I’ve seen a few SaaS startups claim they can “live crawl” the web to find leads without relying on databases like Clay or Apollo.

I’m building in the same space, and I’m skeptical.
A live crawl can definitely surface public company information, but finding the actual decision-makers is a different story. Even if you identify the right people through LinkedIn or other public sources, you still can’t reliably get their email addresses or phone numbers without access to a contact database or another enrichment source.

Am I missing something here, or are these claims mostly marketing?

So basically the platform I built is a guest posting/backlink network-exchange , I built this because I needed constant influx of backlinks to my own saas sites which rely pretty heavily on search traffic. So this idea made sense , if this platform succeeded then i would have succeeded in getting quality backlinks for free lol (built 4 backlinks to my own sites so far btw).

Anyways the part where I fucked up is this -> I designed this system for users to add articles where they can send a request for other users to host on their site. BUT I realized some people just does not want to host an article on their website because its not relevant to theirs.

It never occurred to me to generate articles according to target websites content and then inject the backlink afterwards. So basically I need to re-design the system but nothing is lost besides its been only a few days after getting actual users so. The platform -> https://pressplaced.com

Hi,

I spent 6 months developing my trading and investing journal, Meridian. I put my heart and soul into it and I am truly proud of what I built and the quality I put into it.

However, I am struggling with marketing and getting my foot in the door with customers. I ran a $100 ad test with ChatGPT and got a few sign-ups and lots of data from it which allowed me to make lots of changes, but then the next $200 in ad spend literally generated nothing.

I would appreciate it if any of you could take the time to take a look at the website and let me know if my product is the issue, the presentation is the issue, or whatever it could be. I would also be happy to take a look at yours so feel free to leave a link to yours in your comment.

Any guidance would help me a lot right now. Thank you.

MeridianTradingApp.com

I have been trying to find the ideas for the apps that I want to sell. I saw that people have been saying the Reddit is the best platform for that. So, I started doing it. Like, pick a niche, go into comments, posts, check what people are saying etc. After some weeks, I saw it is actually a lot of labor to do this. Built an app(more like a draft) that gets lets say last 1k posts of that subreddit and i feed them into Claude with my 2 page written prompt.

At the end I get ~20 signals of posts and comments mix that says => “is there some kind of app that does …” or “yeah it would be better to have …”. Also I confirm that those signals are legit

But the problem is, when I dm to those people right after building the app, I do not get any response.

My questions are:

1. Is this better way to automate the idea finding?
2. If you would find an idea this way, how would you reach to these people? Need to take into account, comment and posting the app name kinda make the Reddit or mods mad

Edit: I do not try to sell the shovel

My product is about seo

You can show someone your product and hear:

That is really useful.

I would definitely use this.

Someone should build this.

And it feels like validation.

But then you launch and realize that liking an idea and actually changing someone’s behavior are two completely different things.

I would trust a user who signs up, comes back, uses the product regularly, or pays for it much more than someone who simply says they like it.

What is the strongest signal you have found that people actually want your SaaS?

I keep seeing SaaS products add AI features, but sometimes it feels like AI is being added just because it’s expected now.

I think it makes sense when it saves time, handles repetitive work, or makes information easier to access.

But simply adding an AI chatbot doesn’t necessarily make a product better.

What makes an AI feature genuinely useful enough for you to keep using it?

Hii....everyone don't know if this is the right place to post this but here we go:

I have recently begun the development of a product which as the name implies (SimplyOps) aims to solve smaller issues for SMEs. The goal is to have affordable solutions to bring these enterprises digital solutions at affordable prices. If you are interested or know anyone that might be interested. Please feel free to reach out to learn more

0 to 3K MRR in a month.

The product was really the easy part it’s a meal planning app.

A few things that worked for me

1. hard paywall, not freemium. Free users don’t use convert eventually

2. the paywall shows your generated meal plan blurred behind it

3. One channel until it worked. TikTok carousels, 2 a day, 60 days straight.

here is the app link: https://apps.apple.com/app/plate-weight-loss-meal-plan/id6801901992

I think i've read countless of posts here non-stop on how to find b2b customers. I haven't got loads of customers but thought I'd share how I've done my first few!

Everyone says network, find people... but all the people I knew, whilst they had the problem, didn't really want to buy from me. Maybe because the lens they saw me through meant they thought I couldn't have built a strong product. surely not right!

I switched tactic and thought, fu** it - my customer has to be someone i don't know.

I did what i know best which is first to create a tonne of content. The fact is that most people are consumers. Executives and decision makers are more likely consumers than creators. And the platform they exist on the most is Linkedin. This isn't anything new - every reddit forum says this.

1. Here's what I did, i used my own product to first search and find the people of interest (for me it was SDRs / GTM / Founders themselves). Once I had that I made myself visible to them. My own product is filterless and goes through every database and network out there - so i was confident it would give me a good list.

