u/Illustrious_Cake0018

It’s been 4 months since launching my SaaS firsteyes.ai and I just crossed 40+ paying customers.

It took me a few months to learn some important lessons, and I want to share what worked and what didn’t with you guys.

For context, my SaaS shows how first-time visitors experience a website and highlights where confusion, hesitation, or friction might occur before conversion.

What worked:

1. Reddit: Reddit has been by far our best acquisition channel. Posting honestly about building the product, sharing numbers, asking for feedback and participating in conversations brought in a surprising number of users. The biggest lesson was that Reddit works much better when the post is actually useful or interesting instead of feeling like an advertisement.
2. X: X has also been surprisingly good for getting the product in front of the right people. Founder lessons, product updates, small wins, failures and even random memes have consistently brought attention. The important part was figuring out what people actually cared about instead of just posting about the product every day.
3. Talking to users: Some of the biggest improvements came from simply talking to people who actually used the product. You can spend days guessing what users want, or you can ask them and get the answer in 10 minutes. A lot of our product decisions now come directly from user feedback.
4. Improving the report: firsteyes AI is only useful if the report is actually good. We've spent a lot of time improving the quality of the analysis, making the recommendations more useful and fixing things that confused users. Better product quality also made it much easier to convince new users to pay.
5. Word of mouth: This started happening naturally once the product became better. Users began recommending firsteyes AI to other founders, which is probably one of the best signals you can get as an early-stage SaaS. Someone voluntarily telling another person about your product feels very different from getting a random click.

What didn't work:

1. LinkedIn: Honestly, LinkedIn has been a complete flop compared to Reddit and X. We tried different types of posts and approaches, but the amount of effort versus actual users was nowhere close to the other channels. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but we haven't found it yet.
2. Trying too many channels: Early on, it was tempting to be everywhere at once, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, SEO, communities, outreach and everything else. It felt productive, but it made it much harder to figure out what was actually working. Once we started doubling down on Reddit and X, things became much simpler.
3. Building features without enough validation: Classic mistake. Sometimes a feature sounds useful because it makes sense in your head, but users don't really care about it. We've wasted time building things that looked good on paper but didn't move the needle. Talking to users before building has saved us from repeating that mistake.
4. Assuming traffic was the answer: More visitors don't automatically mean more customers. At one point it was easy to think the solution was simply getting more people onto the website. Eventually it became clear that getting the right people and making the value obvious mattered much more than simply increasing traffic.

Next steps:

Doing more of what already works instead of constantly searching for the next marketing channel.

More Reddit, more X, more conversations with users and more work on the product.

To all my fellow solo founders: stay consistent, keep trying different things, and when you find something that works, double down on it.

There will be plenty of days when nothing seems to work and you're tempted to question the whole thing. Don't lose patience. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep showing up.

All the best to everyone building something cool 🚀

It’s been 4 months since launching my SaaS firsteyes AI and I just crossed 40+ paying customers.

It took me a few months to learn some important lessons, and I want to share what worked and what didn’t with you guys.

For context, my SaaS shows how first-time visitors experience a website and highlights where confusion, hesitation, or friction might occur before conversion.

What worked:

1. Reddit: Reddit has been by far our best acquisition channel. Posting honestly about building the product, sharing numbers, asking for feedback and participating in conversations brought in a surprising number of users. The biggest lesson was that Reddit works much better when the post is actually useful or interesting instead of feeling like an advertisement.
2. X: X has also been surprisingly good for getting the product in front of the right people. Founder lessons, product updates, small wins, failures and even random memes have consistently brought attention. The important part was figuring out what people actually cared about instead of just posting about the product every day.
3. Talking to users: Some of the biggest improvements came from simply talking to people who actually used the product. You can spend days guessing what users want, or you can ask them and get the answer in 10 minutes. A lot of our product decisions now come directly from user feedback.
4. Improving the report: firsteyes AI is only useful if the report is actually good. We've spent a lot of time improving the quality of the analysis, making the recommendations more useful and fixing things that confused users. Better product quality also made it much easier to convince new users to pay.
5. Word of mouth: This started happening naturally once the product became better. Users began recommending firsteyes AI to other founders, which is probably one of the best signals you can get as an early-stage SaaS. Someone voluntarily telling another person about your product feels very different from getting a random click.

