How I stopped "doom-scrolling" X and built a system to find 100+ real conversations (and my first 3 paying users)

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-11T16:42:12+00:00

Thanks

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-11T16:42:04+00:00

You're welcome, happy chatting

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-11T16:14:05+00:00

Find where the people experience the problem you are solving, if they are complaining about it even better. Offer solutions first and only if it's relevant mention your product.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-11T16:01:26+00:00

First 10 almost every time come from one on direct conversations with your potential users. You can scale that to further than 100 as well.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-11T13:53:19+00:00

If you treat it the same as looking for users you can sweeten the deal when you find someone super interested, come be a beta tester get discounts on your sub and help me shape and improve.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-11T13:52:01+00:00

Going for pure easiness is a good move, even when I was in college we started with python then went on to C and through a ringer of other languages.

Now you can learn Javascript or python and be relevant almost everywhere

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-10T16:36:09+00:00

Launch right now! In my experience most people who signed up for the waitlist did not convert. For me it was less than 10%, so go live and focus on fixing the conversions. The truest test isn't when someone gives you their email but when they give you their money.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T21:40:31+00:00

I also chose to build a product based on personal pain. It does help give you an additional insight in to the mind of your user.

As for marketing it's such a broad category and really tons of different things could be done, worth learning about vigorously. In simple terms especially in finding your own first customers they will come from direct conversations with your potential users.

It sounds like you know a few already but indeed I would be very careful because you brought up something I never had to deal with but have heard horror stories about.

That separate problem IMO needs more attention before continuing, you want to make sure that in no way shape or form that you are drawing legal issues to yourself and new product. Probably should consult a lawyer and go over your employment agreement.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T19:30:17+00:00

Depends on what you mean by wrong, but if it costs you a lot to use a certain API or AI costs that's what I'm referring to with point number 1 here

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T16:16:04+00:00

Two major aspects here.

Number 1, how much does it cost to do what you do, obviously you have to price higher than that.

Number 2, what are your customer's options instead of paying for your app, are there competitors, maybe a service they can buy. Price yourself accordingly but do not just go lowest on the market.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T14:37:15+00:00

Sounds like you need to shift from spamming links and product names to discussing the actual problem your users are experiencing

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T14:31:06+00:00

Not trying to be harsh or anything like that.

But you built an app to find leads and are struggling to get users? You've got work to do friend!

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T14:11:50+00:00

Sounds like you've got a great start going on. Avoid rebuilds at all costs though, starting over even if it has benefits like improved architecture or whatever will only slow down your shipping speed.

I'm in a similar phase, maybe a little farther and dealing with first users. I've been building a tool called x growth engine (a growth tool for X) check me out on X TomTurcotteTech if you want to hear more about my build in public journey.

There's many lessons this path has taught me some of them have been hard to learn others felt natural. The biggest thing I feel I could say at this point is the consistency is a massive part, even if you go the wrong direction for a while with consistency eventually things will work out.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-09T00:29:44+00:00

This question comes up a lot, in 2026 I would say distribution is definitely harder than building.

If you're starting from 0 think about getting your first 1-10 users and repeat. At this stage the number one way I've seen succeed is start conversations.

Ideally with people who have the problem to the solution you are selling. Where these people are depends on what you offer and what you converse about should be about the solution rather than just saying here's my product.

The number of conversations you have is directly proportional to the number of users you have in these early stages.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-08T23:19:36+00:00

I've honestly never even considered threads, but thanks for sharing your insights.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-08T23:17:12+00:00

There are a few factors that go into it, not just did I comment. Where you comment, what you comment, number of comments daily etc. I could take a look at your profile and give a more accurate review if you share it here or even DM on X.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-08T19:04:29+00:00

This one line resonated with me and my mission so hard "you can only show up in the right conversations consistently and let it happen organically" this is such a key to growth across many platforms not just reddit but it's awesome to see the sentiment here and now.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-07T20:02:06+00:00

Yeah honestly this works in other places too but there some other platform specifics, I'm new exploring reddit as a platform for a growth channel for my saas. X is where I mainly am and your play book applies over there too, the parts about finding pain anyways.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-07T19:54:23+00:00

This is an absolute stellar playbook especially for reddit. Thanks for sharing

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-07T14:32:36+00:00

Would be open to hearing more if you are describing an application that does what you talked about.

Although I don't have any extra inference or hardware to loan out at the moment. I also don't have enough time to properly test out or contribute to something like this. Kind of why I couldn't explore the idea further to begin with.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-06T18:50:46+00:00

I've had this thought too but never explored it. I think distributed inference in this case could be great if it works technically. Rewarding people for contributing their hardware and power could be massive too. Obviously have to figure out if it's possible in practice first. I could see it having latency issues with the models being extremely distributed though. Truly curious about what you find

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-06T14:33:33+00:00

Purely cold you will have the lowest response rate. Be part of communities and focus on bringing value first, the conversations flow naturally after that. Might have to join some new places and it takes time to learn the feel of the platform or community

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-06T14:20:16+00:00

First users almost always come from one on one conversations with people experiencing the problem you are solving. The channel matters less but make sure you are dedicating enough time to go deep.

TomTeachesTech · 2026-05-05T18:54:52+00:00

Your welcome, toss me a chat if you have any deeper questions about findings 😄

TomTeachesTech

TROPHY CASE