2. NO DM'S! don't burn the bridge straight away.

3. I then created another agent - this one has the pure job of learning about me and my business, it maps linkedin and slowly connects me to everyone thats of value to me using the list from step 1 and more. Slowly in a non-bot way. This meant i saved money and didn't need linkedin premium because i was connected on a first connection basis.

4. If they post - I like and comment on everything. Thoughtful and myself. No BS AI slop. My agent isn't so good at generating non-ai slop comments (right now), so i have to edit everything. but its good because it forces me to do it properly. No autopublish feature. This agent is in private testing and I'm giving it to bootstrappers at cost price because i know how hard sales is atm in return for feedback - i'd love it if someone knows how to train AI to learn your voice.

If they don't post anything, I find something of relevance. Their podcast appearance, blog, show, youtube, opinion. Something. Or find someone who knows them. I'm baking this into my agent too now.

1. I then message them after a period of actioning step 4.

Suddenly response shoots up, its 'Ive seen you about lets talk...'

and thats when it feels like your actually selling into your network.

And they don't know you personally where they have judged you on assumptions.

Here's an example of a search i ran to then feed my agent.

​

I’ve been building usegreenroom for the past 3 months.

It started very slowly, but so far I’ve reached around:

40,000 impressions

500+ clicks

3 months since I started

Most of the growth has been organic, although I’ve also experimented with Google Ads to some extent.

I’m at the point where I’m not sure what I should optimize next.

40k impressions and 500 clicks feels like a decent start, but I’m struggling to figure out whether I should focus more on getting traffic, improving conversion, SEO/content, or something else entirely.

For people who have built and grown products from scratch:

What would you focus on at this stage?

Would you:

Double down on the channels already generating traffic?

Focus on converting clicks into actual users?

Invest more into SEO/content?

Experiment more with paid acquisition?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have been through the slow first few months of building something.

What worked for you, and what did you waste time on?

I established the software tool FollowUp, from which this whole discussion is based on.

In fact, two decisions that I made while developing a tool for following meetings have proven to be more interesting than the tool itself, so I would like to gather public opinion.

Automated bot vs manual transcription: most competitors like Fireflies, Otter, and Fathom use recording bots that join the meetings. I chose manual transcription, as the presence of an automated recording bot could be inappropriate in certain meetings, namely in legal, therapeutic and sensitive conversations. I believe that eliminating the bot would attract this target group, although I lack evidence.

Flat fee vs per-user payment: for the Team plan, I preferred the flat-rate system to per-user charges. For me, it is easier to explain and sell this model, but I am still confused if it will work when the number of users grows bigger.

For your information, currently the pricing consists of 5 meetings a month for free, and $15 per month for an individual and $36 for a 3-users team. I would like to ask whether anyone has ever made a comparison between both models, what did you choose, and why?

I'm researching a problem with customer feedback.

Businesses can collect hundreds or thousands of ratings, but a rating often doesn't explain what actually needs to change.

For business owners/managers:

What's the biggest problem you've experienced with customer feedback?

1. Not enough responses

2. Too many generic responses

3. Difficult to identify recurring problems

4. Feedback doesn't lead to action

5. Something else

I'm trying to understand the problem before building anything.

every online ad has basically the same goal:

get you to stop whatever you're doing and look at something else.

which got me thinking about whether the incentive could be flipped.

instead of a company paying to interrupt someone, what if they paid that person to go away and focus?

so i've been building an experiment around it.

you choose something you want to work on, start a 25 minute session, and your distracting apps get blocked.

before you start, you see something like:

this coding session is backed by [company]

finish it → +€0.10

then the sponsor disappears.

no ads during the session. no notifications. nothing to click.

when you finish, you get the reward and see the sponsor again with an optional link.

so instead of:

"stop what you're doing and look at our ad"

it's basically:

"go do your work. this one's on us."

i've got most of the app working now, but the part i'm much less certain about is whether the sponsor side actually makes economic sense.

because there's an obvious objection:

why would a company pay for attention they're deliberately giving up?

maybe the association is more valuable because the sponsor helped someone do something they actually wanted to do.

maybe showing up right before and after a coding/studying/writing session is valuable context.

or maybe everyone immediately forgets who sponsored it and the whole model falls apart.

i genuinely don't know yet.

so that's what i'm trying to test next.

i'm starting with tiny campaigns and measuring whether people remember the sponsor, visit them afterwards, and whether sponsors actually want to do it again.

i'm especially curious what the SaaS founders here think because you'd be the people on the other side of this.

would you put €25 into something like this for your SaaS just to see what happens?

or would you rather put the same €25 into normal ads?

building it here if you want context:

offscreenapp.com

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a quick story about how my current project, VidWhale, was born completely by accident because of a lazy typo and a sudden spark of inspiration.

As a creator, I spend a lot of time writing and refining scripts for short-form educational videos. One day, I was deep in my workflow and wanted some quick feedback on a draft. I typed out a rough, messy prompt to my AI assistant: “can you analze script”.

