How to get your first 10 SaaS users: what 8 Reddit threads reveal about early traction

By Tomáš Cina, CEO at Discury · AI-assisted research, human-edited

Editor's Take — Tomáš Cina, CEO at Discury

What strikes me reading these threads is how often founders blame their lack of marketing budget when the real issue is a lack of focus. In the 3720+ quotes we've extracted across 53 analyses at Discury, I've watched this pattern repeat: a founder ships a product, posts it to Reddit, gets a spike of "looky-loos," and concludes that "cold email doesn't work" or "nobody wants this." They are measuring success by the wrong coordinate. It is not about how many people land on your site; it is about how many people stay.

*The second trap is the "founder-as-magnet" delusion. It is true that your first ten users often like you, not your product. This is dangerous because they will lie to you to be polite. If your early users are friends or people who just want to support you, you are getting zero signal on whether your product actually solves a painful problem. I would rather have five users who hate the UI but love the core utility than fifty friends who say it is "cool."

If I were starting a B2B SaaS today, I would ignore the "how to get my first users" search queries entirely. I would instead build a list of 50 people who have the problem I solve, reach out to them individually, and offer a 15-minute call to watch them solve that problem without my tool. If I can't find 50 people who are currently suffering enough to talk to me, I don't have a product problem; I have a market problem. The founders in this sample invert this and burn months building a solution no one is actually looking for.

The First User Reality: Why 1,000 Signups Often Equate to Zero Revenue

Founders often mistake total signups for market validation, but the data suggests that vanity metrics frequently mask a lack of product-market fit. u/cherryy_04 reported in a recent r/SaaS thread that after six months, their platform had 1,000+ users, but only 23 were paying—a 2.3% conversion rate. A deeper audit of that user base revealed that 45% were students or hobbyists who never intended to buy, while another 8% were competitors. This creates a hidden operational drain, as free users often demand support and feature requests that never materialize into revenue.

"22 uninterested users are worthless. 5 users who are obsessed with your platform are a goldmine." — u/EnvironmentalWord641, r/Entrepreneur thread

This gap between total users and paying customers is common for early-stage products. u/Airpodboi69 noted in a smallbusiness thread that despite 150+ users and positive feedback, their $9/month tier saw zero conversions because the target market—college students—viewed the product as a free utility rather than a paid solution. The consequence of this mismatch is a wasted feedback loop where the founder optimizes for the wrong persona, resulting in a product that satisfies the "free" cohort but fails to capture the "buyer" cohort.

Where to Find Your First 10–20 Users: A Manual Playbook

Direct outreach and community participation remain the most reliable channels for getting your first 10–20 users. u/its_avon_ outlined a practical playbook in r/startups for breaking the cold start: pick one narrow persona, DM 30 people manually with a problem-first message, and offer a 15-minute onboarding call in exchange for blunt feedback. This approach avoids the "promotion" trap where generic links are ignored by community moderators. The manual nature of this outreach is a feature, not a bug; it allows you to filter for users who are actually experiencing the pain you solve.

u/Efficient_Degree9569 suggests in a smallbusiness thread that the goal is not to sell, but to observe: "Pick one narrow segment, find where they already hang out, and offer to jump on short calls to watch how they currently solve the problem." By focusing on the "how" rather than the "what," founders can gather the qualitative data needed to pivot from a generic tool to a specific solution. One founder in a recent r/SaaS thread even created a dedicated Discord community for early-stage builders to test each other's products, noting that generic "looks cool" replies are a death sentence for a new product, whereas 48-hour feedback cycles with specific bug reports are the only way to iterate.

Why First User Retention Beats Acquisition Volume

Tracking where each user comes from is essential for identifying which channels yield retained users rather than one-time visitors. u/Shot_Percentage_1996 noted in a recent r/startups thread that volume feels good early on, but retention pays the bills. The strategy should be to narrow the audience until the problem statement feels uncomfortably specific, then track activation by source. This requires rigorous documentation; u/its_avon_ recommends maintaining a simple spreadsheet to track where every single sign-up originated, so you can double down only on the source that produces users who remain active after 14 days.

Across the 790+ SaaS-founder threads we've indexed at Discury, we see a recurring pattern: founders who double down on the one source that produces retained users after two weeks consistently outperform those who spray-and-pray across multiple directories. u/ConsciousArachnid636, who landed 22 users in six days, was advised by the community to ignore new users entirely and instead focus on making those 22 users "love the product" through direct communication. This is a crucial shift in mindset: at the 20-user stage, you are not a marketing department; you are a product researcher. If you have 20 users and none of them are using the product daily, adding 100 more users will not solve the underlying churn issue.

The First Time Buyer: How to Reduce Friction

Converting a first-time buyer requires removing technical and psychological barriers to payment. u/nhrtrix shared a failed payment experience where a user attempted to buy with an invalid card. This highlighted the importance of testing the payment stack. u/tomgoose_dev recommended in the same thread that founders test their own payment flow and gather failed webhook events to ensure the process is seamless for the first genuine customer. The technical hurdle of a failed payment is often the first real "moment of truth" for a SaaS product; if your infrastructure isn't ready to capture the money, you lose the trust of the very first person who tried to pay you.

Regarding pricing, u/Airpodboi69 discovered that a $9/month subscription felt like a heavy commitment for a tool used only during specific periods, like exam season. The takeaway for the first-time buyer is that the pricing model must align with the usage frequency. If the tool is used sporadically, annual or one-time payment models often convert better than monthly recurring subscriptions. u/startupsubmit notes in a SaaS thread that founders often waste 40+ hours on manual directory submissions when they should be focusing on the checkout flow, as the first paid user is the ultimate validator of your pricing strategy.

Conclusion: Audit Your First User Pipeline in Two Hours

To move from zero to your first 10 paying users, execute this audit within the next two hours:

1. Identify the 10 most engaged users: In your analytics dashboard, identify the users who have logged in at least three times.
2. Conduct the 15-minute onboarding call: Email these 10 users directly. Offer a 15-minute call to "learn how they solve [specific problem] today." Do not mention your product in the initial email.
3. Observe the friction: During the call, ask them to show you their current workflow. If they do not mention the problem your product solves as their #1 pain point, your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is likely too broad.
4. Implement the "Blunt Feedback" loop: Ask each user: "What is the one thing that would make you pay for this today?" If they cannot name a feature or outcome, your value proposition is too weak.
5. Set the threshold: If you cannot convert 1 out of 10 users to a paid plan after these calls, stop building. You are likely solving a problem that is not painful enough to warrant a budget.

Where these threads come from

This analysis draws on 15 r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, and r/startups threads cited inline above. This analysis was compiled with Discury, which aggregates discussion threads across SaaS-adjacent subreddits to surface patterns in founder behavior.

discury.io