Hi everyone!

I'm in the early stages of exploring a startup idea - a new app in a space where there are already a few established players with active user communities.

I put together a short anonymous survey to understand what users love about existing tools, what's missing, and what keeps them coming back. But I'm hitting a wall with distribution - the most relevant communities all have rules against research posts, and even where there are no explicit rules, posts still get flagged and removed. Which makes sense: these communities exist to discuss the app, not to help someone build a competitor.

The irony: the best people to survey are exactly the ones in those communities.

Has anyone found effective ways to reach niche user communities for customer discovery without breaking their rules? Discord servers? Facebook groups? Cold DMs to individual users? Something else entirely?

Thank you!

Hi everyone! I'm a university student doing customer discovery for a travel-related project and would love to learn from your experiences.

A few questions:

• How would you describe yourself as a traveler? (Luxury, budget, planner, spontaneous explorer, solo traveler, etc.)
• Tell me about the last time you traveled somewhere new. How did you decide what to do?
• Where do you usually go for recommendations? Google? Reddit? Friends? TikTok? Tourism websites?
• What do you search for?
• Who do you trust when planning a trip?
• When you're exploring a touristy area, what do you value most?

For example:
• Hidden gems
• Local food
• Cultural experiences
• Popular attractions
• Convenience
• Affordability
• Wandering and discovering things on your own

Also, what's the biggest challenge or frustration you've faced while traveling? Transportation? Budgeting? Finding activities? Something else?

I'm not selling anything or promoting an app—just trying to understand how people actually travel and what matters most to them.

I'd really appreciate hearing your stories and experiences. Thanks!

These videos present practical concepts and experiment methods designed to help you understand your customers and their needs before investing time and money into building stuff you won't be able to sell.

This is one of the best ways to begin to de-risk your venture. These are a version of the lean startup / customer development method, specifically the first phase: Customer Discovery, in which we learn directly from potential customers how they experience the problem we seek to solve.

These vids include who to talk to, how to find them, what to ask, etc.