Share your current projects below with:

Short, one sentence, description of your product.

Status: Landing page / MVP / Beta / Launched

Link (if you have one)

I'll go first:

Super Launch - A clean and minimal product launch platform, for boosting traffic and exposure for your product.

Status: Fully Launched

Link: Super Launch

What's everyone else working on? Let's support each other and see some cool ideas! 🚀

I see tons of posts about building, but not enough about the grind for those first users. So I wanted to share my playbook. I just crossed 100 customers and ~$7k in revenue for my SaaS, and I did it with no paid ads and basically zero coding skills.

The Idea: Stop Guessing What Sells

Like many of you, I wanted to build an online business but was terrified of building something nobody would pay for. I got interested in Skool, a platform for creators and coaches that's blowing up right now.

A lot of their community data is public (member counts, price, etc.). I realized if I could analyze this data, I could spot trends and find profitable niches before building anything.

So, I built a tool to do it. It scrapes data from 12,000+ Skool communities and makes it searchable. You can instantly see what's already making money, what people are paying for, how big the demand is and where your future paying customers are asking for help.

It's called The Niche Base.

How I Built It (The "No-Code" Part)

My coding skill is near zero. I used a combination of AI tools like ChatGPT/Gemini and Cursor/Bolt to build it and hosted the app on Render. The landing page is WordPress. It's proof you don't need to be a technical god to build a valuable tool.

How to get your first 100 Users

This is probably why you're still reading.

Short answer: Mostly organic. No paid ads. No fancy funnels.

To describe it in one sentence: genuinely listen to people!!! I began by using my own tool to identify online communities for people starting their online business journey.

You’ll get your first users without being salesy and sending cold dm’s like “hey bro, use my tool…”. (I started posting about this a few days ago here on reddit and already have 8 dm’s like this.)

1. Find Where Your Audience Hangs Out: I used my own tool to find free communities where people were starting their online business journey.
2. Listen for Pain Points: I scrolled through posts and saw the same questions over and over: "Is this a good niche?", "How do I know if this will work?", "I'm stuck on finding an idea."
3. Offer Help, Not a Pitch: I never, ever messaged someone with a link to my app. Instead, I'd reply to their posts or offer to jump on a quick demo call to help them. Or I would manually pull data on niches they were curious about and give it to them for free.
4. Let Them Ask: After giving them value and data, the magic question would almost always come. Something like this: "This is great. Where are you getting all the data from?"

That was my opening. It was a natural invitation to introduce my tool. People were already sold on the value before they even knew there was a product.

What's Next: Scaling to 1,000

I'm thinking about adding more "funnels". Here’s the plan for the next stage:

• Affiliate Program: This is my #1 priority. I'm building a list of community owners and creators in the "start a business" space to partner with. The leverage seems massive.
• Paid Ads (The Great Unknown): I know nothing about paid ads. My plan is to watch a ton of tutorials and be prepared to burn some money learning on Facebook/IG. If you have any must-read resources or tips for SaaS ads, please share them!

This got long, but I hope this playbook is useful for anyone on that grind to their first 100 users.

Happy to answer any questions about the process, the tools, or the journey. AMA!

TL;DR: Built a SaaS with AI tools to find hot niches on Skool. Got my first 100 customers ($7k revenue) not by selling, but by finding my target audience in communities and giving them valuable data for free until they asked what tool I was using. Now planning to scale with affiliates and paid ads.

Built my first product 16 days ago.

Failed to deploy it.

Started again from scratch.

No team. No ads. No viral tweets.

Got 38 users.

1 paid user.

$1.2 in revenue.

No overnight success. No trending posts.

Just me, building late nights and learning every day.

It's not a win, but it's not a loss either.

One person paid. That's enough to keep going.

Not all builders blow up. Some just start small.

I'm a techie who spent the last year building and launching three different SaaS products, all solo. All were working well (functionality-wise), and now? All 3 were shut down. Not because I gave up or got lazy, but because no one was using them.

I followed the playbook, picked a real problem, built MVP's launched on Product Hunt, Reddit, Twitter, asked for feedback. Tried to start conversations. And every time, after launch? Crickets. Silence. Nothing. It felt like I was starting from zero again, with no audience, no traction, no retention, just building in a vacuum.

