r/SaaS by u/YaroslavMadvillain 1mo ago How to find real user problems for your SaaS? Im stuck and dont know where to look for real user problems. Browsing Reddit is fine, but how do I systematically find something relevant? What exactly should I look for in complaints or frequently asked questions? And how do I properly validate who to talk to, how many people, and what to ask so I don't get a "well, yeah, great"? Does anyone have a workflow from identifying pain points to first validating an idea? Right now, I feel like I'm either inventing problems or staring into space.
Open on Reddit r/SaaS by u/YaroslavMadvillain 1mo ago How to find real user problems for your SaaS? Im stuck and dont know where to look for real user problems. Browsing Reddit is fine, but how do I systematically find something relevant? What exactly should I look for in complaints or frequently asked questions? And how do I properly validate who to talk to, how many people, and what to ask so I don't get a "well, yeah, great"? Does anyone have a workflow from identifying pain points to first validating an idea? Right now, I feel like I'm either inventing problems or staring into space.
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/Many_Breadfruit9359 10mo ago My SaaS hit 140 paid users in 8 months 🎉 Here's what actually worked vs what was a waste of time 8 months since launching my problem validation platform and I just crossed 140 paying customers. Went through plenty of failed marketing strategies after listening to random posts on Reddit to figure out what actually drives growth versus what just makes you "feel" busy (warning, there are a lot of b.s. strats out there)
**What actually finally worked:**
**Discord and Slack communities (SUPER UNDERRATED).** Joined 8-10 founder communities and became known for sharing validation insights. This is a super underrated method in my opinion that many sleep on. The heated conversations in the threads on the channels revealed exactly what entrepreneurs struggle with most. When someone posted about needing startup ideas, I'd DM directly offering to help (that's the best part of these communities). Much more personal than public posts and converted way better.
**Twitter build-in-public content (posted about my progress).** Shared actual user problems I found, demos of new features, and lessons learned. Nothing fancy, just authentic updates about the journey. Built a following of 0 - 3.2k people who actually care about SaaS. Several customers found me through viral tweets about failed star
Open on Reddit r/Entrepreneur by u/bohdan_kh 10mo ago Spent $5,000 on marketing to get my first $17/month customer - my reality check as a solo founder I spent $5,000 on marketing to get my first paying customer at $17/month.
In this post, I’ll share what marketing channels I tried, what worked, and what didn't, with real numbers, and tools I've used.
Maybe sharing what I learned can help you avoid the same mistakes or set better expectations for your journey.
## Backstory
I'm Bohdan, founder of Fomr - a form builder I've been working on for almost a year now. I'm a software engineer with about 15 years of experience in web development. My marketing background consists of playing around with Google Ads back in 2008 for some of my websites (I was still in high school then), as well as working as a developer for some digital agencies for a couple of years early in my career. That's it.
Some raw product numbers:
- **280 days** of building the product full-time
- **118 days** since the product went live
- **37 days** since I added a paid plan and Stripe
- **1,500 signups** in total
- **150 active users** (10% activation rate, users with at least one form and 5 responses collected)
- **1 paying customer** at $17/month
## My Marketing Journey
### Initial traction & SEO (free channels)
The marketing journey of Fomr began at the
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/Extra-Motor-8227 2mo ago Built 6 SaaS and got 0 customers. Here's how. I keep seeing posts about people reaching $10K MRR or getting their first 100 users. Honestly, that gets old. Instead, let me show you how to build six products and still end up with nothing.
I’ve gotten really good at this over the years. Here’s how you can do it too.
**1. Spend 6 months building before talking to a single human**
This is key. You have a vision, so don’t let potential customers mess it up with their feedback or needs. You know what they want better than they do. Just lock yourself in your room, play some lo-fi beats, and start coding.
Extra credit if you keep saying, “I’ll launch when it’s ready.” It’s never actually ready, and that’s the best part.
**2. Focus on pixel-perfect UI while nobody knows your app exists**
Is that button border-radius 8px instead of 6? Perfect. Spend a whole week picking colors. Rewrite your landing page headline 14 times. The three people who might visit your site deserve perfection.
