The waitlist test that told me my SaaS would work before I wrote a line of code
Before I wrote a single line of code for my current tool, I ran a 2-week test.
Not a survey. Not a landing page with "coming soon." An actual distribution test designed to tell me if I should build at all.
That test saved me months of wasted work. And it's why I'm at $1K MRR today instead of $0 with another dead project.
1) The test wasn't "do people like the idea." It was "can I reach them at all."
Most founders validate the wrong thing.
They ask friends. They post on X. They tweet the idea and watch replies.
All that tells you is whether your idea sounds interesting. It doesn't tell you anything about distribution.
The real question at this stage isn't "is this a good idea." It's "can I actually get in front of the people who'd pay for this, consistently, without paid ads or an audience?"
If the answer is no, a better product won't save you.
So I built a simple landing page, added a waitlist form, and gave myself 2 weeks to see if I could get 50 signups via cold DMs on Reddit.
No ads. No tweets. No posting on my own account. Only outbound, 1:1 messages.
2) The waitlist was the test. The DMs were the product.
Here's the shift that made this work.
I didn't treat the waitlist as a growth hack. I treated it as a proxy for "can I do cold outreach every week for the next 2 years and bring in customers."
Because that's what this actually is. If you can't get 50 strangers to sign up to a waitlist with DMs, you won't be able to get them to sign up and pay once you launch.
Same channel. Same conversations. Same objections. Just a different offer at the end.
Every DM I sent taught me:
how easy or hard it is to find high-intent people on Reddit for this problem
which subreddits they actually hang out in
which phrases make someone reply vs ignore
which problem framings land and which don't
By the end of 2 weeks, I had 60+ signups and, more importantly, a notebook full of real buyer language I could use in my copy once I launched.
3) What to do if the test fails
If you can't hit your waitlist number in 2 weeks of consistent outreach, that's not a small signal. It's a giant one.
A failed waitlist test usually means one of three things:
the problem isn't painful enough for people to give you an email
you can't reliably find the ICP (which means you can't reliably sell either)
your positioning is confusing even to the people most likely to care
None of those get fixed by writing more code.
The right move is to sit with that signal, try a different ICP, a different framing, or a different channel, and rerun the test. Not build the thing and hope.
Before you open your editor, answer one question: can you get 50 strangers to sign up for something that doesn't exist yet, using only cold outreach, in 2 weeks?
If yes, build. Your distribution is already working.
If no, keep testing. Because the second you launch, you're going to need that exact channel to keep humming every single week.
If you want to see proof and the actual timeline of my growth from that waitlist test to $2.5K MRR, you can see it here.
Happy to answer any questions or go deeper on this!
This is one of the most practical approaches to SaaS validation I've seen. Too many founders validate the product and ignore the distribution channel.
Getting 50+ waitlist signups through cold outreach proves more than demand it proves you can consistently reach your ideal customers. That's a huge advantage before investing months into development.
I help founders with customer acquisition and outreach strategies, and your process aligns closely with how I approach market validation. If you're interested, I'd be happy to share a few strategies to scale this beyond Reddit and create multiple acquisition channels for predictable growth.
This is exactly where I am right now.
I built first, then tested — classic mistake.
I'm 57, former construction site manager from Korea.
Built Slash it, an Email Decision OS that
pre-reads your Gmail and tells you what to act on.
Waitlist live, Paddle payment in review.
Looking for 100 founding users.
The part about "can you reach them at all"
hit me hard. That's the real question I'm facing now.
You've built a solid product. For your first 100 users, I'd focus on targeted outreach rather than paid ads.
Promote it in founder, productivity, SaaS, and business communities where people already struggle with email overload. Use a problem-first strategy: show how much time users save instead of talking about features.
This is actually the kind of user acquisition and growth strategy I help founders with. If you'd like, I'd be happy to share a practical plan to attract your first 100 users and build a consistent acquisition channel.
Thanks for the advice!
That's exactly my plan — IH, Reddit, founder and productivity communities.
Problem-first framing makes sense for this stage.
Appreciate the offer, but for now I'll figure it out myself.
That's kind of the whole point of building at 57. 😄
ran into this exact thing building my PM tool - I've hit 200 visitors/week with barely any conversions. session recordings showed users stalling at setup before reaching the core feature. cut onboarding to 3 steps. conversions tripled.
it's crazy how some small fixes at the right place can impact your bottom line
yeah, that's real. I've burned 3 months on the wrong thing more than once - once you find the actual lever it always feels obvious in retrospect
Interesting perspective, I’ve seen something similar.
That's interesting.
How many people joined the waitlist before you felt confident enough to start building?
30
How did you outreach in reddit? What was your strategy?
I find people that describe problems my tool solves or explicitly ask for tools like mine and send them a personalized DM based on what they posted
Great idea, it's like a digital version of an elevator pitch to strangers. Will defenitely adopt this to my idea. As my waitlist site get's no visits at all :-(
No visits to waitlist is a good signal that you need to keep finding ways to distribute it before building, otherwise you'd spend months building and will have the same distribution problem you have now
The most scariest thing to do as a first-time solo-builder is cold DMs. Even worse, when you don't have anything or MVP in your hand to demo and to convince users.
It is interesting that you can DMs some users to sign-up for a product that not exits yet.
How have you done that?
