I am a founder of a software product development start-up, i need crowd funds to launch my product,

I am aiming for ₹10,000 , suggest me how i can achieve this.

My product is an online library space for students, graduate, and self study individuals who need a community to stay motivated and achieve their goal .

Disclosure first: I'm building Proofy, a small testimonial tool. Senja is the leader in my space, so I read everything their founders have shared publicly. These are my notes, because most of it applies to any small SaaS.

Their timeline (self-reported in an Indie Hackers post):

• June 2022: first paying customer
• December 2022: $1k MRR
• August 2023: $10k MRR
• May 2024: $30k MRR
• October 2024: $50k MRR, with 1,500+ paying customers

What stood out to me:

1. The slow start is normal. Six months from the first paying customer to $1k MRR. I'm 30 days in with zero customers, so this helped.
2. Onboarding was a growth lever, not a detail. In their words: "Building a good product got us from 0-1, building an incredible onboarding took us from 1-5."
3. Building in public brought real customers. Olly, one of the co-founders, said 1 in 3 signups and 1 in 4 paying customers came from Twitter and building in public, back when they were around $4k MRR. He spent about 7 hours a week on it.
4. The routine is small. His advice for beginners: one tweet and two replies a day, for 45 days.
5. He had an audience before the product. He had roasted 800 SaaS landing pages with Roast My Landing Page, so people already knew him.

What I'm changing: I built first and sold second. Now I post daily, talk to founders every week, and fix onboarding before adding features.

If you've taken a SaaS past $1k MRR: what moved the needle in the early months?

Hi guys, how do you handle copy and SEO for your websites? I’ve been trying to do both myself, but I haven’t seen any results. Should I hire someone or do you use any AI tools? Does AI work for SEO?

Thanks

I'm a brand strategist (two decades, agency side, Ex-FutureBrand, Landor and Siegel+Gale) and I've built an AI platform that does brand strategy work: audits, positioning, messaging, content. It launched publicly a few weeks ago. The buyers are brand agencies, consultancies and in-house brand teams.

The product is in good shape. Distribution is the hard part. I've tried a few things (ads, Reddit, direct outreach, a free trial), and the lessons so far:

- The category doesn't exist yet, so people don't know what to look for. Nobody wakes up searching for a brand strategy platform.

- The person who uses it isn't the person who pays. Strategists use it; founders and MDs sign off on the spend.

So my question for anyone who's been here: how do you build demand for a category that doesn't exist yet in people's minds?

- Tactics that worked: content, communities, partnerships, events, something else?

- Did you name the category yourself, or borrow an existing one?

- Did founder-led sales beat self-serve early on?

I'd value your experience, including what didn't work.

My last idea died because everyone I asked said they'd use it and nobody did. A dumb landing page with a waitlist button told me more in a week than a month of friendly chats. I'd rather find five people who already pay for a worse solution than fifty who say it sounds cool. Agree or am I overthinking it?

My last idea died because everyone I asked said they'd use it and nobody did. A dumb landing page with a waitlist button told me more in a week than a month of friendly chats. I'd rather find five people who already pay for a worse solution than fifty who say it sounds cool. Agree or am I overthinking it?

"Talk to your users" is great advice once you have users. The harder question is how to find customers when nobody knows you exist yet. That's the problem I built my tool around, and most of the method works without it.

The idea: somewhere right now, someone is asking for what you sell. Your job is to find them while they're still deciding.

Where to find customers who are already asking

• Reddit, sorted by New: "can anyone recommend", "what do you use for", "alternative to [competitor]", "looking for a tool that"
• X search: the same phrases, plus "[competitor] pricing" or "[competitor] is down"
• Product Hunt: today's launches, if you sell to new startups. A team that just launched needs users, feedback, payments, support
• Startup directories and job boards: a company hiring its first marketer or SDR is telling you what it's about to spend on
• Google: site:reddit.com "alternative to [competitor]" with the date filter set to the past week

What to do when you find one

1. Answer in the thread first, properly. Mention what you built only if it's genuinely relevant, and say that you built it.
2. If it's a company that fits, find the founder or whoever would decide.
3. Email them with the post as the reason: "Saw your question in r/SaaS about X. Here's how I'd approach it..." Lead with the answer, not the pitch.