Meanwhile, your competitor with a basic Tailwind template is making sales. But at least your shadows all match.
**3. Rewrite everything in a new framework halfway through**
You started with Next.js but now you’ve heard good things about Remix. Or m
Open on Reddit r/SaaS by u/Impressive_Poem8767 1y ago New to SaaS — How do you validate a pain point before building? Hi everyone,
I'm a complete beginner in SaaS, trying to build something useful for small and mid-sized e-commerce businesses. Right now, I'm at the idea stage and doing research to find a real pain point worth solving.
For those of you who’ve been through this phase:
🔹 How did you find and validate a specific problem before investing time in building?
🔹 What kind of outreach worked best — cold emails, DMs, Reddit, interviews?
🔹 Any mistakes you wish you'd avoided early on?
Would love to hear about your approach. Thanks in advance!
Open on Reddit r/startups by u/ssk012 1y ago Things investors look for in your pitch deck for an early stage startup - I will not promote For some context, I invest in early stage startups and I run through about 10-15 pitches a day, and I wanted to put this out so you can save yourself and your investors a lot of time.
**Slide 1: Team**
This is *the* most important slide. Investors bet on people. Highlight relevant experience, technical expertise, and why you’re the best people to build this startup. For example, if you’re building a fintech startup and have a background in finance or banking, say that. You want to show why you’re the right people to be building this.
**Slide 2: Problem**
Don’t just say what your product does explain the *pain*. Why is this problem painful enough that people will pay to solve it? Keep this slide simple and easy to understand.
**Slide 3: Why Now?**
Timing matters. Has there been a shift in consumer behavior, tech (e.g., AI), or regulation that makes this the right time to build?
**Slide 4: Solution**
Keep it simple. What do you do, and how does it solve the problem better than what exists?
**Slide 5: Market Size**
Don’t claim $100B market sizes without anything to back it up. One approach is take the no of potential customers and multiply by your pricing. For eg:
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/Many_Breadfruit9359 1y ago You’re overcomplicating it. Just solve a real problem. (Got my SaaS to $3,700 MRR) Most people know that the most common reason founders fail is because they don't achieve product–market fit. They build something that no one really wants.
I built a few failed products too where I just couldn’t seem to get users. It’s a tricky situation to be in — you don’t know if you should keep building or just move on.
What made Linkeddit different (my current SaaS) was how I started. I didn’t begin with a random idea. I started with a real problem I personally had.
**Here’s what it was:**
I wanted to find people who might be interested in my product — people talking about problems my product could solve. Reddit was full of those people. But finding them was super hard. I had to scroll through tons of posts, read every comment, and try to figure out who might be a good fit. It took forever, and I still wasn’t sure if I was even looking in the right places.
That’s when I realized: this is the problem.
So I built **Linkeddit** — a tool that searches Reddit for you. It finds users who are talking about the exact kind of problems your product solves. Then it gives you all the details — what they said, where they posted, how active they are — so you can reach out directly wit
Open on Reddit r/Entrepreneur by u/1MadTitan1 8mo ago How did you get your first paying customers without a network? (SaaS product) Hi everyone,
I am writing this because I genuinely need some advice. I am a first-time startup founder, and our product is a SaaS platform that helps with auditing and accounting. As a new player in the market, our initial target is SMEs. This is my first time building any company, so it is very much a learning-by-doing situation for me.
The main challenge I am facing right now is figuring out how to get our very first paying customer. We do not have an investor network and we also do not have any existing network of contacts in this industry.
My current thinking is to buy subscriptions to tools like Apollo and Hunter (possibly LinkedIn Sales Navigator too), get relevant email lists from there and start sending cold outreach emails to potential customers. That seems like the most straightforward approach I can take right now.
However, I am not sure if that is the most effective way, or if there are other approaches that might work better, especially for someone without a network. So I would really appreciate it if anyone here who has been through a similar situation could share what worked for them.
If you have used cold email outreach successfully, I would love to hear your a
Open on Reddit r/SideProject by u/Ogretape 1mo ago I open-sourced a pipeline that finds boring B2B pains from court filings. 4 months of work, free Every week another headline: "Google cuts 12K engineers." "Meta lays off entire ML team." "Startup replaces 60% of engineering with AI."