What makes it worse is that most of the advice out there skips this part
"Talk to users" => cool man, where do I find them when no one shows up?
“Build in public” => I did that, then deleted most of my posts out of frustration because it felt like yelling into an empty room.

I’m still building. This isn’t a rage quit post. But I’m tired. It’s draining to keep going solo, trying to figure this stuff out in the dark. If you’ve made it past that brutal post-launch silence, how did you do it? What changed? What would you say to someone who’s built three things, put them out there, and still got nowhere?

I don’t want growth hacks or success threads. I want the honest stuff. The painful, messy in-between that no one talks about but most of us go through. Because I know I’m not the only one stuck here.

Share your current projects below with:

Short, one sentence, description of your product.

Status: Landing page / MVP / Beta / Launched

Link (if you have one).

What's everyone else working on? Let's support each other and see some cool ideas! 🚀

Mine: FindYourSaaS - Launch your product for free, for boosting traffic and exposure for your product.

Hey everyone 👋

Just wanted to share my indie hacker journey. Maybe it’ll inspire someone who's on the edge of doing their own thing.

Around 2 years ago, I decided I didn’t want to stay in the 9 to 5 forever. I wanted to build something of my own. The AI wave was just starting, so I jumped in and built a directory of AI tools. At the time, only of few ai tools directories were blowing up, so I figured there was space for more.

I spent almost a year working on it and documenting the journey on X (Twitter). After 8 months, I sold the site for just under $2K. Not a life changing amount, but it gave me validation.

From there, I tried launching a few other tools:

• an AI product image generator
• an AI text detector

But none of them got enough traction to quit my job.

Eventually, I realized the hardest part of launching a product was getting attention. One thing that always helped me was submitting tools to directories. But most of the online lists were outdated or useless. So I started curating my own list, only keeping the ones that actually worked (paid + free).

I shared that list on X and got a ton of love. Some people even donated money just to say thanks. That’s when I knew I was onto something.

I built a simple site and instead of just selling the list, I offered a "submit-for-you" service. People paid me to submit their tools manually. And guess what? It worked. Really well. To date, I’ve made over $70K from that service alone.

From there, a lot happened:

• People started following my journey on X
• Some copied my website word for word
• Some offered me jobs
• Some tried to compete with better resources/audiences

I kept going. Focused on improving my service and helping people.

Then I got an offer to join an AI startup started by another indie hackers. I joined part-time, then full-time. Between that and my own project, I was making around $12K to 15K a month. Life felt amazing.

But eventually, the startup hit a financial wall and had to let me go.

That was tough, but I had learned so much more than I ever did in my old 9 to 5. And now… I’m fully indie.

I don’t make $15K/month anymore, but I make enough to stay afloat and keep building. Every day I work on my projects. Coding, SEO, cold outreach, support, marketing, you name it.

Now I’m building something bigger: my own ecosystem of tools where each new launch feeds into the next. More traffic, more backlinks, more revenue.

If you’re still stuck in the 9 to 5 but dreaming of more, I hope this shows it’s possible.
It’s not easy. It takes time. But it’s worth it.

If you're curious to follow my journey, I share everything in public on X/Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

Hey IH, I want to try out what you're working on. I'm a founder in my mid-20s, building tools in the idea validation and security space. I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a product stick. As a user, I'm big on automation, AI/LLMs, fitness apps, and tools for remote workers. If your product targets any of those areas, I'd love to be your user. I'll give you my honest feedback – not just on the UI, but on how it fits into a real workflow and whether the value prop is clear enough that I'd actually pay for it. No strings attached. Just want to help out and see what my fellow hackers are creating. Drop a link below.

I’m working on Journll — a voice-first note app for fast, messy thinkers.
Tap a mic, speak your thought, and it auto-saves with labels, action items, and AI research.
You can even chat with your own notes later.

Just launched early access: https://journll.app

What about you — what are you building or experimenting with right now?

Whether you are building in public or just starting, share what you’re working on. Here’s mine:

Project: Beila
What it does: an AI-powered coding platform where you describe what you want to build and it starts generating code for you. From dashboards to full apps, you can go from idea to working prototype fast, without getting stuck on boilerplate.
Stage: Launched
Check it out: https://biela.dev/

Now your turn! Drop:

1. What you're building
2. Why it matters
3. Link (if you’ve got one)

I am building a platform to connect copywriters(and other freelancers) with clients(mainly SMBs) in an innovative way(Instead of posting vague job requests, clients can identify writers who meet their criteria and send direct work requests based on their portfolio). It's called CopyMatch.in I know getting 30 users isn't a big achievement, but celebrating such small wins helps you to continue building.
It's free as of now, I'll monetize it when the deals between writers and clients begin....
I need some tips on acquiring clients, through pure organic marketing and posts. Which social media platforms are the best to do so?

