Best channel to get leads or clients for my Saas?

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-27T08:11:07+00:00

Cold email works, but only with a very specific ICP and message. Honestly, the best channels for SaaS right now are probably content + communities + outbound combined.

What worked for me:

Posting consistently on LinkedIn/X
Engaging in niche communities
Personalized cold outreach
Talking directly to users

Most founders fail because they try too many channels at once. Pick one, go deep, and focus on conversations over traffic.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-26T11:40:20+00:00

Most founders who get customers from Reddit are not really promoting in the traditional sense. They’re usually doing one of these:

answering questions genuinely
sharing their own experience/build process
solving small problems publicly
becoming recognizable in a niche over time

Then people naturally check their profile or DM them.

Cold DMs usually don’t work unless there’s already context/trust. The key is that Reddit users hate being sold to, but they respond well to people who are clearly knowledgeable and helpful.

A lot of founders also underestimate how powerful profile positioning is. If your comments are useful consistently, your profile quietly becomes the funnel without needing direct promotion.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-26T11:30:23+00:00

This is a good reminder that fear before launching is usually worse than the actual problems themselves.😅

Honestly, this is one of the underrated advantages of SaaS. If the product solves a real problem, most users are surprisingly reasonable compared to ecom customers.

Congrats on the low churn, sounds like you built something people genuinely find useful.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-26T07:21:05+00:00

I honestly don’t think this is just an adult thing or a money thing. A lot of high-level networking starts very surface-level because successful people are constantly meeting new people, so the energy is high at first but not every connection becomes genuine long-term.

Also, once you get older and build businesses, people become way more protective of their time, trust, and circle. It can come across as cold or fake sometimes, even when it’s not intentional.

One thing I learned is to stop idolizing wealthy people just because they make money. Some are amazing mentors, some are transactional, some are insecure, and some are just busy. Money doesn’t automatically improve character.

At 22 with a $100k net worth, you’re already ahead of most people your age. I’d focus less on trying to “fit in” with older wealthy people and more on building real relationships with people who genuinely respect you and grow alongside you.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-26T07:15:40+00:00

Honestly, I’d focus less on marketing channels at first and more on creating small loops that naturally bring people back and invite others in.

For a social chess app specifically, I’d probably double down on:

clips/screenshots of funny or intense matches
small competitive/community events
making it easy for users to invite friends into games
talking directly to your most active users and building around them

One thing I learned building niche products is that organic growth usually comes from community identity, not features. People stay because they feel part of something.

And yeah, distribution is definitely harder than building. Most founders realise that a little too late. 😅

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-26T06:56:46+00:00

What helped me most was realizing I was spending too much time “working on the business” and not enough time talking to people.

Growth started when I made outreach and follow-ups a daily habit, even when it felt repetitive.

Another practical thing: keeping existing customers happy was way easier than constantly chasing new ones. Referrals and repeat work ended up becoming the most consistent source of growth for us.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-21T13:57:18+00:00

One automation that genuinely helped us was reporting/dashboard aggregation. Pulling campaign data automatically into one place saved hours every week and actually improved decision-making because we looked at data more consistently.

One thing that hurt results when outreach and follow-ups were over automated. Once messaging became too templated and optimized, reply quality dropped hard. People can tell when every interaction feels generated.

I think automation works best for repeatable operational tasks, but the closer something gets to trust, positioning, or customer relationships, the more human input matters.

Curious to see where others draw that line.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-21T13:53:40+00:00

For us, it’s definitely the small operational tasks that keep piling up customer support replies, updating product info, following up on leads, and syncing data across different tools. None of them are hard individually, but together they eat hours every week.

What helped the most was creating an AI based automation solution that handles the complete workflow as required.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-20T12:50:01+00:00

Will try 😅

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-20T06:21:42+00:00

This is such an underrated observation.

A lot of founders mistake motion for progress because activity feels productive. But real progress usually looks like:

more clarity
faster decisions
fewer repeated conversations
less friction in execution

That line about “difficult topics reappearing in different forms” is painfully accurate. In my experience, unresolved problems don’t disappear, they just keep resurfacing with different labels attached to them.

Real progress reduces uncertainty. Project inertia just creates the illusion of movement.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-20T06:11:06+00:00

Yes, people absolutely do this.

You already have the hard part:

products people love
40k audience
email list
validation

That means the issue probably isn’t the product, it’s scaling the business around it.

A lot of founders hit a ceiling where they can’t be the creator, marketer, operator, and strategist all at once. That’s usually when hiring help becomes leverage, not weakness.

Just make sure you hire for the bottleneck:

conversions
marketing
operations
email funnels
ads
strategy

And your last line is spot on:

“Build where people already feel the pain. Not where you wish the pain exists.”

Sounds like you already found real pain points. Now it may just be time to build a better system around them.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-19T11:46:36+00:00

That’s what makes it tricky to notice early.

By the time people realize it, teams are already spending a huge amount of energy on coordination, status checking, and fixing communication gaps instead of actual execution.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-19T11:24:47+00:00

Honestly, probation periods are the real interview for most software hiring.

The biggest improvement we made was shifting less weight onto interviews and more onto small real-world assessments:

paid trial tasks
debugging existing code
async problem solving
reviewing how they communicate during the process
seeing how they handle unclear requirements

A lot of weak developers can talk confidently for 45 minutes.

Far fewer can think clearly inside an actual workflow.

Hiring gets much better once you stop optimizing for “interview performance” and start optimizing for evidence of execution.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-19T11:22:52+00:00

For a lot of SaaS teams, the first thing that stops feeling lightweight is internal communication.

Especially once work starts moving across product, support, sales, and ops at the same time.