Yeah, send them an offer and see if they're interested. If they are, tell them you'll let them know as soon as it's live. This is also a great opportunity for you to ask them questions that can help guide you what to include in MVP
This is gold! The waitlist-as-distribution-test framing completely changed how I think about validation. Did you find Reddit DMs worked better than email outreach for that first 50?
Definitely. I get way better reply rates on Reddit (~30%) and it's easier to talk 1:1 to get qualitative feedback
Solid playbook. To extend the 'distribution validation, not product validation' point in the comment above: the test tells you you can move conversations, but not that those conversations convert to a paying customer. One small thing I'd add to the DM script - ask 'what would you pay for this if it existed today?' before the signup. The answers do two things: filter the signups that were just being polite, and give you the exact price ceiling for the launch. Anyone who replies with a real number is a real signup. Anyone who hedges is on the waitlist for sentimental reasons.
Yeah that's a solid approach
One thing that surprised me is how many founders treat waitlists as product validation, when they're really distribution validation.
Getting 50 people to join a waitlist isn't impressive by itself.
Getting 50 people from a channel you can repeatedly access every week is.
The biggest lesson for me wasn't the signups. It was learning where the right people actually hang out, what language they use, and which messages get ignored.
That information ended up being more valuable than the waitlist itself.
（I did made the same mistake as you)
Yep, it's all about if you can consistently acquire customers
Will you be releasing a product for LinkedIn?
Maybe in the future, right now want to keep building the best product for Reddit marketing
Reachability is the real test, not whether people like the idea. Likes are the cheapest signal there is. Same trap post-launch: signups look like traction, but the number that matters is how many come back without a nudge.
Yep
Distribution-first is exactly right and the framing I wish someone had given me earlier. I built Genie 007 for 8 months before properly testing whether I could reach my buyers at all. Your '2 weeks of cold DMs before a single line of code' test would have saved me a lot of wasted time. The Reddit DM approach is interesting — were you targeting people who'd already posted about the problem specifically, or broader cold outreach to relevant communities?
Targeting mostly people that describe problems my tool solves or explicitly ask for tools like mine
Your video is very compelling. I’m going to sign up soon.
funny you say that, it's an old video which I'm going to update soon, the platform got way better stuff now
Hello Panoski,
thanks for your advice, definitely a good one... sell the product is actually the most difficult part
Yeah, validating if you can sell it before building can save you a lot of time
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Building BiteSaaS: A Unified Hospitality Operating System for Restaurants and Hotels
Hi everyone,
I'm currently working on a startup idea called BiteSaaS.
The vision behind BiteSaaS is simple:
Hospitality businesses spend a significant amount of time managing operations through multiple disconnected systems. Restaurants and hotels often rely on different tools for ordering, billing, guest requests, analytics, customer feedback, and business management.
As a result, operations become fragmented, staff spend more time switching between systems, and owners lose visibility into what's actually happening inside their business.
I started asking a simple question:
What if restaurants and hotels could manage everything from one platform?
That question became the foundation of BiteSaaS.
What is BiteSaaS?
BiteSaaS is an AI-powered Hospitality Operating System designed for restaurants and hotels.
The goal is not to build another QR menu tool.
The goal is to create a unified platform that combines:
Restaurant Operations
Hotel Operations
Ordering Systems
Billing & Receipts
Analytics & Reporting
Customer Feedback
AI-Powered Insights
Multi-Country Support
Multi-Currency Support
Multi-Language Support
into a single ecosystem.
Restaurant Workflow
A restaurant can create an account, configure its tables, and generate QR codes.
Customers can:
Scan a table QR
Browse the menu
Receive AI-assisted recommendations
Place orders
Complete payments
Receive digital receipts
Submit feedback
Meanwhile, the restaurant owner can monitor everything from a centralized dashboard.
Hotel Workflow
Hotels can configure rooms and services through the platform.
Guests can:
Scan a room QR
Request room service
Request housekeeping
Browse available services
Make payments
Receive receipts
Leave feedback
All requests are routed directly to the hotel's operational dashboard.
Business Dashboard
The owner dashboard is designed to provide complete operational visibility.
Features include:
Live Orders
Revenue Tracking
Service Requests
Customer Feedback
Performance Analytics
Menu Management
Service Management
Staff Activity Monitoring
The objective is to help business owners understand what is happening inside their business in real time.
AI Layer
I'm also exploring an AI assistant that can help businesses make better decisions.
Examples:
Identifying best-selling products
Suggesting revenue opportunities
Highlighting operational bottlenecks
Providing business recommendations
Analyzing customer trends
The AI is not the product itself.
The product is the operational platform.
AI simply acts as an assistant.
Long-Term Vision
My long-term goal is to build the operating system layer for hospitality businesses globally.
Instead of relying on multiple disconnected tools, businesses would be able to manage their entire operation from a single platform.
Current Status
The product is currently in the planning and MVP stage.
I'm actively refining workflows, validating assumptions, and thinking through implementation challenges.
Questions
I'd love feedback from people who have experience with:
SaaS businesses
Hospitality technology
Restaurant operations
Hotel management
B2B software
Some questions I'm thinking about:
What is the biggest weakness in this idea?
What feature would provide the most value?
What would make a restaurant or hotel switch from their current solution?
What am I overlooking?
I'm genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives and learning from builders who have experience in this space.
Thanks for reading.