• TikTok: There was a secret in the App Store. You could make the application name really, really long. And the search engine on the App Store gives more weight to the application name rather than the keywords defined. So we put a really long application name, ‘make awesome music videos with all kinds of effects for Instagram, Facebook, Messenger.’ And then traffic came from the search engine.
• Strava: We started with friends and asked them to invite a few friends. We got to about 100 with direct friends, and then it spread to about 1,000 by the end of the first 12 months by word of mouth.”
• Pinterest: I used to walk by the Apple Store on the way home. I’d go in and change all the computers to say Pinterest, then just kind of stand in the back and be like, ‘Wow, this Pinterest thing, it’s really blowing up.’
• Etsy: We got off the internet and there was a team out there across the U.S. and Canada attending art/craft shows nearly every weekend.
• Cameo: The founders hired $10/month interns to DM talent on Instagram and Twitter.
• Lyft: Before we launched the Lyft waitlist, we first sent personal email invites to our friends.
• Tinder: It all started at a launch party we threw with about 300 students from USC. In order to get in, you had to download Tinder.
• WhatsApp: To get the first users Jan Koum reached the Russian emigrant community in San Jose through his friend Alex Fishman. That community became WhatsApp early adopters.
• Udemy: After we manually created some successful courses, we had proven the value of teaching a course in the first place. We then went to some experts in programming, technology, and entrepreneurship and convinced them to teach courses
• DoorDash: In the beginning it was me going door to door to convince restaurants to join.
• Discord: The tipping point arrived via Reddit. The team was connected with a member of the Final Fantasy subreddit and asked them if they’d mention Discord.”
• Behance: We got our first 100 users by contacting the 100 designers and artists we admired most and asked if we could interview them for a blog on productivity in the creative world. Nearly all of them said yes. After asking a series of questions over email, we offered to construct a portfolio on their behalf on Behance, alongside the blog post.
• Uber: There was a very significant use of street teams early on at Uber. They went to places like the Caltrain station and handed out referral codes.
• Netflix: We realized early on the only way to find DVD owners was in the fringe communities of the internet: user groups, bulletin boards, web forums, and all of the other digital watering holes where enthusiasts met up.
• Superhuman: PR was key for growth in the early days. We had pieces in Wired, TechCrunch, Cheddar, etc.

And if you find this too vague and want something more actionable, well, that’s why I’m collecting the best guides and tips to get your first 10/100/1000 users in a GitHub repo: https://github.com/EdoStra/Marketing-for-Founders

Hope it helps, and best of luck with your project!

I will start!!

My life:
- 2% explaining to family what I do (they are still confused)
- 3% staring at MRR graph
- 5% actually building the product
- 10% opening Google Analytics, closing it, reopening it
- 15% reading "How I got 1,000 users" posts at 2am
- 25% impostor syndrome (with lifetime subscription)
- 40% caffeine, panic, and sometimes vibes

A few months ago, I tried using one of those AI app builders to launch a mobile app idea.

It generated a nice-looking login screen… and then completely fell apart when I needed real stuff like auth, payments, and a working backend.

That’s what led us to build Tile, a platform that actually helps you go from idea to App Store, not just stop at the prototype.

You design your app visually (like Figma) and Tile has AI agents that handle the heavy lifting, setting up Supabase, Stripe, Auth flows, push notifications, etc.

It generates real React Native code, manages builds/signing and ships your app without needing Xcode or any DevOps setup.

No more re-prompting, copying random code from ChatGPT or begging a dev friend to fix a broken build.

It’s already being used by a bunch of solo founders, indie hackers, and even teams building MVPs. If you're working on a mobile app (or have one stuck in “90% done” hell), it might be worth checking out.

Happy to answer questions or swap notes with anyone else building with AI right now. :)

TL;DR:

We built Tile because most AI app builders generate pretty prototypes but can't ship real apps.