What didn't work:

1. LinkedIn: Honestly, LinkedIn has been a complete flop compared to Reddit and X. We tried different types of posts and approaches, but the amount of effort versus actual users was nowhere close to the other channels. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but we haven't found it yet.
2. Trying too many channels: Early on, it was tempting to be everywhere at once, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, SEO, communities, outreach and everything else. It felt productive, but it made it much harder to figure out what was actually working. Once we started doubling down on Reddit and X, things became much simpler.
3. Building features without enough validation: Classic mistake. Sometimes a feature sounds useful because it makes sense in your head, but users don't really care about it. We've wasted time building things that looked good on paper but didn't move the needle. Talking to users before building has saved us from repeating that mistake.
4. Assuming traffic was the answer: More visitors don't automatically mean more customers. At one point it was easy to think the solution was simply getting more people onto the website. Eventually it became clear that getting the right people and making the value obvious mattered much more than simply increasing traffic.

Next steps:

Doing more of what already works instead of constantly searching for the next marketing channel.

More Reddit, more X, more conversations with users and more work on the product.

To all my fellow solo founders: stay consistent, keep trying different things, and when you find something that works, double down on it.

There will be plenty of days when nothing seems to work and you're tempted to question the whole thing. Don't lose patience. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep showing up.

All the best to everyone building something cool 🚀

It’s been 4 months since launching my SaaS firsteyes AI and I just crossed 40+ paying customers.

It took me a few months to learn some important lessons, and I want to share what worked and what didn’t with you guys.

For context, my SaaS shows how first-time visitors experience a website and highlights where confusion, hesitation, or friction might occur before conversion.

What worked:

1. Reddit: Reddit has been by far our best acquisition channel. Posting honestly about building the product, sharing numbers, asking for feedback and participating in conversations brought in a surprising number of users. The biggest lesson was that Reddit works much better when the post is actually useful or interesting instead of feeling like an advertisement.
2. X: X has also been surprisingly good for getting the product in front of the right people. Founder lessons, product updates, small wins, failures and even random memes have consistently brought attention. The important part was figuring out what people actually cared about instead of just posting about the product every day.
3. Talking to users: Some of the biggest improvements came from simply talking to people who actually used the product. You can spend days guessing what users want, or you can ask them and get the answer in 10 minutes. A lot of our product decisions now come directly from user feedback.
4. Improving the report: firsteyes AI is only useful if the report is actually good. We've spent a lot of time improving the quality of the analysis, making the recommendations more useful and fixing things that confused users. Better product quality also made it much easier to convince new users to pay.
5. Word of mouth: This started happening naturally once the product became better. Users began recommending firsteyes AI to other founders, which is probably one of the best signals you can get as an early-stage SaaS. Someone voluntarily telling another person about your product feels very different from getting a random click.

What didn't work:

1. LinkedIn: Honestly, LinkedIn has been a complete flop compared to Reddit and X. We tried different types of posts and approaches, but the amount of effort versus actual users was nowhere close to the other channels. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but we haven't found it yet.
2. Trying too many channels: Early on, it was tempting to be everywhere at once, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, SEO, communities, outreach and everything else. It felt productive, but it made it much harder to figure out what was actually working. Once we started doubling down on Reddit and X, things became much simpler.
3. Building features without enough validation: Classic mistake. Sometimes a feature sounds useful because it makes sense in your head, but users don't really care about it. We've wasted time building things that looked good on paper but didn't move the needle. Talking to users before building has saved us from repeating that mistake.
4. Assuming traffic was the answer: More visitors don't automatically mean more customers. At one point it was easy to think the solution was simply getting more people onto the website. Eventually it became clear that getting the right people and making the value obvious mattered much more than simply increasing traffic.

Next steps:

Doing more of what already works instead of constantly searching for the next marketing channel.

More Reddit, more X, more conversations with users and more work on the product.

To all my fellow solo founders: stay consistent, keep trying different things, and when you find something that works, double down on it.

There will be plenty of days when nothing seems to work and you're tempted to question the whole thing. Don't lose patience. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep showing up.

All the best to everyone building something cool 🚀

It’s been 4 months since launching my SaaS firsteyes AI and I just crossed 40+ paying customers.

It took me a few months to learn some important lessons, and I want to share what worked and what didn’t with you guys.

For context, my SaaS shows how first-time visitors experience a website and highlights where confusion, hesitation, or friction might occur before conversion.

