u/Strong-Yesterday-183

Last week we launched on Product Hunt and somehow finished #5 for the day.

Causo is an AI fundraising tool that helps founders find relevant VCs, generate investor matches, and run outreach without spending weeks manually researching funds and writing cold emails.

It’s been live for about a week now, and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time refreshing analytics trying to separate real signal from launch hype.

So here’s the honest breakdown so far:

First 7 days:

• 295 visitors
• ~500 pageviews
• 250+ investor matches generated
• 19 fundraising campaigns launched
• 1,000+ investor emails generated
• 300+ emails sent
• 18 investor replies received already

The biggest milestone for me personally though:

complete strangers paid for it.

Not friends. Not people from our network. Random founders finding the site, trying the product, and trusting it enough to put in a card.

That was the moment where it stopped feeling like a side project.

What’s interesting is that the problems became obvious almost immediately.

The users who finish onboarding and launch campaigns usually get value pretty fast.
Most drop-offs happen in a few very specific friction points.

Which is honestly encouraging.
Fixing UX friction feels a lot better than “nobody wants this”.

Also learned something very quickly:
founders absolutely hate fundraising outreach.

Not because they don’t understand it.
Because it’s emotionally draining, repetitive, awkward, and incredibly easy to procrastinate.

That’s basically the whole reason we started building Causo.

Still very early.
No massive ARR screenshots or “we scaled to 7 figures in 14 days” nonsense.

Just real founders using the product, real investor conversations starting, and a very clear list of things to improve next.

Last week we launched on Product Hunt and somehow finished #5 for the day.

Causo is an AI fundraising tool that helps founders find relevant VCs, generate investor matches, and run outreach without spending weeks manually researching funds and writing cold emails.

It’s been live for about a week now, and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time refreshing analytics trying to separate real signal from launch hype.

So here’s the honest breakdown so far:

First 7 days:

• 295 visitors
• ~500 pageviews
• 250+ investor matches generated
• 19 fundraising campaigns launched
• 1,000+ investor emails generated
• 300+ emails sent
• 18 investor replies received already

The biggest milestone for me personally though:

complete strangers paid for it.

Not friends. Not people from our network. Random founders finding the site, trying the product, and trusting it enough to put in a card.

That was the moment where it stopped feeling like a side project.

What’s interesting is that the problems became obvious almost immediately.

The users who finish onboarding and launch campaigns usually get value pretty fast.
Most drop-offs happen in a few very specific friction points.

Which is honestly encouraging.
Fixing UX friction feels a lot better than “nobody wants this”.

Also learned something very quickly:
founders absolutely hate fundraising outreach.

Not because they don’t understand it.
Because it’s emotionally draining, repetitive, awkward, and incredibly easy to procrastinate.

That’s basically the whole reason we started building Causo.

Still very early.
No massive ARR screenshots or “we scaled to 7 figures in 14 days” nonsense.

Just real founders using the product, real investor conversations starting, and a very clear list of things to improve next.

Last week we launched on Product Hunt and somehow finished #5 for the day.

Causo is an AI fundraising tool that helps founders find relevant VCs, generate investor matches, and run outreach without spending weeks manually researching funds and writing cold emails.

It’s been live for about a week now, and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time refreshing analytics trying to separate real signal from launch hype.

So here’s the honest breakdown so far:

First 7 days:

• 295 visitors
• ~500 pageviews
• 250+ investor matches generated
• 19 fundraising campaigns launched
• 1,000+ investor emails generated
• 300+ emails sent
• 18 investor replies received already

The biggest milestone for me personally though:

complete strangers paid for it.

Not friends. Not people from our network. Random founders finding the site, trying the product, and trusting it enough to put in a card.

That was the moment where it stopped feeling like a side project.

What’s interesting is that the problems became obvious almost immediately.

The users who finish onboarding and launch campaigns usually get value pretty fast.
Most drop-offs happen in a few very specific friction points.

Which is honestly encouraging.
Fixing UX friction feels a lot better than “nobody wants this”.

Also learned something very quickly:
founders absolutely hate fundraising outreach.

Not because they don’t understand it.
Because it’s emotionally draining, repetitive, awkward, and incredibly easy to procrastinate.

That’s basically the whole reason we started building Causo.

Still very early.
No massive ARR screenshots or “we scaled to 7 figures in 14 days” nonsense.

Just real founders using the product, real investor conversations starting, and a very clear list of things to improve next.

Hey guys!

Hope you all had a good weekend! As promised, continuing our Causo.ai saga here.

Small recap if you didnt see my last posts:
- We soft launched 2 weeks ago
- Already reduced price and switched model to fremium
- Did a ProductHunt launch and secured top 5 spot
- Had 110+ visitors on the day, 68 signed up, OK conversion to paying users (TBD as not enough data to draw meaningful conclusions)

Still very early, but some interesting patterns already showing up.

Over the last 72 hours:

• ~250 people visited the site
• 90+ signed up for the free product
• traffic is still 2-3x higher than the weekend before PH
• a few users came back today (Monday) and converted after trying the product over the weekend

What’s becoming clear:

1. Conversion to free users is actually pretty solid
2. Conversion to paid is slower than we expected (idk what we expected though...)
3. A Product Hunt launch gives you attention, but not trust overnight

Current hypotheses for why paid conversion is slower:

• We have basically zero brand recognition yet
• Campaign setup is still too hard/confusing
• Timing is brutal because you need to catch founders exactly when they start fundraising

So this week is mostly about testing and iteration:

• keep momentum going (Reddit/socials/follow-ups)
• simplify campaign setup
• collect real reviews/testimonials
• prep another PH launch later this week
• keep building a side/extension product using the same tech stack

Honestly though, seeing people still come back 72 hours later feels way better than the initial spike itself.