If you're an engineer in the blast radius, the standard advice is "build a side project." But build what? Every consumer app is a VC-funded race to the bottom. Every dev tool has 47 competitors.
Here's what nobody talks about: the most profitable software businesses solve painfully boring problems for industries that never make TechCrunch.
AI can't replace you if your customers are plumbing contractors who barely use email.
But how do you find these boring niches? I spent 2 years building "clever" tools nobody wanted before I figured it out: stop brainstorming. Start reading court filings. Every SEC fine, OSHA citation, and lawsuit is a business screaming "I NEED A SOLUTION." If money is leaving involuntarily, you've found a business.
I burned $5K in API credits building 4 AI pipelines that automate this. Here's what I found:
**1. The "Solar Paperwork" Bleed ($100K+ losses):** Solar installers lose massive revenue on rejected warranty claims. Why? Field techs forget to geotag photos or upload serial numbers. One prevented rejection saves the
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/wasayybuildz 12mo ago I scraped 5,000+ Reddit , G2, Capterra and Upwork complaints - tell me your industry and I’ll reply with a real pain point + SaaS idea (free) I got tired of spending nights researching Reddit threads, G2 rants, Capterra reviews, and Upwork briefs just to spot a real, unsolved problem worth building for. So I wrote a crawler + AI parser that now tracks thousands of live complaints and clusters them into pain point cards. I’m using it to power my own project ([StartupIdeaLab](https://startupidealab.io/)), but before I polish anything further I want to test the raw insights with other founders.
If you drop a comment with the niche or industry you’re targeting B2B SaaS, ecommerce tooling, dev productivity, whatever I’ll reply with one genuine pain point my system pulled, plus a quick SaaS idea you could spin up to solve it. No strings attached. If the idea sparks something, great. If you try the tool and bail, even better let me know why the paid plan didn’t feel worth it so I can fix it.
I’ll hang out in the thread for as long as it stays alive and answer everyone who jumps in. Fire away with your niche or feedback.
PS: You can support the launch here [https://www.tinylaun.ch/launch/3671](https://www.tinylaun.ch/launch/3671)
Product hunt launch coming soon :)
https://reddit.com/link/1lekmcq/video/pwf8xeuszq7f1/player
Open on Reddit r/Entrepreneur by u/wasayybuildz 1y ago The Reality Check That Changed Everything Few months ago, I was broke and demoralized after my marketing agency failed to take off. I'd spent 8 months assuming something I was convinced people needed, only to discover that literally nobody wanted it. Sound familiar?
During this time I had an epiphany that I could just ride through this AI gold rush and create products that solve real problems, so I started manually researching as every new founder does, and found out, this is the problem in itself that I can solve!
**The Painful Lesson**
After burning through my time, I started manually researching what people were actually complaining about online. I spent weeks digging through G2 reviews, Reddit posts, and Upwork job descriptions looking for patterns. The insights were incredible - real problems, real frustrations, real opportunities.
But the process was painfully slow. I was spending 6-8 hours just to research one potential idea properly.
**The "Aha" Moment**
That's when it hit me - what if I could automate this entire validation process? What if instead of guessing what to build, I could systematically identify problems people were already paying to solve?
**Building in Public (The Scary Part)**
I decided to bu
Open on Reddit r/SideProject by u/Ogretape 4mo ago I spent 6 months and 5K building an AI engine that finds business ideas from court filings and government fines. Here are 10. Steal them. **What it does**
You type in an idea, a product, or just an industry name. The engine searches the internet for articles, reports, and filings that point to real financial losses. Regulatory fines, court settlements, workforce data. Then it structures everything into a report: who's losing money, how much, and what a fix could look like.
Think of it as automated market research. Same thing a consulting firm would do for $50K. Except it takes 3 minutes and costs me about $0.50 per scan in API calls.