What worked:

1. Reddit: Reddit has been by far our best acquisition channel. Posting honestly about building the product, sharing numbers, asking for feedback and participating in conversations brought in a surprising number of users. The biggest lesson was that Reddit works much better when the post is actually useful or interesting instead of feeling like an advertisement.
2. X: X has also been surprisingly good for getting the product in front of the right people. Founder lessons, product updates, small wins, failures and even random memes have consistently brought attention. The important part was figuring out what people actually cared about instead of just posting about the product every day.
3. Talking to users: Some of the biggest improvements came from simply talking to people who actually used the product. You can spend days guessing what users want, or you can ask them and get the answer in 10 minutes. A lot of our product decisions now come directly from user feedback.
4. Improving the report: firsteyes AI is only useful if the report is actually good. We've spent a lot of time improving the quality of the analysis, making the recommendations more useful and fixing things that confused users. Better product quality also made it much easier to convince new users to pay.
5. Word of mouth: This started happening naturally once the product became better. Users began recommending firsteyes AI to other founders, which is probably one of the best signals you can get as an early-stage SaaS. Someone voluntarily telling another person about your product feels very different from getting a random click.

What didn't work:

1. LinkedIn: Honestly, LinkedIn has been a complete flop compared to Reddit and X. We tried different types of posts and approaches, but the amount of effort versus actual users was nowhere close to the other channels. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but we haven't found it yet.
2. Trying too many channels: Early on, it was tempting to be everywhere at once, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, SEO, communities, outreach and everything else. It felt productive, but it made it much harder to figure out what was actually working. Once we started doubling down on Reddit and X, things became much simpler.
3. Building features without enough validation: Classic mistake. Sometimes a feature sounds useful because it makes sense in your head, but users don't really care about it. We've wasted time building things that looked good on paper but didn't move the needle. Talking to users before building has saved us from repeating that mistake.
4. Assuming traffic was the answer: More visitors don't automatically mean more customers. At one point it was easy to think the solution was simply getting more people onto the website. Eventually it became clear that getting the right people and making the value obvious mattered much more than simply increasing traffic.

Next steps:

Doing more of what already works instead of constantly searching for the next marketing channel.

More Reddit, more X, more conversations with users and more work on the product.

To all my fellow solo founders: stay consistent, keep trying different things, and when you find something that works, double down on it.

There will be plenty of days when nothing seems to work and you're tempted to question the whole thing. Don't lose patience. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep showing up.

All the best to everyone building something cool 🚀

It’s been 4 months since launching my SaaS firsteyes AI and I just crossed 40+ paying customers.

It took me a few months to learn some important lessons, and I want to share what worked and what didn’t with you guys.

For context, my SaaS shows how first-time visitors experience a website and highlights where confusion, hesitation, or friction might occur before conversion.

What worked:

1. Reddit: Reddit has been by far our best acquisition channel. Posting honestly about building the product, sharing numbers, asking for feedback and participating in conversations brought in a surprising number of users. The biggest lesson was that Reddit works much better when the post is actually useful or interesting instead of feeling like an advertisement.
2. X: X has also been surprisingly good for getting the product in front of the right people. Founder lessons, product updates, small wins, failures and even random memes have consistently brought attention. The important part was figuring out what people actually cared about instead of just posting about the product every day.
3. Talking to users: Some of the biggest improvements came from simply talking to people who actually used the product. You can spend days guessing what users want, or you can ask them and get the answer in 10 minutes. A lot of our product decisions now come directly from user feedback.
4. Improving the report: firsteyes AI is only useful if the report is actually good. We've spent a lot of time improving the quality of the analysis, making the recommendations more useful and fixing things that confused users. Better product quality also made it much easier to convince new users to pay.
5. Word of mouth: This started happening naturally once the product became better. Users began recommending firsteyes AI to other founders, which is probably one of the best signals you can get as an early-stage SaaS. Someone voluntarily telling another person about your product feels very different from getting a random click.

What didn't work:

1. LinkedIn: Honestly, LinkedIn has been a complete flop compared to Reddit and X. We tried different types of posts and approaches, but the amount of effort versus actual users was nowhere close to the other channels. Maybe there's a way to make it work, but we haven't found it yet.
2. Trying too many channels: Early on, it was tempting to be everywhere at once, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, SEO, communities, outreach and everything else. It felt productive, but it made it much harder to figure out what was actually working. Once we started doubling down on Reddit and X, things became much simpler.
3. Building features without enough validation: Classic mistake. Sometimes a feature sounds useful because it makes sense in your head, but users don't really care about it. We've wasted time building things that looked good on paper but didn't move the needle. Talking to users before building has saved us from repeating that mistake.
4. Assuming traffic was the answer: More visitors don't automatically mean more customers. At one point it was easy to think the solution was simply getting more people onto the website. Eventually it became clear that getting the right people and making the value obvious mattered much more than simply increasing traffic.

