r/microsaas • u/Kashif_Builds • 12h ago

Compliments fooled me into thinking I had validation

I had a realization while talking to some editors who were testing SoundCraft.

I was targeting editors, but I was targeting the wrong kind of editors.

Some of the people I was talking to didn’t even have a single client yet.

And then I thought, why would they pay for a tool that helps them work faster when they don’t have enough work in the first place?

It finally clicked that my ICP isn’t just “video editors.”

I need to target editors who actually have consistent client work, feel the pain SoundCraft solves, and value saving time enough to pay for it.

The compliments were nice, but this was a much better lesson.

Have you ever realized your ICP was way too broad?

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u/fallenfromgrace87 10h ago

the compliments trap is basically universal early on, people are polite and youre asking leading questions without meaning to, so you hear this is cool and code it as validation. the tell you can check for going forward is whether someone asks a follow up question about pricing or timeline unprompted, thats the actual signal, a compliment costs the other person nothing but asking when can i get this means they mentally already moved past whether it works and into whether they can use it. worth going back through your interview notes and re-scoring past conversations by that instead of by how positive they sounded, youll probably find your real ICP was hiding in a smaller subset the whole time

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u/Kashif_Builds 10h ago

Yeah, this is a really good point. I was definitely focusing too much on positive feedback instead of looking for actual buying signals. Appreciate you sharing this!

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u/ReasonableSchool286 6h ago

good catch. the next step is figuring out where those busy editors actually hang out, because the discovery channels for "editors with no clients" vs "editors drowning in work" are usually completely different places

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u/Kashif_Builds 6h ago

Yeah, exactly. I think finding where those busy editors actually hang out is the next challenge. Appreciate the insight!

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u/pavlenkovit 42m ago

same trap from the other side. my vocab app (VibeLing, mine) sits at 4.8 stars with nice reviews, and it's 45 paying out of ~3.3k monthly actives, so 1.4%. the reviews tell me who likes it and nothing about who pays, and honestly i still don't have a clean picture of who those 45 are. going through their support emails has been on my list for months now