**The numbers**
* 40,000+ documented business problems
* 300+ industries
* 8 countries
* 6 months of building
* \~$5,000 in API costs (Perplexity for research, Claude for analysis)
**Tech stack**
* Python backend (FastAPI)
* Next.js frontend
* Perplexity API for sourcing
* Claude API for structuring and analysis
* Supabase (Postgres)
* Hosted on a single DigitalOcean droplet
**Here are 10 ideas the engine found. Every dollar figure traces back to a public source.**
**1. HVAC Compliance Tracking**
EPA Section 608 requires HVAC companies to document refrigerant leak inspections. Most still use paper logs. When auditors show up, incomplete records mean fines of $15,000-$50,000 per
Open on Reddit r/webdev by u/FUS3N 11mo ago How do you explain to a client why they should pay for a hand-coded site instead of just using WordPress? I keep running into potential clients who look at a static five-page marketing site and say “Why not just spin up WordPress with Elementor and call it a day? "It loads fine for me, I can tweak text myself, and if anything breaks I’ll hire someone to fix it." I mention hidden plugin costs, update fatigue, random PHP errors when a theme and a plugin stop talking to each other (Keep in mind i am nowhere near an WordPress expert so i might not understand all the advantage of it). They usually shrug and say none of that has happened yet. I get why they don’t care about what’s under the hood they only care that the page shows up. When you meet people who genuinely don’t see the downside, what do you actually tell them that gets through? Or do you just walk away and focus on clients who already value performance and long-term sanity?
I am not hating on WordPress at all in fact i think its a great tool and i understand its use that is exactly why i don't know if i even have an argument against it like if it works for you even my own recommendation would be just **go for it** cuz why not? And not like i can go super technical and explain why I can do something with code WordPress can't.
#
Open on Reddit r/webdev by u/sickboyy 11mo ago I'm a freelance web developer, and I'm still not satisfied with how I build websites. Anyone else feel like just throwing in the towel sometimes? I've been freelancing as a web developer for about five and a half years now. I've built a good number of client-facing sites—mostly marketing and informational stuff—but honestly I don't think I've ever felt truly happy with the process.
The architecture of modern web development is just a pure headache to me, especially as a freelancer, where you're already spinning a lot of plates. Rising hosting costs, unexpected costs due to tier changes, overage fees, and DevOps being a headache in general, tooling best-practices, etc.
I'm trying to avoid this post just being a bit of a brain-dump, so to kind of sum up the issues I've had over the years;
* I tried **Sanity**. It was great until the client needed more users and suddenly those additional charges kick in. I originally, naively, was going down a more traditional route of charging a flat yearly fee for hosting, but when the prices started to rise I had to explain to the client that they needed to pay more because of some bandwidth spike or whatever.
* I've been working with **Payload CMS**, self-hosted alongside Astro, thinking I might be able to escape the SaaS tax. I've spent weeks trying to get something that could be worked
Open on Reddit r/Entrepreneur by u/xivey69 8mo ago What is the best way to grow your Email List or Get Users? Hello, I am an entrepreneur and I am creating different products, info products and services but my problem is I am not getting people to test it, can you tell me what is the best way to build an email list to test my products or how can I get users (free) to test my offers/products. My social media channels are new so they are not useful right now, I would really appreciate your suggestions!
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/EmilianoLGU 9mo ago How I Closed My First 10 Customers For $8.4k Using Cold Email. **Cold emailing isn’t dead. Most people just do it wrong.**
I used to send long, 3–5 paragraph emails… and hear nothing back. As an engineer, sales felt like a foreign language. Frustrating, confusing, and honestly terrifying.
Most cold-email advice? Garbage. Forget “AI personalization” and “mass outreach”. Those are lazy shortcuts. The truth? **In a world flooded with AI email slop, standing out is easier than ever if you write authentic, human emails.**
Sales isn’t magic, it’s a science. Every email and call is an experiment to see what triggers a response. The goal? Tweak your sales variables until your positive responses and revenue rise.
Most people say cold outreach doesn’t work because they quit too soon. They send 10 emails, get ghosted, and give up crying “cold outreach doesn’t work!”. Meanwhile, the real winners send 50, 100, even 200 messages a day; constantly failing, iterating, and improving until they crack the code.
