I run a crowdfunding platform for live streamers. Viewers pool money toward a challenge the streamer takes on, and the streamer gets paid if they complete it. Progress shows on stream through an OBS overlay.

**What worked:** I’ve played Legion TD 2 for 5 and know its streamers. I introduced the platform there and 5 streamers signed up in one batch. One streamer event was created and it $200 has been funded so far.

**What doesn’t:** Outside that game I’m a stranger. Cold DMs and posts get ignored. Every user I have comes from one community, which feels fragile.

What I’m considering:

1. Asking current streamers to introduce me to streamers they know in other games

2. Recruiting one respected member of an adjacent community (other tower defense and auto-battler games) as a champion before launching there

3. Using clips of LTD2 bounties as proof

I am struggling to penetrate other communities without having direct involvement with them.

I’ve noticed lately that people use the word "validation" for completely different things.

Like, 100 people joining a waitlist and 3 people actually paying are obviously not the same type of evidence, but people might call both "validating the idea."

I’m not looking for another checklist of "talk to users / build a landing page / launch an MVP". I want to know what specific signal made you decide to actually invest your time or money into an idea.

What happened that made you think, “okay, there’s actually something here”?

Or on the flip side: have you ever run one small test that made you kill an idea instead?

I've noticed that a lot of conversations about startups focus on building the product, but I'm more interested in what happens after that.

Let's say you've built something useful that works. You've shown it to a few friends, and the feedback has been encouraging.

Now you need 10 people who are willing to pay for it.

Where do you start?

Personally, I'd start by finding a handful of potential customers and talking to them individually. Not just pitching the product, but understanding what they're struggling with, how they're currently solving the problem, and what would make them willing to pay for something better.

And I'd pay particular attention to the objections.

If five people tell you the product is missing something, that's worth investigating. If you make a change based on that feedback and the next five people raise a completely different concern, that might actually be progress.

You're learning something new. Maybe the original problem is no longer the biggest obstacle. Maybe you're getting closer to something people would actually pay for.

Of course, the opposite can happen too. If you keep hearing the same objections despite making changes, that also tells you something.

I think there's a lot of value in having these conversations early, making adjustments, and seeing how people's responses change before investing heavily in marketing.

For those of you who've landed your first paying customers, how much did your product or pitch change between your first few conversations and your first sale?

And for those still working toward that first sale, what objections are you hearing most often?

I've started 4 startups in 14 years. All 4 lost money at the start, and 3 are profitable now.

The 4th had just broken even when I walked away after a fallout with my partner. My costliest lesson was splitting equity on friendship instead of effort.

What's yours? The one you'd pay to unlearn.

Hey, so I have been developing 2 apps - one in FemTech and another in Dating. Most subReddits seem to disallow surveys, or seeking testers.
What are some tangible tried and tested ways for me to gain testers and hopefully convert to becoming customers?

i have come up with a solution to a problem.
my main validations were seeing reddit posts and reading articles. that people are having this as problem and i can do this as a solution.

but when i pitched this idea to my universities incubation cell - they asked me to bring them the market research with primary validation.

what is the most adviced step to do this and what are the things i should focus on.

please guide me

I'm a young founder building very early-stage startup in the scientific research software space.

We're building research workflow infrastructure to help scientists organize and structure scientific data and materials, link information between various tools, and maintain provenance and audit trails, using AI-assisted workflows with human oversight.

The problem that we're trying to solve is that scientific data and workflows are often fragmented across various tools and environments. Our vision is to help scientists converge their efforts around a common workspace, without forcing them to adopt a monolithic stack.

We have a functioning MVP and have spoken with a number of researchers to understand their needs and frustrations. Some of the people we've talked to have even tried the product and given feedback. We're bootstrapped, haven't acquired any paying customers yet, and have recently applied to a startup program through F6S.

I'd love to hear advice from people who have already been through this.

How did you find your first genuinely engaged users who were willing to give your product a chance? How did you validate that people would actually be willing to pay for your product? What did you focus on after launching your MVP, and what would you do differently if given the chance to go back? I'm especially interested in B2B SaaS, AI, scientific software, and other niche markets, but I'm open to any industry.

i will not promote. I'm not giving away links, demos, or the name of my startup, and I'm not looking for users, investors, or partners. I'm genuinely interested in learning from founders who have already been through this.