Tile lets you visually design native mobile apps, then uses domain-specific AI agents (for Auth, Stripe, Supabase, etc.) to generate clean React Native code, connect the backend, and actually deploy to the App Store.

No Xcode, no DevOps. And if you're technical? You still get full code control, zero lock-in.

Share your current projects below with:

Short, one sentence, description of your product.

Status: Landing page / MVP / Beta / Launched

Link (if you have one).

What's everyone else working on? Let's support each other and see some cool ideas! 🚀

mine: JustGotFound - Launch your product for free, for boosting traffic and exposure for your product.

When I was starting out, I always wanted to learn from people who had actually seen success, and I just wanted to hear how they had done it. Just getting that perspective used to help and motivate me.

I knew that if we succeeded, I wanted to help others who were in the same position as I was, by just giving that insight and sharing exactly what we did to get to where we are.

Now that we've hit some significant milestones with our validated problem database, here's a breakdown of what actually worked.

Where we are now:

• 100+ paid users across all plans
• $18,000 in total revenue
• 6 months since launch (7 months since MVP launch)

The early days (0-10 paid users)

• Created survey to validate idea in subreddits where founders and indie makers gathered
• Offered genuine value to survey participants to make responding worth their time (free validated problem reports)
• Shared MVP with survey participants when it was finished (our first users)
• Daily posts in Build in Public on X sharing our journey and trying to provide value
• Regular engagement in founder subreddits and indie maker communities
• RESULT: Hit 10 paid users in three weeks

Breaking through (10-50 paid users)

• Put all our effort into expanding our database of validated problems scraped from Reddit, G2 reviews, and Upwork job listings
• Launched on Reddit and got over 100k views with 300+ upvotes
• The viral Reddit post drove massive organic traffic but conversions came from consistency
• Released our production-ready Next.js boilerplate with Stripe, Supabase, and Tailwind which drove additional organic traffic
• Continued daily engagement and value-driven content across communities
• RESULT: Crossed 50 paid users over 2 months through consistent effort

Scaling phase (50-100+ paid users)

• Maintained community engagement (not just posting, but responding and helping)
• Word-of-mouth growth started to really kick in from founders sharing their success stories using our validated problems
• Focused 85% of our time and effort on expanding our problem database vs. marketing
• Set up frameworks to capture and implement user feedback efficiently
• Added custom pipeline builder so users can scrape their own problems from specific subreddits and keywords
• Added success stories database with 1800+ analyzed Reddit success stories for competitive insights
• RESULT: Steady growth to 100+ paid users and beyond

What actually worked

• Reddit launch that went viral
• Idea validation before building (saved months of work)
• Being active and engaging in communities (founder communities on X + Reddit)
• Being open to feedback and using it to improve the product
• Dedicating most of our time to continuously expanding our validated problem database from real user complaints
• Offering genuine free value (boilerplate, problem evaluator, free tools)

What's next:

• Building our own affiliate system for sustainable growth
• Continue taking in feedback from users
• Continue expanding our database so we can help more people find validated problems that already have users waiting for solutions
• Aiming for $30k in total revenue by this year

I hope that getting some insight into how we did it can help you on your journey, even if it's just with motivation.

Since launching on Reddit worked so well for us last time, we're now doing it again. So, if you want to help a bootstrapped solo founder beat all the VC-backed companies, your upvote would mean the world to us! Live right now: Launch Link

I'll continue sharing more on our journey to $30k in total revenue if you guys are interested.

Hey everyone,

I run a newsletter in the entrepreneurship space (startup ideas specifically) with around 100,000 subscribers.

We want to start featuring up and coming tech products and businesses in the newsletter (100% for free) to help them get more users and inspire others to get out there and start building.

To feature:

1. Submit this form: form.gethalfbaked.com/startup
2. Comment below what makes your startup great

I thought I’d share a bit about my small side project journey so far, what I’ve built, how it’s gone (good and bad), and what I’m doing next.

I work full-time as a developer at a small startup, so all of these were built in my spare time, nights, weekends, random pockets of time. Some grew, some sold, some I’m still working on.