The secret: send thousands of emails. Track what works. Change what doesn’t.
——
Here’s the simple, step-by-step framework I followed to land my first 10 customers and $8.4k in revenue for my startup.
**1. Build a high-quality lead list first.**
I
Open on Reddit r/smallbusiness by u/Monish016 7mo ago How do small business SaaS founders reach potential customers at the right moment? I’m curious about strategies for engaging potential customers as soon as they express a need online.
For example, someone might ask, “Best simple CRM for freelancers?” or “Affordable analytics tools for early-stage startups?” By the time you notice it, there could already be dozens of replies.
For small business SaaS founders: What methods or workflows have worked for you to spot these opportunities and connect with the right users quickly?
Looking forward to hearing your experiences and tips.
Open on Reddit r/Entrepreneur by u/wasayybuildz 1y ago I don't know how I got paid before officially launching my product! I was scrolling Reddit on my phone when I got the notification. Someone just bought my pro plan out of nowhere.
I literally jumped up from my couch.
This is my first ever SaaS dollar online. After months of building, doubting myself, and wondering if anyone would actually want what I'm creating.
**The crazy part?** I haven't even officially launched yet.
**Here's what happened:**
I've been posting about my journey building StartupIdeaLab dot io - a tool that finds validated SaaS ideas by scraping real customer complaints and pain points. Instead of waiting for the "perfect launch," I just put it out there with a clean landing page and a working MVP.
No fancy marketing. No big announcements. Just genuine posts about solving a problem I had myself.
**The lesson that hit me hard:**
If your product solves a real problem, someone out there is desperately looking for exactly what you're building. They don't care if it's "officially launched" or has all the bells and whistles.
They just want their problem solved.
**What I learned:**
* Don't wait for perfection to start marketing
* Someone is always willing to pay for a solution that saves them time or makes them money
* Your bi
Open on Reddit r/sales by u/Then-Assumption-779 1mo ago Day 26 of 30: The biggest lie they tell new reps is that hard work beats everything. Almost at the finish line of my 30-day trial by fire.
Looking back at the last 3.5 weeks, I realized something depressing. The days I made 80 cold calls and sent 100 generic emails were my lowest performing, most soul-crushing days.
The only traction I’ve gotten has been from hyper-personalized stuff. Remembering a client's specific complaint, or researching a lead's business before calling.
But doing that manually takes FOREVER. I spent an hour yesterday just researching one commercial lead on LinkedIn and writing a custom email, only for it to bounce.
It feels like the game is rigged. You need volume to hit the numbers the manager wants, but you need extreme personalization to actually get people to reply. How do you physically do both? It feels like you need to clone yourself or hire an assistant, but I’m too broke to even buy a premium LinkedIn account.
Just trying to figure out a sustainable workflow before my Day 30 review.
Open on Reddit r/sales by u/bojangleschikin 7mo ago Recommend me some software. I’m missing opportunities. Fam. I’m here for your help.
I (38) run sales with 2 (65+) dudes. We split North America up into 3 territories. The business does 5 million a year in sales and is growing.
The product we sell is 50% sold through distribution (an installer) but we have a lot of interaction with the end users before directing them to this local distributor. The other 50% buy direct and self install.
We have a limited pool of distributors nationwide so our time isn’t spent prospecting but rather keeping them in our circle (vs. the competition).
We get sales leads from our website and calls daily. For me it’s grown to be chaos and I hate every day. What should be a great problem is making me depressed. The emails generally generate a phone call from me asking for follow up information. Almost every day I have 4-6 calls that run 20-60 min. Then I send a long email with a quote that can take 10-20min to write.
THEN. FUCKIT. I NEVER REACH OUT TO FOLLOW UP. if they don’t reach back out with a question or ask to order. Fuck. It dies right there.
I have a CRM (less annoying crm and love it) but use it to maintain our distributors (700+) and honestly have this feeling that I don’t want a shit load
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/Abject-Addendum5409 6mo ago Need Help: can't figure out how to reach customers who are literally right in front of me Hey everyone,
I'm going to be honest - I'm kind of freaking out and need some outside perspective.