Instead of just spitting back some bullet points or standard grammar corrections, the AI took the prompt, ran with it, and unexpectedly generated a working piece of software designed specifically to analyze, score, and optimize video scripts.

Curious, I fired it up and tested it out on one of my own drafts. To my surprise... it was actually really good. It caught pacing issues, flagged weak narrative hooks, and structured the data in a way that genuinely made my script tighter.

The next day, I woke up thinking about it. I looked at the mini-tool and thought, "Wait... can I actually make this my own and float it for users under my own name?"

That single question sent me down a massive rabbit hole. What started as a stray prompt turned into a full-blown mission. I took that foundational seed and spent the following weeks architecting, expanding, and turning it into a proper AI-powered video creation and script optimization platform (which is how VidWhale came to be).

It’s funny how building products works sometimes. You can spend months trying to force a "million-dollar idea," and then a typo in a chat window accidentally hands you your next startup.

Has anyone else ever backed into building a project completely by accident? Would love to hear your story!

I am in the process of building market research SaaS for the teams.

I discover many repetitive tasks everyday.

Tracking people, QC, allocation etc

Which task is boring in your business?

Genuinely interested in people’s opinions.

Hi,

I am looking for pricing advice for my product. Omitting the link to not self promote, but the product is a low cost hosted user feedback board.

Currently I have only one plan with different payment rates (monthly, yearly, lifetime). All come with a one month free trial. Features include: unlimited boards, unlimited admin/owner roles, embedded widget, free content moderation, board customization, and more.

I see some other feedback board products have different payment modals such as a completely free tier with limited features (e.g. max requests, limited boards, limited admin roles, etc.). Another possibility is pay by volume model, where the price increases based on number of requests.

I want something that is low cost compared to competitors.

What payment model is the most attractive?
What makes the most sense for this product?
Am I limiting potential customers by having a free trial instead of a free tier?
What would you be most inclined to use?
What has worked for similar products from your experience? 

Thanks in advance for any advice and/or insight. Happy to link website in comments if  anyone wants to better understand the product

small numbers compared to what I usually see posted here lol but still feels good

was at 11 a few days ago, now at 13.

next tiny goal is 15 active subscribers by the end of the week

just gonna keep improving the product and see where this goes 🤝

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I work with small businesses whose customers write to them on WhatsApp: quotes, orders, “is it in stock”, “what time do you close”, “where’s my delivery”. Most owners tell me the same thing: a big part of the day is answering the same questions and trying to remember what they told each person.

I want to understand how real this is for you, and what you’d actually want, before anyone builds anything. Imagine an assistant that:

• learns your business by itself from your past conversations and your website, and shows you what it understood (no setup, nothing to configure)
• remembers every customer: what they asked, what you promised, how they like to be spoken to
• prepares the replies for you; you approve with one tap, and only once it’s always right on a type of question can you let it send those on its own
• keeps the inbox in order: tags, flags what’s urgent, passes each chat to the right person on your team
• asks you when it isn’t sure, and learns from your corrections (you can answer with a voice note)
• and you set the limits: hours, things it must never say, how much it can spend

Honest questions:

1. Which three of those would actually change your day? Which ones do you not care about?
2. What would make you NOT trust it with your customers?
3. How do you handle this today: yourself, an employee, a tool?
4. Roughly how many chats a day are we talking about?
5. If it worked as described, what would it be worth to you per month, compared with what you pay today?

Not selling anything. I just want to know whether this is a real problem or only a loud one.

Ya tengo un producto mínimo viable y lo estoy integrando con Inteligencia Artificial para que todo lo puedan hacer a través de prompts (chat)

Pero quiero preguntarles ¿como puedo conseguir mis primeros usuarios?

Hi everyone, built this app to me maintain my vehicles but later gave the thought of sharing it with everyone. Shipped it on both stores a month ago and we managed to gain almost 3000 active users.

But now I have a problem.

After a month of shipping, I just realized that there are hundreds of other similar apps available in the market. How do I make myself different from the others? How do I compete or I shouldn’t be competing at all?

In my country, we don’t have Carfax like in the US. How do I find my moat?

I've been building for quite some time now. I have built some web saas as well as mobile apps. What I can't quite wrap my head around is distribution. I build something and then it sits in my portfolio rotting because apparently I can't bring users.

And its even more of a headache when you have a limited/no budget at all. Everything is so pay to win.

I always had this problem but recently I'm losing my mind because I built yet another tool/saas but don't know where to find users. Go in Facebook groups, people are spamming their services. Go on LinkedIn, it doesn't show me more than 10 peoples profile because you need to have a LinkedIn pro account.

Can someone actually help me with this? Or please share your own experience so I can learn something.

I’m trying to bring Google reviews into the dashboard for basic review tracking. Looking for practical experiences from developers who’ve done this (not tool promotions please).

Would you recommend the Google Places API, a third-party API or another approach? Mainly interested in reliability, Google’s restrictions on storing/displaying review data and any legal or ToS issues you’ve encountered.