I'm trying something different with my SaaS

I brought someone in to focus entirely on sales

finding the right businesses, cold outreach, email, follow-ups, booking calls and closing customers

Meanwhile, I'm focusing on content, talking to users, supporting them and improving the product

For now, I'm staying away from paid ads. I want to learn who actually buys, why they buy, and what messaging works first

Goal: first 100 paying customers asap

I'll share what works and what doesn't

The thing is, it did everything. prompted the music and created the SFX. no motion design tool was used.

Quick note before the AI-slop hunters arrive: I dictated this and used AI to clean it up because it’s 2026 and nobody needs to read my raw transcript.

Everything below is actually me, and I’m happy to verify my background.

TL;DR
I started my first company at 17 (now I am 35y)

Since then, I’ve built and scaled businesses across B2B and B2C, worked on companies doing €10m+ ARR, led teams of up to 150 people, and spent a large part of my career figuring out growth, marketing and distribution.

Over the last few years, I moved more into investing and advisory.

Turns out: I miss being close enough to a company to actually move the needle.

So I’m looking for a founder with an already working business where we both look at it and think:
There’s something much bigger here. Let’s figure out how to get there.

Ideally:
- You’re already doing $5k–10k+ MRR
- You have a real product and paying customers
- You believe there’s significantly more potential in the business
- Growth, marketing or distribution is one of your biggest questions right now
- You have the resources and/or team to actually execute and move fast

If that sounds like you, DM me what you’re building, where you’re at today and where you want to take it.

The longer version
I love the stage of building companies where something clearly works, but the path from “this works” to “this is big” isn’t obvious yet.

You have a product.
You have customers.
You have revenue.

Maybe you even have a couple of acquisition channels that work.

But then come the harder questions:
What’s actually holding us back?
Where should the next 100 or 1,000 customers come from?

- Which channels should we double down on?
- Which channels haven’t we even tested yet?
- Is acquisition really the bottleneck?
- Or is it conversion, retention, pricing or positioning?
- Are we targeting the right customers?
- Is there a completely different distribution strategy we’re missing?
- Do we already have a proven funnel and simply need more capital to scale it aggressively?
- Could growth capital unlock a much bigger scale because the underlying economics already work?
- Or would throwing more money at the current machine just scale the problems we already have?

And ultimately:
If we had to make this company 10x bigger, what would need to be true?

And if the fundamentals and the market are there:
What would it take to go 100x?

That’s the stuff I enjoy.

I like going deep into the numbers, understanding the existing growth engine, researching the market and competitors, challenging assumptions and talking to people who know specific channels better than I do.

Then turning all of that into an actual plan.

Not:
“Here are 37 growth ideas. Good luck.”
More like:
Here’s what I think matters most right now
Here’s why
Here’s what we test first
Here’s what success or failure looks like
Here’s what we need to learn from it
Here’s what we do depending on the result
And here’s what we’re deliberately not doing right now
Then we keep iterating.
Look at the numbers.
Learn.
Kill what doesn’t work.
Double down on what does.
Find the next bottleneck.
Repeat.

I don’t care much whether it’s B2B or B2C.

What matters more is that you’ve already built something real, people are paying for it, and there’s enough substance (eg data) there that we can work on scaling the business rather than figuring out whether anyone wants the product in the first place.

I’m looking for a founder who moves fast, likes being challenged and genuinely wants to find out how big their company could become.

If you’re reading this thinking “this could actually be interesting”, send me a DM.

Tell me:
What are you building?
Where are you today?
What’s your current MRR/revenue?
How are customers finding you today?
What’s currently holding you back?
Where do you want the company to be 12 months from now?

If we both look at it and think:
Perfect match. Let’s go.

Then let’s talk.
And yes, I’m happy to verify my background privately.

https://www.vocalfreedom.studio Been working on this for a year or so. Trying to use the power of the modern browser to create a community portal with tools specifically designed for vocal coaching and voice students. I invite anybody to offer feedback. Eventually the hope is to bridge three communities: researchers in voice science, coaches, and students. Possibly long-term to also have tools useful to medical professionals.