**The situation:**
Built a tool that helps online fitness trainers manage their clients without losing personal touch using AI and automation. Built to save time, save effort and train better
**What's killing me:**
Started with Indian trainers. Got decent traction on free trials, some even wanted to convert to paid... but then came the requests. "Can you add this feature first?" "I need you to customize this for my specific workflow." and some very unrealistic expectations.
I realized if I onboarded them, they'd become a bigger problem than having no customers at all. Endless customization requests, support nightmares, and honestly... most still wanted to pay like ₹100/per/month (\~$1.1). That's not a business, that's a side project that'll kill me.
The problem is definitely real though - there are 4-5 competitors in this space doing well in Western markets. Mine's actually simpler and better UX. So I pivoted to western trainers where people actually pay for SaaS tools.
**Here's where I'm stuck:**
I'm in Facebook groups and Subreddits with thousands of online fitness traine
Open on Reddit r/sales by u/roguejedi1 4mo ago Subtle tips that could help your booking rate Hey guys! This sub found my last post around cold email to be helpful, so I thought I'd share some more things, in case it's valuable.
Note: By conversion rate, I'm referring to meetings being booked, so this is for B2B specifically. I'm sure this might help B2C, but I have limited experience there, so take this with a grain of salt if you're selling B2C.
1. Cold emails - avoid sending links, images and attachments in the first email. Followups are ok, but the risk exists.
What I've found to work better:
\- Send an email, maybe offering to send over some collateral (e.g a recorded video/demo or lead magnet).
\- Await a positive response
\- Send the lead magnet as a follow up to their response, keeping normal followups to just maintain plain text and keep the same call-to-action.
2. Negotiating the time > Sending calendar links
I ran an experiment on this, what I found was sending my calendar link, had less people who actually booked a call compared to giving specific times.
The reasons why I suspect this outcome occurred:
\- Extra friction in the buying process, the prospect now has to put in effort to click the link and pick a time (which was surprising as I
Open on Reddit r/startups by u/the_programmr 2mo ago I've learned way more about market research and outbound than I ever thought I would (I will not promote) I come from a technical background and finally decided to pursue building a product (SaaS) and taking it to market. It's as hard as I thought it would be but honestly for different reasons. I figured I would get crushed with customer complaints, feedback, feature requests, things of that nature. The thing I overlooked was that in order to even get to that point, you need distribution and people using your product!!!!
I work on my startup just about every day and I realized yesterday that it's been over a month and a half since I've even opened up the editor to really build anything. All of my time at this point is spent either creating content, researching target businesses for outbound, and playing with wording around emails and content generation. I haven't used Apollo before this point and honestly I'll say the amount I've learned about this process has been way more than I ever thought I would. Email campaigns, warming up a domain, building in public, prospecting, things like that. There is so much that goes into it that I didn't even realize or think about when I started this endeavor. It feels like an art at this point and I've learned to respect it way more.
The other surp
Open on Reddit r/sales by u/Separate_Ad_8665 3mo ago What's your process right after a client call? I feel like I'm leaving money on the table with bad follow-ups I've been in B2B SaaS sales for about 3 years and honestly my biggest weakness is what happens AFTER the call ends. The conversations themselves go well. I listen, ask good questions, build rapport. But then I hang up and immediately get pulled into the next thing, and by the time I write my follow-up 4 hours later I can't remember half of what we discussed.
My follow-ups end up generic and I know it's costing me deals.
Here's what I'm doing now and I'd love to hear how you handle this:
Right when I hang up I do a quick voice dump on my phone. Like 90 seconds of: okay they're concerned about integration with their existing CRM, timeline is Q3, budget's around 40k, and the VP of ops is the actual decision maker. I use Willow Voice for this and it gives me a transcript I can reference when I write the real follow-up. Way better than scribbling notes during the call, which always made me sound distracted.
Then I try to get the follow-up out within 2 hours max. I use the transcript to make it specific to their actual pain points, not just a generic thanks for your time email.
