Reddit

I'm 16 and I want to become a professional indie hacker

I'm 16 and I want to become a professional indie hacker. My goal isn't just to build apps, but to build products that people actually pay for. Right now I'm learning JavaScript, then I'll move to React, Next.js and SaaS development. If you could go back to the beginning, what would you do differently? - What should I focus on first? - Which skills gave you the biggest advantage? - What mistakes should I avoid? - Any books, courses or creators you'd recommend? I'd really appreciat...
Reddit

Got my first paying customer with $0 marketing budget here's exactly what worked

Wanted to share this since I know how rare an honest post about what actually worked is around here. JAM English, jamenglish.com , an app that helps people practice English speaking using the "Just a Minute" method. AI feedback on fluency, hesitation, filler words. I had zero users, zero budget, zero audience. What actually got me 10+ users and my first paying customer: - post on r/SideProject explaining the problem I was solving, being fully transparent that I had zer...
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My co-founder wrote zero code and was, by a distance, the most valuable person on the team.

In dev circles the non-technical co-founder gets quietly disrespected, and I'm ashamed I bought into it early. My co-founder couldn't write a line, and here's what he did instead: he talked to more customers in a month than I had in a year, he closed the deals that kept the lights on, he figured out pricing that actually made us money, and he kept us pointed at problems people would pay for instead of problems that were fun to build. I built a great product that would have died without a single ...
Reddit

4,500 visitors → 14 signups → 1 real user. I finally measured my own funnel and it hurt

I have been building a customer data platform for about 6 months. It has analytics, session replays, feature flags, campaigns, product tours, and a lot more features. Solo, nights, weekends. And all of that on top of a day job at a YC company. I started my go-to-market a few weeks ago, where I ran some meta ads, posted in a local subreddit, watched the sign-up numbers go up, and I felt pretty good about it, honestly. Two days ago, I sat down and actually queried my production database inst...
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increased AOV by 18% entirely by AI

built an AI product growth engineer for personalised experiences early phases of testing increased AOV by 18%, but it works across both B2C & D2C CRO's curious what your current stack looks like?!
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Crossed $1.2k MRR with 2 customers. The “underrated growth tactic” was obsessing over customer #1.

Just crossed $1.2k MRR with my B2B SaaS, and it came from only two customers. I build a safety audit tool for oil & gas contractors and industrial teams in the US. Nothing glamorous, but it solves a painful operational problem. Here is what worked: I got my first customer about a month after launch and put them on a $300/month, 6-month pilot . For the next six months, I basically went all in: Every request went into the “can we reasonably ship this?” queue I focused on elimi...
6 months of work, finally my app is live!
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6 months of work, finally my app is live!

After months of hard work finally my app is live and ready to use. It started as a simple idea 6 months ago, with a bit of planing, polishing it turned in Wird app My first and proudest app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wird.blocker Feel free to give any feedback or ask any questions
Your "built for local businesses" SaaS will churn if it requires the owner to log in. Here's what I learned the hard way.
Reddit

Your "built for local businesses" SaaS will churn if it requires the owner to log in. Here's what I learned the hard way.

https://preview.redd.it/4jxk0nxasffh1.png?width=2916&format=png&auto=webp&s=219882fd58f2c37e8643af8bf858e26e6817b4bf I have been building a product for local service businesses for the last few months. Plumbers, HVAC, dentists, that kind of customer. The single biggest lesson I learned and I wish someone told me this earlier. These people do not log into dashboards. Ever. They do not check analytics. They do not read onboarding emails. They are on a roof or under a sink until 6p...
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A much bigger competitor launched what we were building after meeting us. How would you take this?

I’m a student founder building in the SaaS space. Over the past few months, I met the founders of a much bigger competitor at startup events in Chennai and Bangalore. They were genuinely sweet, appreciated what we were building and encouraged us to keep going. Now, a few months later, they’ve launched almost the exact thing we were building. For context, they’re IITians, backed by one of the biggest startup accelerators in the world and already doing seven figures in annual revenue. I’...
Reddit

How can I validate my app idea?

I am building an app which helps people calculate how much they are spending on food delivery with a built in AI couch which helps them find ways to spend less. Possible features: Track how much you spend on food delivery each month/annually Show the fees and markup separately from the food cost Suggest something quick based on ingredients you already have Show how much you’ve saved by skipping previous orders Set personal limits and receive a warning when you approach them I h...
What SaaS founders responded to in this cold outreach campaign
Reddit

What SaaS founders responded to in this cold outreach campaign

I recently helped a small software agency improve its outbound funnel in the US. Over the last four weeks, the campaign generated: 6% reply rate 10 positive replies 45% positive reply rate 5 qualified opportunities $10,000 in total pipeline value 2 conversions worth $4,000 The biggest lesson was that the improvement did not come from sending more emails. It came from making the campaign narrower. 1. We tightened the ICP Instead of targeting every company that looked rem...
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switching off mercury for international payments, recommend providers with good fx + speed

Currently, we've been paying contractors in the UK and Singapore for the last 2 months. Our current setup has been Mercury. It's good for domestic transactions, but the international transfers are rough. We pay fees on both ends, get a bad exchange rate, and payments take three or four days when they're supposed to take one. We're new, so when payments get delayed, the contractors keep messaging about it, and we don't want to keep delaying. Founders with employees or contractors in different c...
Reddit