Here’s the quick rundown:

LectureKit

• Time to build: ~1 year total (spread out, ~120 hours)
• Result: 190 users, 0 paying customers
• I left it alone for about a year, then got a few acquisition offers and sold it for $6,750

NextUpKit

• Time to build: ~1 week (but spread over 6 months lol)
• Very simple Next.js starter kit
• Made ~$300 total (I don't market it, but I randomly get a sale here and there)

WaitListKit

• Discontinued (did get 1 pre sale payment though, I refunded cause I didn't want to work on it)

CaptureKit

• Time to build MVP: ~3 weeks
• In ~2 months: 300+ users, 7 paying customers, $127 MRR (not $127K, just $127 😅)
• Sold it for $15,000
• Took 2.5 months from building to sale.

And now I’m working on my next project: SocialKit.

I’m trying to take everything I learned from the previous ones (especially CaptureKit) and apply it here from day 0.

Here’s what I’m doing and planning:

- SEO from day 0 - I built a content plan with ~20 post ideas, posting a new blog every 2–5 days.
- Marketing pages - Dedicated pages for each sub-category of the SaaS.
- Free tools - Built and launched a few already to provide value and get traffic:

• Internal linking + link building- Listing the site on various directories, even paying ~$120 for someone to help because it’s time-consuming.
• User feedback - Giving early users free usage in exchange for honest feedback, and I even ask for a review for social proof.
• Content cross-sharing - Blog → Dev to → Medium → Reddit → LinkedIn → YouTube.

Stuff I plan to keep doing:

• Keep posting 1–2 blogs a week (targeting niche keywords).
• Keep building more free tools.
• Share progress publicly on Reddit and LinkedIn (fun fact: one of the buyers for CaptureKit first reached out on LinkedIn).
• YouTube tutorials and how-tos for no-code/automation users (Make, n8n, Zapier, etc.).
• Listings on sites like RapidAPI.
• Avoiding X/Twitter (just doesn't work for me).

Honestly, the strategy is pretty simple: building while marketing.
Not waiting to “finish” before I start promoting.

Trying stuff many solo devs ignore, like:

• Building in public
• Sharing real numbers
• Free tools to bring traffic
• YouTube (even though it feels awkward at first)

Anyway, that's the plan so far for SocialKit.
Hoping sharing this helps someone.

If you're doing something similar, I'd love to hear how you’re approaching it.

Happy to answer any questions :)

I’m not going to lie - I’ve built (and abandoned) at least 10 SaaS projects over the past two years. Some were too early, some were too vague, and most simply never reached the right audience.

This one is different. It didn’t go viral, and it didn’t reach #1 on Product Hunt. However, it has achieved $900 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and continues to grow a little each week.

Here are the three tools that genuinely made a difference for me:

1. A Directory Submission Tool

Before writing my first blog post, I got my product listed on over 500 SaaS/AI directories. It only took me 10 minutes using this tool I found on Reddit. About 40 of those links got indexed, and a few ranked well. I still receive steady streams of referral traffic and long-tail search hits from directories I didn't even know existed. It cost me $87 and resulted in 10 new customers.

2. Senja.io for Testimonials

had my initial users, I used Senja to collect and display testimonials. The tool auto-generates widgets that look clean on landing pages. One user even mentioned, “I signed up because I saw the reviews.” Subtle social proof is more effective than flashy statistics.

3. Loops.so for Onboarding Emails

Instead of guessing what to send to users, I created a 3-email drip campaign based on questions users asked in chat. Loops made it straightforward to set up the logic for:

- Welcome email + product hook

- “What stopped you from trying X?”

- Upgrade nudge

My click-through rate doubled once I stopped sounding robotic.

I’m not suggesting these tools are magical; however, they helped me stop wasting time on flashy growth hacks and instead focus on steady, reliable traction.

I’d love to hear what has worked for you. Do you have any small wins you would recommend testing?

Hey guys need some advice Three months ago I totally changed my path and became an indie hacker. Its been harder than I expected and this past month Ive been really stressed out. Im living on a small monthly budget from my saved money and I have enough to last until the end of this year. My throat hurts constantly, feels like theres a lump there. Also getting some consistent little stomach pain. Im always anxious wondering if I am doing everything right or completely wrong. Anyone else go through this when they started? How do you deal with the stress and anxiety of not knowing if youre on the right track?

Really struggling here and could use some wisdom from people who made it through the early days​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​

I'm struggling to find the motivation to market my product. I just want to code and the users will appear.

If you're the same, what tricks have you used to get yourself to love marketing or to tolerate it?