For CRM I log everything in HubSpot but honestly I update it in batches at the end of the day which I know
Open on Reddit r/marketing by u/SomeDudeB2020 6mo ago Non-Marketer in Charge of Marketing Just wondering if anyone has experience with someone who is very obvious a non-marketer running your marketing department.
I'm in a customer service role for a non-profit where I communicate with our B2B clients using materials produced by the marketing department, which is run by someone without formal marketing training or experience. Their experience stems from business consultations on operating more efficiently. As a result, the stuff the department produces is...really bad. So bad that a board member emailed the team pointing out how shit some of it looks.
To highlight how erratic our marketing operation is:
\- We use a really complicated wordpress build for our website that's managed by a team of developers overseas. I personally think it's overkill as our organization is very simple and could probably benefit from the simplicity and low cost of a Wix website. But the one running the show thinks a website needs all the bells and whistles to be reputable. The problem is, no one in the home office has access to the wordpress backend. Even if we do, we're not comfortable enough with it to make changes without blowing up the website. The most frustrating thing is, the langua
Open on Reddit r/startups by u/Professional_Monk534 1mo ago I used to believe execution mattered more than ideas. Now I’m not sure. I will not promote Hello, I'm a senior software engineer and solutions architect, and I've been trying to build at least an MVP for an idea for around two years now. I'm working on it after work all the time, and I even invested in a developer team for my latest idea, only to discover later that the idea actually wasn't valid in the market because I lacked the experience in discovering, checking, and validating ideas properly.
However, now that I've gained some experience, it feels like there are no valid ideas out there anymore. Every time I come up with an idea and do some research, I find out either:
\- it's impossible to implement with my limited resources,
\- there's an unbelievable competitor that could build it in one day,
What can I do? Am I right or wrong about this?
Because before all of that, I used to tell myself that it's not about the idea, it's about the implementation, how you execute it, and the person behind it. Like, we invest in people, not ideas.
But now I'm starting to feel a bit upset and discouraged about it.
What do you guys think?
Open on Reddit r/SaaS by u/Interesting_Look7438 2mo ago Has anyone actually automated sales/marketing with AI agents (beyond hype)? I have been spending a lot of time manually doing things like:
- finding leads
- researching prospects
- sending outreach / follow-ups
- tracking conversations
- creating content regularly
It works, but it’s time-consuming and hard to scale. Now with all the talk around AI agents, I am trying to understand:
Is anyone actually using AI to automate meaningful parts of sales or marketing in production?
Not just experiments or demos but real workflows that are running consistently.
Specifically curious about things like:
- Lead sourcing (finding the right people automatically)
- Outreach (pcalls, email / LinkedIn / WhatsApp without sounding robotic)
- Follow-ups and nurturing
- Content generation that actually drives inbound
CRM updates / pipeline tracking
A few things I am trying to figure out:
What parts can genuinely be automated vs what still needs human touch?
What tools / stack are you using?
Where did it break or fail?
Any real results (even small wins)?
Right now, most solutions I see feel either too generic or too "demo-like"
Looking for grounded, real-world setups that are actually working.
Open on Reddit r/startups by u/Extra-Motor-8227 3mo ago SaaS founders, do you have any system to reduce churn, or are you just focused on getting new customers? (i will not promote) Feels like 90% of the advice out there is about acquisition: ads, SEO, cold outreach... But nobody talks about what happens after. Do you have anything in place to keep customers? A process, a tool, even just a habit? Or is it all going into growth and hoping people stick around?
Open on Reddit r/indiehackers by u/Medium-Importance270 7mo ago As a Solo Developer Built a $20K/Month Chrome Extension A solo software engineer, Saeed Ezzati, built “Superpower ChatGPT,” a Chrome extension that adds useful features to ChatGPT. He launched quickly, grew through organic channels, and now generates over $20,000 per month. Below is a practical breakdown of how he approached idea discovery, building, distribution, and monetization, keeping things simple and focused.