Looking for founders to talk about the complexities of validation

!! NOT TRYING TO SELL ANYTHING founders spend weeks jumping between Reddit, X, LinkedIn, cold DMs, trying to validate an idea, and mostly get ignored or a "cool idea, I'd use that" that goes nowhere. Then they build anyway and find out later nobody actually wanted it. I'm a new indie dev who is facing this same problem and trying to build a solution around it to reduce the time and complex steps taken to validate an idea. so before even building, I would like to know what probl...
Reddit

Realizations from launching my first saas completely solo

I recently launched my first saas product aimed at job seekers. I had pretty limited funds, basically zero knowledge about the market starting out, and spent countless hours building the whole thing by myself. A few things I learned the hard way along the way: Marketing is way harder than building. I realized pretty fast that building the product is the easy part. Distribution and marketing is the real challenge. Competing with big giants alone is tough. Trying to go up against establi...
Built AI Smart Board Using Excalidraw + Gemini + desmos
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Built AI Smart Board Using Excalidraw + Gemini + desmos

https://preview.redd.it/v2ba3dlslefh1.png?width=508&format=png&auto=webp&s=5db76e5758bf52846efa98a01c9ac074808990dd This YouTube Short grabbed my attention, so I built something similar this weekend using Excalidraw + Gemini + Desmos .
Reddit

Launched my first subscription app. Now trying to figure out acquisition.

Hi everyone! I recently launched Plan it Prep , a subscription-based meal planning app. The product is live on iOS and Android. Now I’m in the phase where I’m trying to answer the biggest question every founder eventually faces: How do you acquire your first real users? I’ve been experimenting with SEO, ASO, social media, and content, but I’m always looking for new ideas. If you’ve launched a SaaS or subscription app before, I’d love to hear what worked best for you. submitted b...
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Are we accidentally building SaaS products that need a full-time employee to operate them?

I have been thinking about something strange in SaaS. We celebrate products becoming more powerful: more integrations more automation more dashboards more customization more workflows But at some point, the product itself becomes another system customers have to manage. A customer buys SaaS to save time. Six months later they have: an admin managing permissions someone maintaining workflows someone cleaning data someone explaining reports someone training new user...
I just got my First Dollar from my startup after i resigned from my job
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I just got my First Dollar from my startup after i resigned from my job

I resigned my Job recently and focusing on my SaaS for a past few days, i don't know if this is a sign to continue this Journey. i'm getting a call back from my manager to revoke my resignation. Long way to go and I'm ready to face anything taking care of my startup. Is anyone is in the same situation as me and how it's going?
Reddit

Chrome just silently disabled my extension for 4000 users. Stop building your core product on rented google land

A user emailed me on a Tuesday asking if the extension was broken for everyone or just him. I said just you probably then I opened Chrome and mine was greyed out too. Neither any email from Google nor any dashboard warning. Just went off. And I'll be straight with you…. I had a warning. Years of it actually. Manifest V2 was announced dead so long ago that I stopped reading the emails and kept telling myself I would migrate in the next quiet week which never showed up. So I'm not standing her...
Reddit

I don't understand how to get users without being scummy

I don't get it, guys. I want to share and talk about my SaaS, but it feels so disingenuous. We're all trying to get our first or first few sales. I just don't know how to approach marketing properly without sounding greedy. I entered a competitive niche, and I know it will be difficult, but surely it's not impossible to market with a bit of soul.
Reddit

I realized pseudonymous doesn’t necessarily mean anonymous, so I built a small SaaS around that gap

I used to think a Reddit username was enough to stay anonymous. Then I realized how much you can learn about someone just by reading through their posts and comments. Their job, where they live, what they’re interested in, and sometimes even who they are. That gave me the idea for Wheesper. Every discussion is separate. People can join without creating an account, and their replies aren’t connected to a public profile or history. I created a discussion to test the idea: What part of you...
I built a tool that tells who tried your startup idea, and how they died
Reddit

I built a tool that tells who tried your startup idea, and how they died

Every time I had a “new” idea, I’d eventually discover three dead startups around the exact same thing. Usually after days :) So I built Déjà View. You describe an idea, and it researches its real-world predecessors: companies that tried it before, when they operated, when they shut down and who survived. It’s live at https://dejaview.bsct.so . Try it on your current idea and tell me if the report found anything you didn’t know about! [...
Reddit

How do you manage this attribution problem?

I’m getting a bunch of direct/referral links to my main domain seems like the initial referral is Google. I know through my GSC the only search term there’s likely that it hits first on Google is if they type my brand name but any other search queries like adjacent to the problem I’m solving are not on the first page. I’m running a few tiktok and ig accounts promoting my business and so is it just that I’m literally getting people that see my brand on social and just type it in Google and do...
Reddit

To all the AI API calling SaaS, did you face problem of Throttling

Do people really face the problem of throttling while calling AI, especially after you launched an MVP and gained 300-400 users, even for free usage? If yes, how did you tackle it, rate limiting, caching. or Bring your own Key Throttling -> If 100-150 users make requests simultaneously calling the AI api, It hits a limit and shows error