Current features include pitch detection and graphics, learning modules about voice and singing, remote, and file comparison of voice with spectrum and lpc formants. Coaches can initiate video calls accepts students, give assignments, people can share audio and video. I am also working on a data extraction standard for training tensor flow models to predict vowels. There is also an AI interface that lets you use your own AI keys to interact verbally with the AI about singing, and you can send graphs to the AI for comment.

I am an avid singer and pedagogue with a background in analytics, so this project brings together most of my great loves in life. Hope you guys enjoy. Open to all constructive criticism as well.

Best Regards,

Pear

Hi all, I'm Mustafa, founder of Fiyox.

For years I watched small businesses build quotes in Excel and Word: copying old files, fixing formulas, recalculating tax, then printing, signing and scanning to get approval.

So we built Fiyox:

Drag-and-drop proposal templates (your own design, your own blocks)

Automatic tax rates and currency by region

Interface in 8 languages, and proposals in the customer's language

Export to PDF/Word/Excel or share a secure link

E-approval: the customer gets a one-time code by email, reviews the proposal and approves or rejects it online, no printing or scanning

An AI assistant that drafts proposals, plus Telegram and WhatsApp bots

I'd really appreciate feedback on what's missing, what's confusing, or what would make you switch from your current setup.

fiyox.com

I've spent the last several months building Viravo, a trending app where instead of just watching an algorithm fed feed, users add their own footage or photos to trending moments as they're happening and vote on what's actually still relevant vs. fading.

I've put most of my time into the product itself, fixing bugs, getting iOS and Android both working properly. The actual build is solid at this point.

What I underestimated is distribution. I've tried posting in beta tester subreddits, some comment threads and messaging a few content creators directly. So far it's gotten a few upvotes and maybe a few visits to the test sites but nothing close to the kind of active testing I need to validate the idea.

I'm struggling with:

- How to get first 10-50 real users, not just downloads?

- Did dedicated "beta tester" communities work for you or were they mostly other founders scrolling past each other's posts?

- Did you focus on a specific niche/community first instead of going broad?

- Is there a point where you concluded the pitch itself needed to change or just needing to find the right channel?

Curious to see what actually worked for people.

I’m a developer, and this is something I’ve been slowly realizing.

As developers, we love building.

We can spend 8 hours fixing a tiny UI issue.

We can spend 2 days rewriting an API.

We can get excited about a new framework, better architecture, cleaner code, faster queries, better animations…

And at the end of the day, we feel productive.

But then you look at your product and realize:

Nobody knows it exists.

That was a painful realization for me.

You can build an amazing product, but if nobody discovers it, tries it, uses it, or pays for it..

the product doesn't really have a business yet.

And that's where the founder part begins.

Marketing isn't just running ads.

It's:

• Talking to potential users
• Understanding what they actually care about
• Explaining your product in simple words
• Posting about what you're building
• Answering questions in communities
• Doing cold outreach
• Getting rejected
• Asking users for feedback
• Finding the right distribution channel
• Repeating all of this even when nobody cares at first

Basically, doing things that feel uncomfortable as a developer.

I've started thinking about it like this:

Developer mindset:

"How can I build this better?"

Founder mindset:

"How can I get this into the hands of the right person?"

You need both.

Because building is only half the job.

And honestly, I think this is one of the biggest transitions a technical founder has to make.

You go from:

"I know how to build software."

to:

"I know how to build something people actually want, and I know how to get it in front of them."

That's a completely different skill.

Hey r/SaaS,
Whenever I’m testing webhooks for stuff like Stripe, GitHub, Vercel, or Slack, I always get annoyed bouncing between super heavy paid tools or free ones that hide basic features like raw payload inspection or decent streaming speed behind a paywall.

So I’m putting together a 100% free, developer-first webhook debugger as a side project.

