QuoteScope

At a recent startup week event, one takeaway really stuck with me:

“Your ICP is a hypothesis, not a conclusion.”

That helped me relax a bit. I’d been trying to define the perfect customer for my SaaS, QuoteScope — but I kept getting stuck. Freelancers? Small agencies? Internal sales teams? Each seemed possible, but I didn’t know which to bet on.

The speakers said to treat ICPs like experiments:

• Pick one group, focus for ~3 months, then see if the hypothesis holds.

• Talk to existing users — ask what pain pushed them to your product.

• Find out where they spend time online, and tell stories there.

• Don’t get too precious — pivot if the traction isn’t there.

So that’s what I’m trying now. My current hypothesis: small service businesses that already use Xero and send manual PDF quotes. They feel the quoting pain daily but aren’t yet using big CRMs.

👉 Curious how others validated their ICP — what signals told you you’d found the right one?

I’m at the stage where QuoteScope works well, but now I’m trying to find my first real users, people who don’t already know me.

I’ve joined Reddit under a new account to keep my personal one separate, and I’ve been looking for places online where it might make sense to share what I’m building. But it still feels a bit awkward, I’m not a regular in those communities, and the line between sharing and self-promotion can feel tricky to navigate.

For those of you who’ve been here before:

• Did you find early users manually (e.g. DMs, personal outreach, 1:1 demos)?

• Or through content/community participation?

• What channels actually worked: Reddit, X, niche forums, something else?

I’m trying to stay authentic, I genuinely care about the problem I’m solving (quoting and client comms for freelancers) - but I don’t want to come across as just promoting myself.

Curious how others handled this stage.

I’m working on QuoteScope, a quoting tool that already connects with Google Sheets — but honestly, that integration never really got traction. I didn’t push it much, but it made me realise I should think more carefully before jumping into another one.

Now I’m looking at adding a Xero integration. It seems useful (send quotes → invoices → payments), but it’s a fair bit of work, and I’m wondering how other founders decide which integrations are worth it.

Do you go by:

• Customer requests?

• Strategic reach (e.g. “Xero users might discover us”)?

• Or just what makes your own workflow easier?

Curious how others prioritise integrations or decide when to say no to one.

I’d had Guidde open in a tab since I spotted it in the Indie Hackers newsletter a while ago. I finally needed it when I wanted better guides for my SaaS QuoteScope.

Turns out the thing I linked most wasn’t the video feature, but how it generates step-by-step screenshots with arrows and text. I could export that to markdown, then used a quick script to pull the images down and drop everything into my docs site.

That workflow saved me heaps of time compared to screenshot → upload → mark up in an image editor → save one by one. I’m a coder, not a designer - image editing tools just take me ages to fiddle around with. For me, the screenshot/annotation bit was the killer feature.

👉 Curious what other tools people use to help users discover new UI features without burying them in docs?

A friend was trialing QuoteScope for me and asked for help using it, so we jumped on a Zoom call and he shared his screen.

A couple of things stood out:

• I spotted bugs I never would’ve noticed (his browser zoom level made a modal unusable).

• More importantly: he had no idea how to use the AI well. I’ve been using generative AI daily, like many of us here I use it for coding, docs, marketing material etc. But most users don’t. They don’t it's limitations, what it does well, or the best way to ask it for what they need.

It made me realise: my written docs aren’t enough. As builders we treat AI like second nature now, but for most users it still feels like a black box. They don’t know what it’s good at, what it struggles with, or the best way to ask it for what they need.

I probably need examples, short videos, or onboarding flows that show people how to succeed.

👉 For other SaaS builders: how do you teach users to use your product, especially when it involves AI?

When I first built QuoteScope, it was a way to turn a Google Sheet into a shareable, interactive quote. That’s still there - but I realised not everyone loves spreadsheets as much as I do. People wanted something faster and less fiddly.

So I’ve pivoted: QuoteScope is now a web app where you can:

• ⚡ Use an AI assistant to draft or tweak quotes in minutes (drawing from your past quotes for accuracy).

• ✍️ Edit quotes manually in a clean, web-based editor.

• 🤝 Let clients interact with quotes (toggle items, ask questions, accept online).

• 👀 Replay client visits to see how they engaged with your quote.

Docs: quotescope.co/docs

👉 If you send quotes today, what’s the single biggest bugbear you have with your current process?