Most advice on getting your first users boils down to “do things that don't scale,” which is true but not actionable. Here's the specific version: your first users aren't found by broadcasting to strangers, they're found by showing up in conversations that are already happening about the problem you solve.
Why cold outreach underperforms early on
A cold DM or cold email asks someone to context-switch into caring about your product. Someone who just posted “does anyone know a tool that does X” has already done that work for you — they're actively looking, in public, right now. Replying to that person converts at a completely different rate than interrupting someone who wasn't thinking about the problem at all. The skill isn't writing a better cold message; it's finding more of the first kind of person.
Where those conversations happen
- Reddit— niche subreddits built around the exact job your product does, plus adjacent ones where your audience hangs out for other reasons.
- Hacker News— “Ask HN” threads and comment sections on posts about problems adjacent to yours.
- IndieHackers, Stack Exchange, Ask MetaFilter— smaller volume, but often higher intent, since people posting there are already asking specific, solution-seeking questions.
The manual playbook
- Write down the 5–10 phrases someone in pain would actually type — not your product category, the symptom. “How do I find users” beats “lead generation software.”
- Search each phrase on Reddit search, Hacker News (via Algolia's HN search), and Google with
site:reddit.comfilters. - Read the whole thread before replying. A reply that ignores context someone already gave reads as a bot, even from a human.
- Lead with a genuinely useful answer — the kind you'd give if you had no product to mention at all. Mention your product only if it's the honest next step, and only once, near the end.
- Check the subreddit's self-promo rules before you post. Many require a minimum comment history or restrict promotion to specific days/threads — getting this wrong gets you banned, not just downvoted. See our guide to founder-led sales on Reddit for the specifics.
- Repeat daily. The volume of relevant threads on any single day is low; the compounding value comes from consistency over weeks.
Where it breaks down
This works, but it doesn't scale by hand: checking five communities for new relevant threads every day, reading each one for actual fit, and drafting a non-spammy reply is real, repeated work. That's the exact gap Getriveis built for — it polls Reddit, Hacker News, and the channels above continuously, scores each post against your product's actual description rather than keyword-matching, and drafts a reply for threads that clear a relevance bar. Nothing posts automatically; you still review and send every reply yourself, from your own account.
If you'd rather do the search-and-reply loop above without the manual overhead, Getrive is free to start.