Some weekend numbers:

https://preview.redd.it/1xyizz99pv1h1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=f402dbbc341b492a09a9bc1ed10f59990a4e6485

https://preview.redd.it/gtdgppbvpv1h1.png?width=2716&format=png&auto=webp&s=c5536532ed3e2e768f083512a069d2e1ec4eab2b

Yesterday we launched Causo on Product Hunt and somehow finished #5 for the day.

Still feels a bit surreal honestly. We’re just two founders trying to build something we wished existed when we were fundraising ourselves.

A lot of people asked how we got traction, so here’s the unsexy answer:

We spent the entire day just talking to people.

Not AI-spamming.
Not fake engagement pods.
Not “growth hacking”.

Just:

• replying to everyone
• posting in founder groups
• messaging friends
• supporting other launches
• hanging around Reddit and LinkedIn all day

Launch day honestly feels a little like a circle jerk sometimes. Everyone launching is supporting everyone else launching. But people can also smell AI-generated slob from a mile away now.

The stuff that actually worked for us was posting real experiences from fundraising and building.

Two of our Reddit posts alone ended up getting 6k+ views because we stopped trying to sound polished and just wrote honestly about how emotionally draining fundraising can be.

24h results:

• ~170 visitors
• 68 signups

So yeah, definitely not one of those “we made $10M overnight” stories.

But seeing complete strangers sign up for something we spent months building was still pretty awesome.

Biggest surprise was how much traffic came from direct shares, Reddit, and random founder communities rather than Product Hunt itself.

Now we’re hoping the PH newsletter sends another wave today. Curious to see how much of launch day is hype and how much sticks long term.

Either way, feels good to finally get things moving.

Proof below:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/causo-hub-free-tools-for-fundraising

https://preview.redd.it/uw7iwkepaa1h1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=136db151e65f20737d7fe1e57a59cc39e3b16d88

https://preview.redd.it/vmmdd6fraa1h1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=a149773fdd876e68fb859452aee06b973cc9e542

Another update on Causo (I posted here 3 days ago about going from 9 to 26 users after fixing onboarding).

Today we did something scarier. Cut prices in half on both paid plans and made the main investor browsing feature completely free.

• Starter: $25 → $15/mo
• LFG: $150 → $59/mo
• Investor database: now free to browse

When we talked to people who signed up but didn't convert, the same thing kept coming up. Not "I don't see the value." More like "I'm an early stage founder, I have no money, $150 a month feels insane right now." Most also just wanted to peek at the database before paying. We were gating the most curiosity-driven moment behind a paywall.

The $150 LFG tier especially bugged me. We picked it because it felt reasonable for agency-type clients, but our actual users are broke founders trying to raise. We were charging based on what would be nice, not what people could afford.

First day: 5 new signups (vs 2-3 a day before), a couple of paid conversions on the lower tiers, and two people from earlier "no thanks" conversations came back and upgraded.

Too early to know if it's a real lift or a novelty bump. Genuine worry is whether dropping from $150 to $59 just trains users to expect cheap and locks us into low ARPU.

Things I'm trying to figure out:

1. For people who cut prices significantly, did the conversion lift offset lower ARPU long term, or did you regret it?
2. Anyone successfully raised prices back up after dropping them? How did existing users react?
3. Did making your core feature free actually change your funnel, or did most people just freeload?

I made a post here last week about trying to get the first users for Causo and got a lot of genuinely useful feedback from people here, so I figured I should share what happened after we made some changes.

Last Wednesday we had 9 live users and 2 paying users.

Today we have 26 users and 7 paying users.

The funny part is that the changes were actually really simple:

1. We moved onboarding from step 0 to step 1.

Before, people had to fill in a bunch of stuff before they could even properly see or use the product. Now they can get in immediately, look around, click things, see matches/data, and then complete onboarding later if they want better results.

2. We started showing way more upfront.

Previously users had to go through multiple steps before seeing anything useful. Now they instantly have something to explore before paying.

Both of these feel painfully obvious in hindsight, but it still took nearly a week, 12 emails to users, and a lot of guessing before we finally got enough feedback to understand where people were dropping off.

I think one thing I underestimated is how hard it is to get useful feedback when you only have a handful of users. Everyone says “talk to users”, but when you have 9 users and half of them ghost you, every feedback cycle takes forever.

So now I’m curious:

1. How do you shorten the time between “something feels wrong” and actually figuring out what the issue is?
2. For people with freemium products, did introducing a free tier change how you priced the paid plans? And did local pricing / currency end up mattering much?

Hey guys, real question here.

We have launched our first product about a week and a half ago (soft launch with pretty much no marketing or warmups).

So far were able to onboard 9 users, 2 paying rest free/discounted. However only 3 of them are actually using the product and are not really giving any real feedback - and we know there should be plenty to say, the product is by no means perfect.

Would love to hear what worked for people and what didn't!

Many thanks in advance!

Edit: a few people DMed me asking what the product was, it is a tool that helps to remove time and emotional commitment out of sending VC emails - anyone who ran a fundraising product will know the pain. I have also added a little about it in my personal description.

P.s. There is a lot of great comments and helpful people here, so dont want to ruin it with self promo.

Building Causo, an AI tool that handles VC outreach for early-stage founders (finding right-fit funds, researching partners, sending personalized emails).

Looking for 5-10 people actively raising or about to raise who'd be up for trying it and telling me what's broken. Free access, no catch, just want honest feedback. (I hope this constitutes "value for the community")

Drop a comment or DM if you're interested.

Thank you all in advance 😄