What the product does
* Adds productivity features to ChatGPT’s interface
* Improves daily workflow for users who rely on ChatGPT
* Built with plain JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
Who made it
* Solo developer with a software engineering background
* Learned browser extensions on the fly and shipped within days
* Focused on listening to users and iterating fast
How to find ideas
* Build for existing platforms with large user bases (Gmail, Twitter, YouTube)
* Target platforms with smaller marketplaces but less competition (Zoom, Salesforce)
* Join user communities and listen for repeated requests
* Subreddits
* Discord servers
* Slack groups
* Facebook groups
* Validate by solving a clear pain point the platform doesn’t solve
* Pro tip not from him - [Sonar](https://www.sonar.wtf/?utm_source=thefounders) finds val
Open on Reddit r/webdev by u/blietaer 2mo ago Relevant CMS framework in 2026 ? Dear Web-Dev Community,
Sorry if I sound a bit 'LMGTFY' here, but I have a hard time comparing web frameworks...
**My needs:** I would like to build a very stupid light web site (\~20 pages or so) for a friend, but with a couple of form (yes, *maybe*, I'd want sessions Login user/pwd), but also I want to support the friend releasing it...and then forget about it (e.g. have my friend fully autonomous on the content maintenance...I guess it still pronounces 'CMS' ?)
Oh, and I am a bit old-school: I want it free/Free, as in 'no fees, no ads,...' (Sorry **Wix**) with full control on it.
**My background:** as Linux and embedded SW engineer, I am not really scared by code and/or CLIs...but I am really scared by fancy modern huge frameworks (i.e. Node). So, I did a bit of webdev back in my days with Symfony (definitely an overkill here...), CodeIgniter, Django, Typo3...
**The usual suspects:** before deploying blindly another **WordPress**, I would like to make sure I don't miss something else/better,... typically **Hugo** seems very appealing, but quite static (its first purpose), so the moment I'll want to add forms/sessions...I am opening the hood and start doing hugly things, r
Open on Reddit r/smallbusiness by u/sakikomi 3mo ago Website Building Im an aerial fitness coach and looking to make a basic website for myself. I am needing something that can manage a few pages, maybe 4 to 5 max. I would like to be able to embed my booking widget/class schedule to the page and have a contact form section as well as a subscribe to newsletter box.
That's about as complex as the site is going to get for now. I do not know how to code, but could learn if thats going to be my best option if someone can point me in the best direction to start. I do feel drag and drop would be easiest for me though, but I am trying to stay as cheap as possible since I am still building my client base.
Other coaches at my studio use squarespace but said the price is getting to be a bit exspensive for our needs. A few others said they use wordpress but I have seen such negative feedback about WP for beginners and I the few at my studio that use it either have broken sites or poorly made ones. So I cant tell if its more to blame on the user or on WP being hard to learn.
I found a site carrd and siimple but couldn't tell if they allowed for embedding. I already user MailerLite as my email marketing platform, but their drag and drop doesnt format to mobi
Open on Reddit r/webdev by u/SmoothGuess4637 2mo ago Who doesn't have a CMS horror story? I've been a content professional at software companies for 20+ years, and I know that people love to hate their CMS. My software experience shows me that it's often not the tool that is the problem.
What causes have you seen for failed CMS implementations? Got a horror story you want to share?
Open on Reddit r/startups by u/Professional_Monk534 1mo ago Why does every startup idea feel either impossible or already taken? I will not promote Hello, I'm a principal software engineer and solutions architect, and I've been trying to build at least an MVP for an idea for around two years now. I'm working on that after my 9 - 5 all the time, and I even invested in a developers team for my latest idea, only to discover later that the idea actually wasn't valid in the market because I lacked the experience in discovering, checking, and validating ideas properly.
However, now that I've gained some experience, it feels like there are no valid ideas out there anymore. Every time I come up with an idea and do some research, I find out either:
\- it's impossible to implement with my limited resources,
\- there's an unbelievable competitor that could build it in one day,
What can I do? Am I right or wrong about this?
Because before all of that, I used to tell myself that it's not about the idea, it's about the implementation, how you execute it, and the person behind it. Like, we invest in people, not ideas.
But now I'm starting to feel a bit upset and discouraged about it (I’m scared of losing the energy/passion).
What do you guys think?
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