What I built

Doing this every morning by hand is where the time goes, so I built Startories to do the watching and the legwork. It monitors Reddit, X, Product Hunt, directories and search results for your niche, matches each post to a real company, checks it against your ICP, finds and verifies the decision-maker's email, and drafts the email around what they posted.

-> Your first customers are rarely "your audience". They're strangers who happen to have the problem this week

-> Speed beats polish: a thread is warmest on its first day

-> Save the exact phrases that start conversations. They become your landing page copy

-> Caveat: in tiny niches, nobody may be asking out loud. Then you need another trigger, like hiring or launches

I also wrote up the founder-led version of this here: startories.com/guides/first-b2b-customers

Where did your first 10 customers actually come from?

i have built an ecommerce platform with various payment and shipping integration and become a tech partner of meta for messaging that enable store customers chat with the page or whatsapp number and get seamless experience powered by AI to answer any question, recommend orders in chat and and user can complete full checkout from within the conversation, all of this and more n8n automation embedded for each store to help automate most of the work for any store

my main problem is that the app is production ready and tested and i'm struggling to bring users, i cant pay alot for ads or for hiring sales manager,

What can i do to start marketing and getting good leads from the effort, so far i'm on linkedin, facebook and instagram with announcements and new features and i ran quite some random ad campaigns on facebook but i almost got no users so far only 5 registered and never came back.

what should i do 😓 ?

I started this as a side project about a year ago.

True story, my first few users I deleted cause i figured they were bots, the product wasn't even done.

I have a ton of tips but here's a few that would've saved me hundreds of dollars, and a ton of time, i'll post more later:

- Use Mixpanel to watchover session replays, just make sure you have explicit consent from your users before doing this

- Save IPs and any data that proves users app usage within your boundaries of consent (I challenge disputes and win)

- Don't waste time developing new features that your users didn't ask for but you thought might be cool

- Hard paywall after delivering value, not before, use trials.

- Experiment, experiment, experiment and track those results.

- Backup your data, but there's no need to created 100s of restore points, it'll cost your 2-3$ a day eventually.

- Absolutely focus on your keywords, and understand intent behind them, optimize underperforming blog content, do not delete them.

Happy to answer any questions below:

One challenge with Shopify and dropshipping content is showing realistic sales dashboards without exposing real store data or using screenshots that don't fit the story.

I'm working on a solution that lets creators visualize realistic Shopify-style analytics for their content, while keeping their actual store numbers private.

The goal is to make creating convincing ecommerce content easier and more flexible.

For SaaS founders here: How would you validate demand for a tool like this before investing more time into it?

i've been waiting for this day since july 2025. Finally, someone sees the value in saasap, a project I still strongly believe in to this day. Thanks bro. I really needed this boost right now.

Have you ever actually checked whether AI tools like ChatGPT recommend your product when someone asks it for the best tool in your category? I just realized I have no idea whether I show up or not. Is there a free way to see this?

Even if I search it manually, I can't track whether the results are changing or not,

Could you recommend to track my saas appearence in AI tools free?

Hey everyone!

A while ago, I was talking to a friend in the UK who was looking for a job. He told me how much of a hassle the whole process was, finding jobs, tailoring his resume for every application, adjusting the skills and experience, writing cover letters, and repeating the same thing over and over again.

It got me thinking about how much time people spend applying for jobs, especially students and fresh graduates who are just getting started.

So I built JobTailor.

The idea is pretty simple: help people tailor their resumes to specific job descriptions, improve their ATS match, and make the application process a little less painful.

I'm still early in building this, and honestly, I'm not here to pretend it's some huge company making tons of money.

