u/Recent-Ad7093

whats your first message to your potential clients, when u just want to get their feedback without annoying them?

especially if these people are not your friends, so theres no warm intro, no shared context, nothing. just me reaching out cold and asking for their time.

im trying to figure out how much to put in that first message,

- do u say straight away that u re building something and want feedback?
- or do u start with a question about their work and get to the point later?
- how long should it be? 2 lines? a short paragraph?
- do u ask for a call or just keep it in text so its easier for them to reply?

if u have a message that actually worked for u, id love to see the actual wording,

thanks!!

whats your first message to your potential clients, when u just want to get their feedback without annoying them?

especially if these people are not your friends, so theres no warm intro, no shared context, nothing. just me reaching out cold and asking for their time.

im trying to figure out how much to put in that first message,

\- do u say straight away that u re building something and want feedback?
\- or do u start with a question about their work and get to the point later?
\- how long should it be? 2 lines? a short paragraph?
\- do u ask for a call or just keep it in text so its easier for them to reply?

if u have a message that actually worked for u, id love to see the actual wording,

thanks!!

whats your first message to your potential clients, when u just want to get their feedback without annoying them?

especially if these people are not your friends, so theres no warm intro, no shared context, nothing. just me reaching out cold and asking for their time.

im trying to figure out how much to put in that first message,

- do u say straight away that u re building something and want feedback?
- or do u start with a question about their work and get to the point later?
- how long should it be? 2 lines? a short paragraph?
- do u ask for a call or just keep it in text so its easier for them to reply?

if u have a message that actually worked for u, id love to see the actual wording,

thanks!!

not the hard conversations, im talking about the four sentence reply thats been sitting in drafts since this morning,

mine is always the reply to someone who already said they were interested, investor or first customer, doesnt matter which, the fact they said yes to talking is somehow the thing that freezes me,

team slack i type without thinking, replies go out in seconds, but the second its a person who can say no to me i rewrite it until the words stop meaning anything, then i read it back and it doesnt sound like me at all so i start again,

english is my second language and for years i told myself thats the whole explanation, im less sure about that now, i think id do the same in my own language,

so:

- which message is it for u, who is it usually to?

- when was the last one and how long did it sit there?

- did anything actually happen because it sat, or was it fine in the end?

- what do u do while its sitting, do u work on other stuff or does the whole afternoon go?

and honestly if u re the opposite, if u just send it in ninety seconds and it works out fine, i want to hear that one most, tell me what u re doing differently

do u think ai made real valuable startups win less?
was it easier before ai?

my thinking is that building got so cheap that everyone can ship something in a weekend now, so the space is full of stuff that looks like a product but isnt solving anything. and the ones actually doing hard, valuable work get lost in that noise, or worse, people assume they just wrapped an api too.

on the other hand maybe its the opposite and ai just removed the boring part so good teams move faster than ever,

so which one is it in your experience?

- is it harder to get attention now than before ai, or easier because u can build and test ideas so fast?
- do investors and users still tell the difference between a real product and a thin wrapper?
- if u were building before ai and are building now, what actually changed for u?

curious what people think, thanks!!

does reading books really helped u with doing business?

im asking because i keep seeing people say books changed everything for them, and then others say its all theory and u only learn by doing. so which one is it in real life?

what im curious about specifically,

\\- was there one book that actually changed how u run things, or just small bits here and there
\\- did u apply it right away or did it just sit in your head
\\- do u re reading business books or more general stuff like psychology, biographies, whatever

and if books didnt do much for u, what did? mentors, just failing a lot?

honest answers please, even if the answer is no they didnt help at all,

and also how often do u read books?

thanks!!
I Will not promote

whats the best platform to advertise productivity saas products?

im trying to figure out where the money actually goes furthest for this kind of tool. some things im not sure about:

\- google ads vs meta for productivity tools, does search intent win here or is it too expensive
\- reddit ads, do they actually convert or just burn budget
\- linkedin, worth it if the users are individuals and not companies
\- newsletters and sponsorships in the productivity niche, is this better than paid ads

if youve run ads for a productivity saas, which channel gave you the best cost per signup, and which one you would not touch again? also curious at what point paid started to make sense for you, or if organic/content was the better move first.

happy to hear anything from real experience, even if its just what didnt work.