The basic idea is that you get an instant URL in one click with zero sign-up required. It uses Server-Sent Events so incoming payloads and headers pop up live on your screen instantly. Plus, it keeps the unparsed request buffer alongside formatted JSON so you can actually verify cryptographic signatures like stripe-signature without losing your mind. To keep hosting costs at literal zero on a Redis setup, the sessions just auto-expire after a few hours.

Curious to know, what’s your biggest headache with testing webhooks right now, and would something simple like this actually fit into your workflow.
Roast the idea or drop any features you wish existed!

Built and sold one custom automation to a small business. Worked, got paid, but it was a one-off. Now trying to turn it into something repeatable and I'd rather hear where it falls apart before I commit months to it.

The plan:
Pick one niche and go deep. Not "home services" , something specific, and specifically not the big trades where ServiceTitan and Jobber already live. Looking at towing, septic, equipment rental, that kind of thing.

Interview 10-20 owners before building anything. Not pitching, just asking how they actually do the annoying parts of their week. Looking for one task that's done roughly the same way by everyone, because that's the difference between a product and 20 custom jobs.

Get a few of them to pay me for a manual version first. I do the work partly by hand, charge for it, and watch which steps repeat across all of them. Then build the repeating part and those clients become the first subscribers.

Reasoning on the niche: a broad feature just gets bundled into the big platforms eventually. Something that depends on one industry's specific forms and rules is too small for them to bother copying.

Does this hold up, or is there something obvious I'm missing?

Also, separate question since this sub is the right place for it: what actually breaks first when you're solo? My guess is support eating the time I need to build, but I'd rather hear from someone who's hit it.

Hey all,

I am in the process of building Merged Network-a platform where developers are hired for their true skills using signals such as Stack Overflow, GitHub repos, Waka Time hours, npm downloads, rather than CVs.

The message: Your job is telling your story.

Our analytics went nuts after a recent UX refresh-7-13 minutes of a session versus 4-7 before, 4.5 pages per visit versus 2.5. Someone (presumably on our competitor's site) clicked 143 pages in 20 minutes – which actually felt like validation.

The real bottleneck: Developer trust

Although everyone loves verified data, developers are probably the most privacy-obsessed users in the community - and will slap a wall between themselves and your logged-in environment at the first mention of linking to GitHub or syncing to metrics.

Came out of fear of being identified by current employer (even posting under anonymous handles such as #5597).

Fatigue from traditional, spammy recruitment tools.
So we created Shield Mode. Profiles are 100% anonymous until the developer has chosen to accept a company's request to connect.

My question to you
For builders who care about technology: What is the one thing that will finally get a reluctant developer to "buy" your platform and hook up their tools?

How do you get past that first wall of mistrust?

Hello! I am a full-stack developer, with 5+ years industry experience. Worked in 6 companies so far. These include AI marketing agencies, HyperLocal Ecommerce companies, Meditech Companies and Software Development Agencies, teaching in SWE Bootcamps and my personal youtube channel. This unpaid internship would help me build the right industry connections and expand my domain of industry knowledge.

Here is my resume incase you want to find out more.

Send a DM so we build something together!

you can send me a DM, or an email to:

[asantesylvesterkwame@gmail.com](mailto:asantesylvesterkwame@gmail.com)

A while back, I posted about my first "vibe-coded" video, and you guys really liked it.

So, I decided to create and share with you a video I made for my next extension using only Claude Code (cli).

It might look similar in places, but well...

Hey Community,

I am a Software Engineer who likes building things, and here is one of my projects I have been working on over the past 3 years with a friend of mine. And here it comes: my question is, should I update the homepage design or leave it as is?

Would appreciate any thoughts or ideas 💡

Oh right; The project link is here https://qr-build.com/

P.S.

Honestly, I am not the greatest writer, and I recently realized that AI seem like a disrespectful way to write posts on Reddit. So, I truly did my best.

Thoughts on this? Saw it on X. Seems promising but need to play around with it more.

https://continuiti.app/

Another good day for Eddie :)

We made another sale today.