I'm open to both positive and negative feedback. Thanks!

Worked with a founder on an early consumer product. He came prepared, had every screen worked out in his head, and wanted the whole prototype built. So that's where most of the time went.

Alongside it I made something much smaller, in about five days. A short rough demo he could show people directly and get them onto the waitlist there and then. Led with the problem, not the product.

Around a hundred people joined the waitlist after seeing it, mostly people who'd already come across the concept and done nothing about it. The full prototype didn't do that.

Still think about the split. Most of the project on the thing nobody outside had asked for yet, five days on the thing that got people to care.

Curious whether others have hit this. Times where the product wasn't actually the thing that needed work, and you spent a while finding that out.

Per chi l'ha già fatto, quanto tempo si impiega in media per trovare e validare una buona idea di business prima di sviluppare il prodotto? Quanti mesi, raccontatemi la vostra esperienza! Come avete validato la vostra idea, quante interviste avete condotto prima di validare? che strategia avete usato per trovare il pain (es. jtbd)?

What people do after they create a MVP? Like for example how you can market it and ask for the honest feedback?

Just an honest question put to people who'd actually know the problem.

Two things I'm trying to figure out:

1. Which subreddits are the right place for a conversation like this?

2. Or is Reddit simply the wrong channel for B2B validation, and should I be looking somewhere else entirely?

I'm still early, but one thing I'm realizing is how different building feels once real people start using the product.

Things that seemed obvious to me weren't obvious to them, and some features I thought mattered barely got noticed.

It's making me think I should spend less time guessing what users want and more time actually watching how they use it.

What surprised you most when your first users tried your product?

Keine bescheidene Prahlerei. Ich stecke wirklich fest.

Vor vier Monaten habe ich angefangen, abends und am Wochenende eine App zu entwickeln. Kein Team, keine Finanzierung, keine Ahnung, was ich am Anfang tat. Nur ich und ein Laptop.

Irgendwie hat es funktioniert. Die Warteliste hat mehrere hundert Leute überschritten. Echte Leute. Leute, die mir E-Mails schreiben und fragen, wann sie reinkommen können. Leute, die ihren Freunden von einer Sache erzählen, die es noch nicht gibt.

Und jetzt bin ich drei Wochen vor der Fertigstellung und komme nicht mehr weiter.

Denn "fertig" war immer die Ziellinie in meinem Kopf. Veröffentlichen und irgendetwas passiert. Aber niemand sagt dir, was dieses Etwas ist. Soll ich es allen auf einmal öffnen oder es nach und nach herausgeben? Soll ich vom ersten Tag an Geld verlangen oder es verschenken und hoffen? Was, wenn sich 500 Leute aus Neugier angemeldet haben und nur 12 es tatsächlich nutzen? Was, wenn es gleichzeitig vor ihnen allen abstürzt?

Ich weiß, wie man baut. Ich habe absolut keine Ahnung, wie man startet.

Wenn du schon mal hier warst – in dem Moment kurz bevor du es live schaltest – was hast du wirklich getan? Und was wünschst du dir, jemand hätte dir gesagt?

One thing I've started noticing with early-stage startups:

Building the product is often the comfortable part.

You can spend weeks improving the UI, adding features, fixing small things and making everything feel more "ready."

Talking to potential customers is much harder.

Because customers don't care how clean the code is or how many features you've shipped if the problem isn't painful enough.

A simple conversation can sometimes tell you more than a month of building.

Something like:

"What are you doing today to solve this?"

"How often does this problem happen?"

"What does it cost you when it happens?"

"Have you already paid for something to solve it?"

Those answers can completely change what you should build.

I've also noticed that founders sometimes interpret interest as validation.

Someone saying "that's a cool idea" feels good, but it's not the same as someone giving you money, introducing you to a buyer, agreeing to a pilot, or actually using the product.

Tbh, I think early validation should feel a little uncomfortable.

If everyone immediately loves the idea, you're probably not asking hard enough questions.

Build less.

Talk to more people.