Looking for real numbers from people who tried UGC style content for a saas or any software product, not physical products.

Did it bring signups, or just views? and what format worked, short videos, testimonials, creators using the product on camera?

I havent tested it myself yet, so I dont know if it translates at all when the product is software.

What percentage of businesses that actually make it are scams or fake, and how many are real? Im curious what people here think, because from outside its hard to tell the difference, a lot of the loud success stories look like they are selling courses about success rather than running a real business.

I dont have numbers on this, thats why im asking. Just an impression that the ratio is worse than people admit, but maybe im only seeing the noisy ones and the real companies are quietly working and not posting about it.

If anyone has actual data or just experience from their own industry, would love to hear it, whats your split?

is it really worth it to create tiktok videos and instagram reels for a small saas app? thats my main question.

second thing, my target audience is US but tiktok mostly shows my videos to people in my own country, even though all the content is in english. so the views i get are basically useless for me, nobody there is going to be a customer.

so what do you do in this case?

\- do you keep posting and hope the algorithm figures out who your audience is
\- is there some setting or account thing im missing
\- or is short form video just not the channel for a small saas and i should put the time somewhere else

im curious from people who actually did this and got US traffic out of it, did it convert to signups or was it just views

is it really worth it to create tiktok videos and instagram reels for a small saas app? thats my main question.

second thing, my target audience is US but tiktok mostly shows my videos to people in my own country, even though all the content is in english. so the views i get are basically useless for me, nobody there is going to be a customer.

so what do you do in this case?

- do you keep posting and hope the algorithm figures out who your audience is
- is there some setting or account thing im missing
- or is short form video just not the channel for a small saas and i should put the time somewhere else

im curious from people who actually did this and got US traffic out of it, did it convert to signups or was it just views

how much did you put aside per day when you first started marketing, and at what point did it actually bring results? by results i mean your first real customers, even free ones who genuinly used the product, not just impressions and clicks.

im planning to spend 10$ daily and honestly dont know if thats worth it or just burning money slowly. subscription will be priced at 12$ month, so one signup a day basically pays for the ads and nothing more.

i know it will be very different per industry and per channel, but roughly:

- what was your daily budget in the beginning

- how many days/weeks until you saw first signups from it

- did you start bigger and cut down, or start small like 10$ and scale up

also if 10$ a day is simply too low to learn anything, please tell me that too, id rather hear it now than after 2 months of spending.

Question is simple, is it possible to take ANY saas product and pivot it so it solves urgent problem instead of nice to have one?

The reason im asking, most products i see (and honestly mine too) sit in the nice to have bucket. people say "oh cool, nice idea", they dont even sign up for free plan. nothing breaks in their business if the tool disappears tomorrow. thats the problem.

so where i get stuck:

- is urgency a property of the product itself, or just of the customer you point it at? same tool, different segment, suddenly its a must have?

- can urgency be manufactured by positioning and pricing alone, or you actually have to rebuild the thing?

- if its already built and paying a little, do you pivot the product or pivot who you sell to?

- is there a category of saas thats just doomed to stay nice to have no matter what you do?

Im not claiming to know the answer, i genuinly dont. i havent done a successful pivot myself, thats why im asking here instead of writing a thread of advice.

if you did it, im curious what actually changed. was it the feature set, the audience, the way you talked about it, or the moment you caught the customer in. and if you tried and it didnt work, that answer is also useful for me, maybe more useful.

does it frustrate you when you have messages in your inbox that you have to answer but you postpone it?

not the spam ones, i mean the real ones. the ones where somebody asked a normal question and i know exactly what the answer is, i just dont open it. i read it on the notification, i think ok will reply later today, and then later today becomes tomorrow, then its 4 days and now the reply needs an apology on top of it.

and the funny part is the reply itself takes maybe two minutes. its not hard work. but it sits there in my head all day and it makes me tired more than the actual tasks i did that day.

so im curious how it is for other people, do you have the same thing or do you just answer immediately and forget about it? and if you had this and fixed it somehow, what actually worked?