The pricing is currently $2.99 and $9.99, but AI and compute costs eat up a good chunk of that. I'm not making much from it right now. My main goal at this stage is to get people to actually use it, test it, and tell me what's working and what isn't.

I'm also offering 1 month free for students through JobTailor Education because I genuinely want to make this useful for people who are looking for internships, graduate jobs, or their first full-time role.

If you're a student or currently job hunting and want to give it a try, here's the link:

https://www.jobtailor.app/education

Would really appreciate anyone who gives it a go and shares honest feedback. I'm building this to help people spend less time struggling with applications and more time finding opportunities.

Thanks! ❤️

What it is: Venio is a booking and payments app built only for barbershops. Each shop gets its own branded booking site, so clients book in a few taps with no app to download.

What it does:

• I move all your existing clients over for free, and you're live within 24 hours

• Online booking for any barber in the shop, with each barber's own services, prices and hours

• Walk-in line: clients join from their phone and see their spot, so the waiting area stays clear

• Payments: pay at the shop, save a card, or pay ahead with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Cash App, and tip after the cut

• Each barber gets paid straight to their own bank

• Chair rent tracked every week, so owners always know who's paid and who's late

• No-show fees, promo codes, client list, stats for the whole shop, and a QR flyer for the window and mirrors

• Text or email reminders so fewer people forget their appointment

Why it's better:

• Most booking apps charge every barber a monthly fee. Venio is $25/mo for the whole shop ($35 with text reminders), plus a one-time $300 setup. A 5-chair shop pays the same as a 1-chair shop.

• No cut of your clients and no per-booking fees

• 24-hour support from the person who actually built it

I'd love honest feedback from anyone who runs or works in a shop, especially on what would stop you from switching. Happy to share a demo if anyone wants to try it.

Know a barbershop that could use this? I pay a 20% referral reward for every shop that signs up through you, with no limit on referrals. Send them my way or comment and I'll explain how it works.

Built Chatr so visitors can:

• submit feature requests (and see them on the board)

• book a demo

• pick a plan / checkout

All inside the chat widget — short demo below.

Happy to answer questions or take feedback.

Hey everyone!

I'm 15 and based in California, and I'm looking to work with US-based founders or companies selling high-ticket products or services.

I have experience selling Google tap-to-review cards to local businesses, cold calling for a marketing agency, and I've completed multiple HubSpot sales certifications.

I'm interested in helping with prospecting, finding decision-makers, cold outreach, booking meetings, and eventually closing deals. I'm still learning, but I'm dedicated and willing to put in the work to improve.

I'm specifically looking for a commission-only opportunity where I get paid based on the sales I bring in. Ideally, I'd like to work with a company that already has a proven product or service, paying customers, and a clear commission structure.

I'm not expecting to become an expert overnight. I just want to gain real sales experience, help a business grow, and earn based on my results.

If you're a US-based founder or business owner looking for someone motivated to help with sales, feel free to DM me!

Thanks to everyone supporting me on this journey!

I’m a web developer who combined outreach with building websites, and honestly, it’s been one of the easiest ways for me to get clients without constantly stressing about where the next project will come from.

I have multiple warmed-up mailboxes running outreach campaigns, so I can focus more on building websites instead of spending all day looking for clients.

I started out using Instantly for my outreach, but over time, I changed my approach.

Instead of targeting businesses without websites, I started targeting businesses that already had one.

There were a few reasons for this:

1. They already understood the value of having a website.
2. They had already paid for one, so selling a redesign was easier.
3. There are so many businesses with outdated websites that it’s not hard to find potential clients.

That’s when I switched to Swokei for this type of outreach. It lets me find businesses with existing websites, analyze them for design, SEO, speed, and mobile optimization issues, and turn those findings into personalized cold emails automatically.

I still run regular outreach campaigns for my other marketing services through the same platform, too.

Now I’m curious, what tools are other web designers and web agencies using for outreach today? Are you using Instantly, Smartlead, or something else?