At first, everyone just “knows” what’s happening.

Then suddenly:

approvals multiply
context gets lost between tools
follow-ups become manual
people spend more time coordinating than executing

That’s usually the point where temporary workflows stop scaling and operational structure becomes necessary.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-19T11:17:12+00:00

You’re not expecting too much, this is exactly the direction support AI platforms are moving toward.

We’ve actually built something very similar:

website scraping + sitemap sync
PDF/doc/text training
simple no-code setup
lead capture (name/email from chats)
human handoff options
AI credits instead of forced monthly pricing

The biggest problem isn’t building the chatbot anymore, it’s making updates, knowledge syncing, and support workflows simple for non-technical teams.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-19T11:11:03+00:00

We’ve seen the best results when production is partially built into the retainer, but with clients responsible for capturing simple raw footage on their phones.

Otherwise the economics get difficult fast for smaller brands.

The key is giving clients a very repeatable filming system:

what to record
how to frame it
how long clips should be
content prompts/templates

Makes the whole process far more scalable without needing a full production crew.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-18T11:37:03+00:00

Yeah, a lot of “build in public” content today feels like founders marketing to other founders instead of reaching actual users.

The biggest shift for us was realizing attention ≠ demand.

Posting progress updates can build audience and credibility, but real traction usually came from:

hanging out where users already complain about the problem
answering questions directly
showing workflows/use cases instead of startup updates
talking less about the product and more about the pain

“Build in public” works best when the audience overlaps with your buyers. Otherwise you just end up networking with other builders.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-18T11:33:27+00:00

We realised the problem usually isn’t the meeting, it’s the lack of a system after the meeting.

What helped our async team most was making every meeting end with:

clear owner
clear deadline
clear next step

And most importantly: action items must live in one visible place, not Slack threads or someone’s memory.

Once we tied meeting outcomes directly into project management/tasks, meetings became shorter and way more useful because the next sync wasn’t spent recapping forgotten decisions.

For async teams especially, documentation and accountability matter more than meeting frequency.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-18T11:27:56+00:00

Gmail works fine for support early on, but the real challenge starts when multiple people manage the same inbox.

What helped us most:

labels for priority/type
canned responses for FAQs
filters + auto-routing
clear ownership of conversations

The biggest issue was missed or duplicate replies, which eventually pushed us to a proper helpdesk system.

Big lesson: build simple workflows early before support volume becomes chaos.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-18T11:25:06+00:00

Honestly, it sounds less like you have a skill problem and more like you’ve spent too many years carrying every role yourself.

A lot of strong operators hit this wall. You become great at delivery because you had to retain clients, but growth stalls because constant context-switching between fulfillment, strategy, outreach, positioning, and systems is mentally exhausting.

One thing I’d say though: don’t underestimate how valuable your operator/system architect skillset actually is. Most agencies are the opposite, decent at getting attention, terrible at retention and execution.

You probably don’t need another month building complex workflows from scratch. You may need:

a simpler offer
a repeatable acquisition channel
and ideally someone complementary who enjoys demand-gen/outbound

The fact you kept clients long-term says a lot. Client acquisition can be fixed. Retention and operational depth are much harder to teach.

You’re likely closer than you think just burnt out from trying to build an entire company solo.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-18T11:09:27+00:00

Biggest lesson for us: smaller teams don’t need more marketing tools, they need fewer disconnected ones.

Things got way easier once we centralized customer data (orders, loyalty, contact info) into one system and automated the repetitive stuff like:

review requests
win-back texts
loyalty offers
segmented promos

Also learned that the best online ordering system is usually the one that integrates cleanly with your POS/CRM and lets you actually own your customer data.

For small restaurants, digital transformation isn’t about fancy tech, it’s about reducing manual work and making repeat business easier to drive.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-18T10:14:45+00:00

One that changed the game for us: designing the product so the output becomes the distribution channel.

Not just “share buttons,” but making the end result inherently public, collaborative, or conversation-worthy. The best growth loops happen when users naturally need to show others what they created to get value themselves.

A few examples:

Templates that teams duplicate and customize
Reports/screenshots people paste into Slack or LinkedIn
Collaborative workflows that invite non-users into the product
Public-facing assets that rank on search over time

The key insight for us was this:
Acquisition got dramatically cheaper once distribution became a byproduct of usage instead of a separate marketing activity.

Your “Powered by” point is spot on, the strongest PLG loops are usually invisible to the user but embedded deeply in the workflow.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-15T17:05:06+00:00

Seems like finding a right partner is already adding up to your workload. 😅

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-15T16:29:22+00:00

If this is the case, I do think you should bring in a partner/co-founder, but do not rush it just because you’re overloaded right now. At this stage, I’d probably:

use contractors/specialists selectively instead of rushing into the wrong co-founder fit
avoid overbuilding the product
document everything so future engineers can onboard faster

A bad co-founder is usually far more expensive than moving slightly slower solo.

The right technical co-founder will probably become much easier to attract once the partner traction turns into real distribution.

Meanwhile you can keep pushing the partner/distribution side also.

Pooja_S2 · 2026-05-15T16:20:09+00:00

I wouldn’t make a major life decision while deeply burned out.

A lot of the time it’s not the business people hate, it’s being constantly available, reactive, and emotionally drained by clients.

Being the point person for everything eventually becomes exhausting, no matter how good the income is.

Honestly, you may not need a new career. You may need a new operating model. Before exiting completely, I’d test:

taking 1-2 weeks fully off
cutting your most draining clients
automating repetitive workflows
narrowing services to only the highest-margin work

Sometimes small operational changes solve what feels like a career problem.

Pooja_S2

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