You don't need more users. You need one who'd be upset if you disappeared.
Most early-stage founders obsess over growth metrics.
"How do I get more signups?"
"How do I hit $1K MRR?"
"What channel should I focus on?"
These are the wrong questions when you're just starting.
The only question that matters early on: is there ONE person who would genuinely miss your product if it disappeared tomorrow?
1) Signups don't mean product-market fit
It's easy to confuse interest with value.
People sign up for lots of reasons:
curiosity
it's free
your landing page looked good
But signing up isn't the same as relying on your tool.
If every user you have could easily switch to something else (or nothing at all) without caring, you don't have PMF yet. You have traffic.
2) One passionate user teaches you more than 100 lukewarm ones
When someone genuinely depends on your product, they'll tell you:
exactly what they use it for
what's missing
what they'd pay more for
That one user becomes your roadmap, your testimonial, and your first case study.
100 lukewarm signups won't give you any of that.
3) How to find that one person
This isn't something that happens passively. You have to actively look for it.
Here's what I did:
reached out to every active user and asked what they use my tool for
asked churned users what would have made them stay
looked for the users who kept coming back without me prompting them
When I found someone who was more excited about using my tool than I was - I knew I had something real.
Everything I built and marketed after that was based on what made THAT person stay.
Before you scale your marketing, before you add features, before you chase MRR milestones - find your one person.
If they don't exist yet, no amount of marketing will save you.
If they do, everything gets easier.
If you need help finding that one user, check out my tool.
Happy to answer any questions or go deeper on this!
Really cool tool — the focus on personalized communication workflows stands out. Curious how you’re balancing automation with personalization so messages feel human and not generic? Any funny or unexpected use cases so far?
the automation vs personalization tension is real. I've found that the best messages feel human when they reference something genuinely specific about that person — not just their name or job title, but an actual thing they said or wrote. once you template even that detail, people can feel it instantly.
The DM contains personalization based on what the user posted about. The DM template looks like this:
"Hey! Saw that you're {post_problem_summary}. I built a tool that {value_prop}. Want to try it out?"
So true! I added a simple contact form hoping users would send feedback, but most people don’t reach out unless strongly motivated. They would just become visitors driving traffic with no real feedback to help me understand what is actually working and what isn't. I am starting to see the difference between traffic and real engagement.
Yeah, once you realize chasing traffic is useless and it's all about chasing engaged buyers, your whole distribution strategy changes
The "excited about using it more than you are" metric is brilliant. I've noticed this with my own tools - the users who send me screenshots of their workflows unprompted, or who email me at weird hours with feature ideas.
What's funny is these passionate users often reveal use cases you never expected. I had someone using my app for tracking their kid's screen time when I built it for personal productivity. They were more invested in that edge case than I was in my original vision.
I love the practical advice about looking for users who keep returning without prompting. That organic retention signal is so much stronger than any engagement metric. It's the difference between "I should check this" and "I need to check this."
One thing I'd add: those passionate users also become your best customer development partners. They'll tell you exactly what's missing not because you asked, but because they genuinely want the tool to succeed. That's gold for product direction.
Yes, feedback from most people needs to be ignored. Feedback from your passionate custoners that use it every day needs to be paid closed attention to
The reframe from 'how do I get more users' to 'who would genuinely miss this' is such a valuable mental shift. I had a moment like this — two active users both emailing me the same edge case bug. That's when I realized they weren't 'users', they had actual workflows built around the tool. Everything before that was just noise. The 'excited about using it more than you are' line is the best heuristic I've heard for identifying true PMF signal.
Yeah, and this mental shift also changes your whole distribution strategy
This is the truth. "Traffic ≠ PMF" should be tattooed on every founder's arm. That one passionate user becomes your compass — they tell you what to build, how to price, and who else to target. Great insight about reaching out to churned users too — that's where the real learning happens.
Passionate customers and churned users is where you find the feedback you need
strong point. one thing that helped me was defining a must miss metric: if this vanished tomorrow, which weekly workflow breaks for the user? if you cant name it clearly, pmf is still fuzzy.
Nice one!
Great read.. reminds me of my first business (more excitement than me).
Hope it was useful!
This is very true. When I launched my small tools site, I had many visitors, but the real turning point was when one user emailed me saying they use it almost daily because it saves them time.
That one person taught me what actually matters — speed, no login, and reliability. After that, I stopped guessing and started improving based on real usage, not metrics.
Traffic feels good, but dependence is what really tells you you're building something valuable.
Spot on
If every user you have could easily switch to something else (or nothing at all) without caring, you don't have PMF yet. You have traffic."
This distinction is brutal but necessary. I've had "successful" launches with 500+ signups that went nowhere because nobody actually needed it.
The "one passionate user" framework is something I wish I'd internalized earlier. I used to think:
- 10 lukewarm users = I'm onto something
- 100 signups = time to scale
- Revenue = validation
But the real signal is: would they pay more if I raised prices?
If the answer is "probably not, they'd just leave," you have a nice-to-have, not a must-have.
Practical question:
How do you distinguish between:
- A user who likes your product (but would survive without it)
- A user who depends on it (would genuinely be upset if it disappeared)
Is it usage frequency? Time spent? How quickly they respond when you ask for feedback?
I've found that the "upset if it disappeared" users usually:
- Reply to emails within hours (not days)
- Send unsolicited feature requests
- Tell you specific workflows they've built around your tool
But I'm curious how you identify them before explicitly asking.
Also: "looked for users who kept coming back without me prompting them" - this is gold. Organic retention is the only retention that matters early on.
Great post. This should be pinned for every first-time founder.
I recognize these users through 1:1 conversations. They always reply in emails (or more often reach out first) and they openly share their excitement and workflows with the tool. If no one reaches out, it most likely means they don't care that much
Agreed. though I would like to add: watch what they do, not what they say they need.
That one user telling you they would definitely use your tool is different from the one person who opens your product unprompted every single day.!
100%
Agree on that... I just finished building a SaaS subscription tracker and the temptation is real...traffic, signups, Reddit posts, “how do I get to 100 users fast”.
But if I’m honest… I don’t need 100 curious signups. I need just few founders who checks Subvero before approving a new tool.
Btw. Signups are easy to fake. Dependence isn’t. Right now I’m trying to find that one slightly obsessed, slightly overwhelmed SaaS founder who’s tired of ghost subscriptions and “wait, why was I charged?” moments.
If they don’t exist, no ad budget will fix that. If they do, everything else is just amplification. Hard pill to swallow, but probably the right one. Let's see...
Spot on. Early-stage SaaS is all about talking 1:1 with your target audience and iterating on your core offer until you reach PMF.
On point!
Hello, you're right... but many visitors also show where you're going wrong... when they leave, you notice that they all like things that are too simple... or vice versa, whoever stays... first time on this site... you can talk to the founders... that's good...
Traffic brings quantitative feedback, talking 1:1 with your target audience brings qualitative feedback. When you're early-stage qualitative feedback gives you better insights
nice