Next steps:

Doing more of what already works instead of constantly searching for the next marketing channel.

More Reddit, more X, more conversations with users and more work on the product.

To all my fellow solo founders: stay consistent, keep trying different things, and when you find something that works, double down on it.

There will be plenty of days when nothing seems to work and you're tempted to question the whole thing. Don't lose patience. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep showing up.

All the best to everyone building something cool 🚀

Not because they're bad at marketing or because they built a bad website. It's mostly because they've spent so much time looking at the same page.

You build the product, write the copy, change the headline, move a section around, look at it again, get some feedback, make another change... and after a while, everything on the page starts to feel obvious.

But it only feels obvious because you already know what you're looking at.

A first-time visitor doesn't have any of that context. They don't know what you meant when you wrote the headline, they don't know why a particular feature matters, and they definitely don't know where they're supposed to look next.

They just land on the page and try to figure out one thing:

"Is this actually for me?"

I honestly think this is an underrated reason why some good products struggle with conversion. The founder looks at the page and sees everything they've built, while the visitor sees a page they've never seen before and has to make a decision with very little context.

Curious to know if anyone is facing the problem of users not converting from the landing page?

https://preview.redd.it/dfp41pzswrhh1.png?width=1028&format=png&auto=webp&s=fae43d568740419f135cccc4761da43ba16a0843

Getting to this point has taken so much more work than I ever imagined when I started building my product.

There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether spending countless hours building, talking to users, improving the product, and marketing it every single day would ever pay off. More than once, I wondered if I was simply chasing an idea that nobody really needed.

But now, it feels like all the hard work is paying off.

Not because everything is perfect.

But because the signals are becoming harder to ignore.

• More users are discovering the product through word of mouth.

• Customers are trusting a product built by someone they've never met.

• Revenue is growing consistently.

When I launched, I knew absolutely nothing about marketing.

I just believed there had to be a better way for founders to understand why visitors leave their websites before converting.

That belief kept me going through the quiet days when almost nobody was using it.

Looking back, building the product was only half the challenge.

Learning how to find customers, earn trust, and communicate value has been the much harder (and much more rewarding) journey.

But seeing people genuinely find value in something I built from scratch makes every late night worth it.

Sometimes progress is invisible right before it isn't.

https://preview.redd.it/t04b25wc9rhh1.png?width=1832&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed0cc1c693e19520e24e5f3eabdc91258647e160

4 months ago we had:

• 0 users
• 0 paying customers
• $0 revenue

Today we've crossed 30 paying customers.

Looking back...

The product wasn't the hard part.

Trust was.

I spent months improving features.

But the biggest improvements actually came from:

• talking to users

• fixing confusing messaging

• making the product easier to understand

• listening instead of assuming

Funny enough...

Once strangers started trusting the product...

Growth became much easier.

If you're building a SaaS right now...

Spend as much time earning trust as writing code.

https://preview.redd.it/llyfplp44rhh1.png?width=1832&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c08a81e5ce7810ac38978f1f3399a3defb9f7e1

4 months ago: 0 signups, 0 paying customers, and $0 in revenue.

Today we crossed 30 paying customers.

Nothing beats the feeling of seeing someone trust a product you built from scratch.

Getting here took far more work than I ever imagined.

There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether spending countless hours building, talking to users, improving the product, and learning marketing from scratch would ever pay off.

More than once, I wondered if I was simply chasing an idea that nobody really needed.

Looking back, the biggest surprise wasn't the product.

It was realizing that building the product was only half the challenge.

The other half was learning how to:
• Talk to customers instead of making assumptions.
• Communicate value clearly.
• Earn trust from complete strangers.
• Keep improving based on feedback instead of my own opinions.

Over the last few months, I've watched something interesting happen.

Users started recommending my product to other users.

Word of mouth slowly started replacing luck.

That's when it finally felt like things were beginning to click.

I'm still very early in this journey.

There are countless improvements left to make and many more milestones ahead.

But seeing people genuinely find value in something I built makes every late night feel worthwhile.

4 months ago: 0 signups, 0 paying customers, and $0 in revenue.

Today we crossed 30 paying customers.

Nothing beats the feeling of seeing someone trust a product you built from scratch.

Getting here took far more work than I ever imagined.

There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether spending countless hours building, talking to users, improving the product, and learning marketing from scratch would ever pay off.

More than once, I wondered if I was simply chasing an idea that nobody really needed.

Looking back, the biggest surprise wasn't the product.

It was realizing that building the product was only half the challenge.

