Product Hunt is done. I have 1 sign-up and $0 MRR. Here's how I'm thinking about finding my first paying customer.
The launch is behind me. 5 upvotes, 0 new sign-ups, $0 MRR. That's the honest number.
I'm not dwelling on it. But I'm also not pretending it didn't tell me something important.
The thing it told me: warm relationships don't automatically become paying customers. They become warm relationships. The conversion requires something more direct than a post or a launch listing. It requires finding a specific person with a specific problem and asking them a specific question.
So here's how I'm thinking about it now.
The problem I'm solving is invisible until it isn't.
Founders don't know they're losing users to silence. They just notice the churn number and assume the product needs to be better. The moment it becomes visible "have you ever lost a user who didn't know about a feature that would have kept them?" is the moment the conversation changes.
That question is my filter. The founders who pause when they hear it are my customers. The ones who say "that's not really my problem" aren't.
Where I'm looking.
The founders who feel this pain most acutely are the ones with 10-50 paying users who are starting to see their first churn and don't know why. They're on IH posting about retention problems. They're on X talking about users going quiet. They're in threads asking what they're doing wrong.
Those are the conversations I'm inserting myself into not to pitch, but to ask the question.
The goal.
5 paying customers before I build a single new feature. That's the rule I set publicly and I'm holding it. Every day between now and that number is distribution work, not product work.
If you're a SaaS founder with 10-50 users and you're starting to see churn you can't explain I'd genuinely love to talk. tryreleaselog.com
What's your approach to finding your first 5 paying customers? Would love to hear what's actually working.
That question you're asking founders is a good way to find the right people. Have you tried posting it in threads where founders are already talking about losing users?
I’m in a similar spot today. We also launched on Product Hunt, and I’m not expecting the launch itself to magically solve distribution. I’m looking for people with a very specific pain: folks who spend a lot of time in work calls and worry about speed, missing important details, or losing context across conversations. So I’m basically doing the same thing now: talking to a narrow group and trying to get the product into their hands for testing while it’s still free.
Yeah, that’s pretty much where my head is at too. Product Hunt felt more like a visibility spike than an actual customer acquisition channel. I’m starting to think the real work is finding a very specific group of people who already feel the pain badly enough to actively look for a solution.
Your approach makes a lot of sense. I think getting the product into the hands of a narrow group while it’s still free is probably the fastest way to learn what actually matters to users vs what we think matters. Especially for products tied to workflow habits like meetings/calls, context switching, and information overload.
I’m trying to shift from “launch mindset” to more of a “continuous conversation with potential users” mindset. Feels slower, but probably more real.
The strongest part here is the question, not the launch recap.
“Have you ever lost a user who didn’t know about a feature that would have kept them?” is much sharper than “release log,” because it turns the product from a publishing tool into a retention and activation problem.
I’d probably narrow the ICP even more: not just SaaS founders with 10–50 users, but founders shipping fast enough that users miss important product changes. That is where the pain becomes urgent. If they only ship once a month, the problem feels nice-to-have. If they ship weekly and users still churn silently, the value is much easier to sell.
The naming is worth watching too. Release Log is clear, but it frames the product as a changelog utility. The pain you described is bigger than logging releases. It is about making product progress visible enough that users stay engaged. If that is the direction, a broader name like Xevoa .com would carry the workflow/retention layer better than a name tied to one feature format.
The public "5 paying before any new features" rule is exactly the discipline most founders skip.
One refinement on your diagnostic question: "have you ever lost a user who didn't know about a feature" is a leading question, not a filter. Founders are nice — they'll say yes to any sympathetic hypothetical.
Sharper: "tell me about the last user you lost. What was the last thing they did before they stopped logging in?" Buyers tell you a story with a name and a feature. Polite agreers say "I think they got busy." The story is the signal.
Also — your ICP (10-50 users, first churn) is operationally invisible upfront. Those founders post "anyone else dealing with dropoff?" not their user count. Engage with every churn post, sort in conversation.
The leading vs diagnostic question distinction is useful. "Have you ever lost a user who didn't know about a feature" is easy to agree with sympathetically. "Tell me about the last user you lost, what was the last thing they did before they stopped logging in" forces a specific memory. Buyers have the story. Polite agreers don't. The ICP visibility point is also right "10-50 users" is an internal metric nobody posts publicly. "Anyone else dealing with dropoff" is the language. Sorting by the churn and retention threads rather than trying to find people who match a demographic description is the smarter approach. Appreciated this changed two things in the plan.