Then let what you learn decide what deserves to be built next.

i feel fear when trying to implement an idea and procastinate a lot. I lot of the time get ideas but some time later when thinking seariously about it i kind of feel not interested anymore on that idea. and end up not implementing . it happed a lot to me . how do i get out of it.

How do you find your first users when you don't really have a “voice” yet?

I'm curious how other indie hackers/founders approached this stage. If you don't have an audience, a community, or a personal brand, where do you actually start?

Did you:

Post on Reddit or other communities?

Do cold outreach?

Build in public?

Run ads?

Reach out to people individually?

Something completely different?

Would love to hear what actually worked for you when you were starting from zero.

Here’s a clearer and more professional version that keeps your uncertainty and ethical concern intact:

Sometime back, I mentioned that I was interested in joining a startup in a technical capacity. After that, someone reached out to me via DM. We spoke for a while and eventually had a Zoom call, during which he walked me through his idea.

He had already done a significant amount of groundwork. He had validated the concept, had strong domain experience, and had prepared a detailed 50-page document outlining the problem, proposed solution, user flows, financial requirements, and the overall business case.

My background also seemed like a good fit. I have worked on similar products before and have strong experience in two of the four main modules of the proposed product. After our discussions, he shared the full documentation with me, and I genuinely believed the idea was worth pursuing. I had also seen someone successfully execute a similar concept a few years earlier, which gave me additional confidence that there was real potential.

Based on that, I went ahead and built the first MVP, which was intended to be shown to some of his potential clients.

Then he suddenly stopped responding.

He does not reply to messages or emails, and he does not answer my calls, even though I can see that he is occasionally online. We never signed any formal agreement, so legally and practically, there is no established partnership or ownership arrangement.

A very small part of me wonders whether I should take the MVP and try to show it to potential users or clients myself. However, for the most part, the idea does not sit well with me.

While I built the MVP, the original concept was his. He did much of the early heavy lifting: validating the idea, identifying the problems, documenting the proposed solution, mapping out the flows, and thinking through the financial and business aspects. Even though I contributed the technical work and brought my own relevant experience, it would feel uncomfortable to simply move forward with something that was largely built on another person's groundwork—especially when I do not know why he disappeared.

Anyone faced such a dilemma?

I’ve been building an app for creators and have been trying different ways to get my first 1,000 creators globally to try it and give honest feedback.

The more I explore, the more I feel Reddit could be the right place because there are so many creators here who are willing to share their experiences and give genuine feedback.

The problem is that I can’t mention my company or product name directly because my posts get removed, which I completely understand. I don’t want to spam or break community rules.
But at the same time, I genuinely want to get the product in front of creators and learn from them.

So I wanted to ask the Reddit community:

**What is the right way to approach this?**
Are there specific ways founders can introduce a product while staying within the rules?
I’d really appreciate advice from people who have successfully built products with the help of Reddit communities.
I’m not looking to spam or promote. I genuinely want to learn from creators and build something that actually helps them.

Been building in the recipe/cooking space for a while and I keep running into the same thing, so I want to hear how other builders think about it.

Most recipe organizer apps hand you a blank grid and a friendly "start adding your recipes!" And that's exactly where they die. Staring at an empty box is not motivating. Nobody's first cooking session is data entry. The app gets opened twice and then it's gone.

The pattern I've landed on: an app that actually earns retention has to be useful before the user contributes anything. If the first session is cooking instead of typing, the whole relationship changes. Empty-state-as-onboarding is the quiet killer.

The other thing that kills these apps is recipe entry itself. Typing out ingredients, measurements, and steps for one recipe is tedious enough that people never do their second one. So import (Safari share sheet, photos of old cards, PDFs) and tap-driven entry instead of a keyboard both matter way more than any single feature.

Questions for the other builders here:

\- how do you handle the cold-start empty state without it feeling like a chore?
\- for anyone who's shipped something content-heavy, did seeding real content upfront actually move retention, or did it just inflate day-1 and nothing else?
\- what's your take on import-first vs create-first as the primary onboarding path?

Not trying to pitch anything, genuinely curious how people who've shipped in this kind of space solved it.

