Secret to finding your first users to validate your SaaS idea?

Hey @qfoster

It depends what you're testing.

If you want to test you're solving the 'right' problem for 'real' users, then finding those users yourself might be the best bet. As long as the type of user you're building for is attainable to you. e.g. Investment banker friends of yours. Use your connections to find friends of friends and so on. Go to events. Sell your idea to people face to face.
Building an email list can take time, but it's still worth doing.

If you want to test usability, then there are services out there that source users for you. They cost, but you can even filter by demographic, so maybe you can get quite close to your user type that way. One I use is called Maze. I'm a UX designer in the Fintech industry so I know how hard it can be to find users.

Good luck with your venture!

Finding your first SaaS users is like streamlining a Marriage Certificate Attestation process; it requires a strategic approach to ensure a smooth experience. Engage and attract users to validate your SaaS idea effectively.

In the case of my ventures, cold emailing / LinkedIn communication coupled with providing value from the very first interaction was the key. I.e. when I saw our ideal customer reacting on the blogposts about AI on LinkedIn — I would text them with some questions / ideas / supplementary material / blog content from our website. And I completely agree with @thebigk, that money in the bank account is a way stronger indicator than engagement. My first venture failed exactly due to this problem: we found people to talk with, top execs were saying that the problem we solved actually makes sense, and the product addresses it — but we never managed to close any deals and charge the money, since the problem we solved was simply not a priority for customers we considered ideal.

I can tell you from my experience - the only way to validate your idea is to see if people are -

1. Signing-up on your landing page (shows intent)
2. Are willing to make small payment (very strong intent)

Even with 10 people signing up on your website; you are likely to get 1-2 people to actually talk to you. It's super hard in the beginning; but that's the only way.

How do I know?

Been there, done that several times and failed. I am now building a smart waitlist software that helps with this exact problem.

Incoming IB analyst, working on a few side projects of my own in the financial space, would love to chat about your transition to entrepreneurship.

I grew but ultimately failed a few other startups due to poor validation (among a few other issues).

What’s the best email to reach you at?

Hey @qfoster – this is actually exactly the problem I'm currently trying to solve with my startup Parrot – ChatGPT for market research. It lets founders create customer profiles that you can chat with and survey using AI.

The idea came from a personal experience of working at my current startup. We tended to talk way too little to customers, but at one point last spring I went into a bunch of communities to talk to hundreds of HR professionals. I learned a lot, but afterwards I decided to try getting ChatGPT to role play as an HR professional and was pretty blown away where I could get 80%+ of those hard earned insights just by chatting with GPT-4.

Turns out that questions like "What's your typical budget for wellbeing initiatives" and "What time of year do you usually set your budget" are pretty straight forward to GPT-4 impersonating an HR manager, but not to me as a startup founder.

Would love to connect if you'd like to do a workshop with Parrot to see what insights we can get out of it for your idea!

Hey Q.
I can totally relate, I was a consultant who wanted to transition towards a microsaas entrepreneur.
Please share your landing page.

What has been your approach

I posted on HackerNews, both a little bit content marketing, and a little bit about the software. Someone else posted to HN & Reddit too about my project. And I replied to people over at Quora who were asking for the type of software I've built. — And all this was more than enough, to get started.

build something people ACTUALLY want .... the investing niche

Have you heard about The Mom Test Book? It'll tell you what to do, how to proceed (and what not to do). The first 3 chapters (which are the most important ones) you can find for free online (search for "The Mom Test Book pdf" for example).

Also check out these sales & marketing advice: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sales-advice-for-technical-founders/
especially the Low Hanging Leads?

Yes plz share the landing page. I don't invest, just curious

Will you build everything yourself (do you write code, in addition to finance?) or you'll find sbd else to help you

you might try to post in hackernews or reddit or you can also look-up "building in public" it like you share in twitter (or another social media) what you are working on and you might get some users like this.