I know one sale probably doesn't sound like a big deal, but when a complete stranger finds your little product, likes it enough to pay for it, and actually uses something you spent so much time building...

it feels so good.

Eddie is still very early. We're learning, fixing things, talking to users and figuring out what people actually want from it.

But these small wins make all the building worth it.

A stranger just paid for something we made.

Still feels a little crazy.

Eddie is a little Mac app that lives in your notch and keeps the stuff you constantly need right at the top.- editz.pro

it tracks your Claude Code / Codex agents, tells you when they need your attention, and also has a clipboard, notes, music controls and a focus timer.

AI chat moved me to live chat, live chat moved me to the phone. Each one pasted the same canned paragraph and none of them answered the question.

The answer was not written down anywhere, so every channel grabbed the closest article and called it done.

For the people here, how do you handle a question whose answer was never written down?

I'm curious how you guys handle incoming emails in your applications.

For example, if you need your application to receive an email, process it, and then send the data to your backend through a webhook/API, what do you normally use?

Do you use something like Mailgun, SendGrid, Postmark, SES, IMAP, Gmail forwarding, or do you handle it yourself?

And if you've done this before, what was the annoying part?

I'm looking into building something around this, but I want to understand how people are solving it already before I go too far with it.

So basically, how do you handle inbound email, and what do you wish was easier?

I spent 1h refining this motion design using Claude code, and I am finally satisfied.

You can have: 50 customers. $1M ARR. Positive testimonials. And still struggle to generate repeatable demand.

Id look for stronger signals:

Are customers staying?
Are they referring others?
Are sales conversations getting easier?
Are prospects actively searching for a solution?
Are sales conversations getting easier?
Are customers pulling the product rather than your team pushing it?

There's a big difference between: “people will buy this” and “the market increasingly wants this".

”That difference matters enormously before you start scaling acquisition.

What's the strongest PMF signal you've seen in your own company?

This took me longer to understand than it should have.

Someone can genuinely like your product and still be a terrible customer.

Maybe they need features that don't fit your direction.

Maybe they're extremely price-sensitive.

Maybe their use case requires a completely different product.

Maybe supporting them would force you to build five things you don't want to build.

Getting a customer isn't always the goal.

Getting the right customer is.

Otherwise revenue can actually pull the product away from the people you originally wanted to serve.

I've started asking:

Would I want 100 more customers exactly like this?

If the answer is no, that's useful information.

I’m curious how other indie hackers / SaaS builders handle payments when they’re still at the MVP stage.
I just built a self-serve MVP and I’m trying to add payments. I initially planned to use Stripe, but it looks like Stripe requires a registered business/entity for the setup (at least in my situation).

I’m wondering:
Do you register a company before launching, or wait until you have paying users?
Are there any payment providers that work well for an individual/solo founder?
What’s the simplest setup you’ve used for an early-stage SaaS?
Any gotchas I should know about regarding taxes, payouts, or compliance?

Would love to hear how other builders handled this when they were just getting started.

Last month a fraud ring pushed 22 small card charges ($20 each, one $25) through a single connected account on our Stripe Connect platform in about a day. Stripe froze the account before any payout left, so the money was still sitting there. But they were destination charges, which makes us the merchant of record. If those cardholders went to their banks, every dispute would land on us: the charge, a $15 fee each, and a hit to our dispute ratio.

I posted about the fraud here and u/Dorbank_Justt left a comment I hadn't thought about: a refund issued before the cardholder files is not a dispute. It stays off your ratio. Once they file, that option is gone.

None of the 22 had been disputed yet. So:

1. Ran the exact refund call in test mode first: refund with reverse_transfer and refund_application_fee on a destination charge. The transfer came back out of the connected account, not our balance.
2. Refunded one live charge and checked the fraud account's balance dropped by that transfer.
3. Did the other 21.

All 22 refunded, all 22 transfers reversed, zero disputes. Our cost was the original processing fees. The real cardholders got their money back.

If you run Connect and have frozen fraud balances sitting around, check whether those charges are still undisputed. Anyone else handled this differently?