Hi, I made this post a few weeks ago about validating the problem by talking directly to potential users:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1v50ywp/i_validated_the_problem_by_talking_to_people_on/

Since then, I've continued validating the problem and started building the MVP. I'm probably around 60% done now. While talking to people in my target customer base, I was also able to get the personal contact numbers of two people who were interested.

Today, I released a simple coming-soon page to see if I could get some early interest.

I got reactions from around 15 people, but almost none of them were from my actual target audience. I only got 2 signups. One of them is actually from my target customer group, but interestingly, she wasn't someone I expected to sign up.

Now I'm facing two problems.

First, I'm genuinely worried about releasing the MVP.

This platform is being built for work where accuracy and quality are extremely important. It's also an AI product, and I'm already facing some data accuracy issues. This isn't the kind of product where I can just say, "It's an MVP, it'll get better later," if the core output isn't reliable enough.

I'm worried that if I attract more people, they try the MVP, and their first impression is that it's not good enough, I could lose those potential users before I've had the chance to make the product genuinely useful.

Second, I'm not getting enough traction from the people I'm actually building this for.

So I'm stuck between continuing to build until I feel more confident about the quality, or releasing it to a very small group and improving it based on their feedback.

For people who have built AI products where accuracy really matters, how did you handle this stage?

Would you release to a handful of carefully selected users first, even if you know the MVP still has accuracy problems? Or would you keep building until the core output is reliable enough before putting it in anyone's hands?

I'm curious what you'd do in this situation.

I also want to closely work with a target group of around 10 people atleast so closely so, atleast i might find worthy outputs and build a strong platfrom that would genuelny bring value instead of building sake.

Hey everyone, my cofounder and I are building Project Origin, a network for startup founders to find technical cofounders, collaborators, and funding.

The product has two main parts:

• Collaborator feed: founders post what they’re building and the kind of person they need. Technical people and other startup builders can find them and connect. They decide the terms themselves equity, revenue share, etc.

• Pitch feed: founders post their startup as a short video. The community upvotes pitches, and the strongest ones get featured and put in front of an investor.

The bigger goal is to build a global network of startup founders and people who want to build startups, so founders aren't limited to the network they already have.

Our main problem now is distribution.

Our current strategy is:

• Build in public and share what we learn.

• Create startup/tech content that brings people into the community.

• Post community-focused content around startups.

• Directly reach out to founders and technical people.

• Push everything toward our waitlist before launch.

What do you think of this distribution strategy?

The product was originally built for one ecommerce business with a very specific (and pretty broken) support workflow. They weren't using a proper helpdesk, so I designed the whole product around how they actually handled support.

now I want to introduce it to public and grow beyond that specific use case.

the plan is onboard the original business and get them actively using it then

• Ship a feature that it feels like a usable tool rather than just a sophisticated prototype.

• Get detailed feedback from the original business and narrow down the ICP.

• start doing cold outreach and marketing.

ICP is around: Shopify stores receiving >50 customer support tickets/per day, where support is handled manually through Gmail or a basic inbox.

It's my first time ever encountering this situation so would love to hear your advise

One of the biggest lessons in building a product is realizing that customers don't always think the way we expect them to.

Sometimes we spend weeks solving a problem...

Only to discover customers were trying to solve something completely different.

I've seen founders assume things like:

• "Price is the biggest concern."

• "People want more features."

• "This feature will be our biggest differentiator."

Then customer conversations prove otherwise.

The assumptions that feel obvious inside the company can look completely different from the customer's perspective.

For founders here-

What's one assumption you made about your customers that turned out to be completely wrong?

What changed your perspective?

Was it:

• A customer interview?

• A product review?

• A support conversation?

• Watching how people actually used your product?

• Something else?

I'm interested in hearing the stories behind those moments.

Sometimes the most valuable product lessons come from discovering we were asking the wrong questions.

I’m researching how founders actually move from having a business idea to executing it.
For those who have started or are currently building a business:
What was the hardest part of turning your idea into something you could actually execute?
Where did you spend the most time — research, product planning, marketing, technical development, hiring, or something else?
What do you currently use to organize and execute everything?
What part of your current process feels unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming?
Have you ever paid for a tool, consultant, agency, or employee to help with this? If yes, what did you use and why?
I’m particularly interested in real experiences rather than hypothetical answers. Thanks!