would you still recommend this approach to someone starting today?
Yes, for learning and meeting people! I’d just start looking for conversations with potential customers alongside the founder discussions. I’m enjoying the response here, but I can’t yet recommend it as a proven way to get signups!
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Finding the right people is still the hardest part for me! I can explain what the apps do, but that doesn’t tell me where a "small business owner" would look when they need one. These conversations are helping me get more specific about that!
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
It started with practical problems like planning crew routes, putting estimates together, and keeping jobs organized. Those seemed worth solving for small businesses! That gave me a reason to build, but finding out which tools people will actually choose and pay for, is still evolving!
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
How many people had their own experience to share! I expected a few replies about directories, not days of back-and-forth!(its very helpful i think) The daily games example especially surprised me because it showed a listing working well when it reached the right people!
Thanks for sharing the numbers, that makes it much easier to follow.
Glad it helped! I wanted to share what’s actually happening, of course my own replies count toward the total. Have had couple more come in since then on that post! Still happy to see people joining in!
Interesting take. Would you still recommend this approach to someone starting today?
I’d recommend joining the conversations, yes! But I’d also look for where potential customers ask for help from the start. I’m getting value from talking with founders here, but I haven’t established it as a customer channel! So I wouldn’t present it as a proven approach yet..
That daily games listing detail is the whole post for me. A vertical directory works because the intent is already there — nobody browses a daily-games site by accident. The hard part you named is real though: the equivalent for contractors is probably wherever they already complain about paperwork, not anywhere that calls itself a startup site. I have had the same experience from the other side: general directories brought numbers so small they were basically rounding errors, while one niche place sent more real visitors than all of them combined. Showing up to help before showing up to sell seems to be the only entrance that works.
“Where they already complain about paperwork” gives me a more useful starting point than another list of places to promote. Good to hear you found a niche place that worked too! I’d rather join a conversation where I can help than turn up with a pitch nobody asked for.
The daily game listing insight is the important one. A niche directory worked because people there were already looking for daily games. For contractors, the equivalent is trade forums, supplier newsletters, and local business Facebook groups — not startup communities.
We build an SEO scanner at UtilitySEO. DA 3, four visits a month, ten referring domains and they're all spam. Founders here engage with our posts, but our actual users will come from people typing "why is my website not ranking" into Google. The IH engagement is genuinely useful for sharpening how we describe the product, but it won't be the acquisition channel.
One thing that helped clarify it: track where people come from when they actually use the product, not just where they comment on your posts about building it. Those are two completely different audiences with almost no overlap.
Appreciate you coming back to the discussion! Your point about these conversations helping us explain the product is worth keeping too! I’m glad for the engagement here, even while I’m still figuring out where the "small business owners" who need the apps are looking.
For contractors specifically, the conversations usually happen in trade-specific Facebook groups and in the comments on suppliers' content. The people asking "how do you handle estimates for jobs with unknown scope" are your users, and they're asking other contractors, not founders.
If you can find three of those groups and spend a week just reading before posting, you'll learn how they describe the problem in their own words. That language is usually very different from how we'd frame it here. The gap between "I need a better way to track my field crews" and "workforce management solution for SMBs" is enormous, and the first version is the one that gets a contractor to click.
Busiest post but no users is so common. The audience that engages with founder stories usually isn't the audience with the problem. A quick way to find where your users hang out: search for the pain in their words, not yours. For chatform.in (conversational forms), my users weren't in startup communities at all. They were in r/FacebookAds, law-firm marketing groups, GoHighLevel agency posts on LinkedIn and "Typeform too expensive" threads. Ask 3-5 existing users where they'd ask for a recommendation, then go there.
The “Typeform too expensive” example helps! That’s someone describing a problem in their own words, "not searching for a category" I’d put my app in. I’ve been thinking about where to post, but looking for those specific complaints gives me a different place to start!
The daily games example really gets at it, since there's a big difference between people browsing startup stuff and people who already showed up looking for something to use. For contractors I'd guess a lot of those conversations happen in trade Facebook groups or at the supplier counter, and they sound more like "how do you handle estimates" than "what app should I use." Have you tried leading with just the workflow answer, like how you'd structure an estimate, and only mentioning the app when someone asks what you use?
I haven’t deliberately tried that approach in trade groups yet.. “How do you handle estimates?” sounds a lot closer to the conversation a contractor would actually have! I’d be more comfortable helping with that question than opening with an app pitch... Thanks for making the example specific!
I had the same week. Busy thread, wrong room. The people who actually want the thing weren't on a startup site.
I still don't know their hangout for sure. I just stopped assuming it's here.
The daily-games example generalises: the best places are the ones where people are already looking for a solution, not the ones where they talk about their work.
For contractors, a lot of that looking happens in search. Someone types "roofing estimate template" or "cleaning quote form" the night before they need it. A free, genuinely useful page for one of those searches (a printable template, with the app as the upgrade) reaches exactly the owner-operator who has the problem that week.
The other is the tools they already pay for. Suppliers, trade associations and local trade groups are where contractors ask each other for help, and a supplier recommending you counts for more than any post you write.
I'd pick one trade and one app and go deep there for a month before spreading out. Which of your apps has the most specific "I need this tonight" moment?
Our users don't hang out on landing pages — they're in growing Threads conversations talking about the problem. One early reply in the right thread brought more installs than a week of SEO. Go where the conversation already is.