The other half was learning how to:
• Talk to customers instead of making assumptions.
• Communicate value clearly.
• Earn trust from complete strangers.
• Keep improving based on feedback instead of my own opinions.

Over the last few months, I've watched something interesting happen.

Users started recommending my product to other users.

Word of mouth slowly started replacing luck.

That's when it finally felt like things were beginning to click.

I'm still very early in this journey.

There are countless improvements left to make and many more milestones ahead.

But seeing people genuinely find value in something I built makes every late night feel worthwhile.

Happy to answer any questions!!

4 months ago: 0 signups, 0 paying customers, and $0 in revenue.

Today we crossed 30 paying customers.

Nothing beats the feeling of seeing someone trust a product you built from scratch.

Getting here took far more work than I ever imagined.

There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether spending countless hours building, talking to users, improving the product, and learning marketing from scratch would ever pay off.

More than once, I wondered if I was simply chasing an idea that nobody really needed.

Looking back, the biggest surprise wasn't the product.

It was realizing that building the product was only half the challenge.

The other half was learning how to:
• Talk to customers instead of making assumptions.
• Communicate value clearly.
• Earn trust from complete strangers.
• Keep improving based on feedback instead of my own opinions.

Over the last few months, I've watched something interesting happen.

Users started recommending my product to other users.

Word of mouth slowly started replacing luck.

That's when it finally felt like things were beginning to click.

I'm still very early in this journey.

There are countless improvements left to make and many more milestones ahead.

But seeing people genuinely find value in something I built makes every late night feel worthwhile.

Happy to answer any questions!!

https://preview.redd.it/m7ax9mqxm6hh1.png?width=1832&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e5526e80ab6d69ec387604d883baba5edb74474

30+ paying customers 🤯

I still can't believe I'm writing that.

A few months ago, firsteyes AI had 0 signups, 0 paying customers, and $0 in revenue.

Today, 30+ users have trusted a product I built to help them understand why first-time visitors leave their websites before converting.

Getting here wasn't easy.

There were days when almost nobody signed up.

Days when I questioned whether I was solving a real problem.

Days where I spent more time marketing than coding.

But every conversation with a user...

Every piece of feedback...

Every improvement to the product...

Slowly started to compound.

The biggest lesson?

Building the product was only half the challenge.

Learning how to earn trust from complete strangers was the real job.

P.S. To celebrate, we're offering flat 50% off for the next 2 days (till 5th August EOD).

Use FIRSTEYES50 in the checkout to view your full report for just $6 instead of $12.

Website link is in the 1st comment.

Hopefully it helps a more users improve their websites before their next visitor leaves.

https://preview.redd.it/eyeadfggekgh1.png?width=1028&format=png&auto=webp&s=91083775a1e7e4ab6869c33afae38b377b169bee

Getting to this point has taken so much more work than I ever imagined when I started building my product.

There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether spending countless hours building, talking to users, improving the product, and marketing it every single day would ever pay off. More than once, I wondered if I was simply chasing an idea that nobody really needed.

But now, it feels like things are starting to click.

Not because everything is perfect.

But because the signals are becoming harder to ignore.

• More founders are discovering the product through word of mouth.

• People are coming back to run new audits after product improvements.

• Customers are trusting a product built by someone they've never met.

• Revenue is growing consistently.

When I launched, I knew absolutely nothing about marketing.

I just believed there had to be a better way for founders to understand why visitors leave their websites before converting.

That belief kept me going through the quiet days when almost nobody was using it.

Looking back, building the product was only half the challenge.

Learning how to find customers, earn trust, and communicate value has been the much harder (and much more rewarding) journey.

But seeing people genuinely find value in something I built from scratch makes every late night worth it.

Sometimes progress is invisible right before it isn't.

https://preview.redd.it/0467cxzzp7dh1.png?width=1034&format=png&auto=webp&s=9f82496fc934b3e38a0d65a55a9f0488ccf438ef

A. Nobody visits

B. People visit but don't sign up

C. People sign up but don't pay

D. People pay but don't stick around

I know that doesn't sound like much. But when you're building something from scratch, spending weeks staring at code, doubting yourself, wondering if anyone will ever pay...

5 feels huge.

We got around 25 paid customers till now, which still feels surreal to say out loud.

Still a long way to go.

Btw, if you're curious, I'm building firsteyes.ai - It shows how first-time visitors actually experience your website and highlights where they get confused, lose trust, or hesitate before converting.

Do check it out if you're getting traffic but struggling with conversions.

Happy to answer any questions!