r/SaaS

Ive been looking into ways to cut down the number of live demos our team runs every week. Every tool I check out keeps mentioning conversational AI but I cant tell if its actually something new or just a different way of packaging chat or product tours. Some of them look like bots and others look like guided demos so Im a bit lost on what it actually does differently or how its supposed to replace a real demo. Is anyone using this in a way that actually works?

How do you guys deal with all the hate around AI products?

Every time someone launches something with AI, people instantly say:

(saved quite a few but these are the repetitive ones )

“Just another AI wrapper with a fancy UI.”

“AI products are replacing people’s livelihoods.”

“People spent years mastering these skills, and now AI making them irrelevant.”

“You’re automating work real humans used to do.”

“Most AI startups are solving fake problems.”

“Everyone’s just adding AI because it’s trendy.”

“AI is lowering the value of skilled work.”

“This feels more like a replacement than innovation.”

“Builders are profiting while others lose jobs.”

“Why use AI when a human can do it better?”

And honestly, I kinda get both sides.

AI already affected my own career negatively, and now I’m learning it and trying to build something useful for myself first. But seeing so much negativity around AI builders sometimes makes me hesitate.

How do you guys process the criticism, and what keeps you motivated to continue building?

I started a business and while building out my sales team, I realized I did not actually have reliable leads to give them.

I looked into buying leads, using platforms, scraping directories, and all the usual stuff people recommend, but could not shake the feeling that most of it was either outdated, overpriced, or being sold to everyone else too.

It started as a rough MVP, but after about a week of vibe coding, it turned into a full-stack app running in custom Docker containers on my VPS.

If anyone here has built something similar, I would love to hear your thoughts. I am not sure if I am overengineering it, but so far it is actually pulling in some solid leads.

https://preview.redd.it/31470rvvuh2h1.png?width=1360&format=png&auto=webp&s=e2505bd9854a4c4fc879e1433fba4593d803a9d3

If your interested in a copy of the repo and know how to run docker compose, hit me up.

I'm building a b2b SaaS. Kind of a niche thing. I'm aiming to replace some software in my industry which effectively has a monopoly, but that I often heard complaints about.

I have a few ex-colleagues who were able to arrange a chat and a demo at their new companies. Both times, I started by having them explain what their current workflows are, what their problems are, what could be better. From my perspective, it seems to align with what I'm building.

Then move into a demo and they seemed enthusiastic, asking a few questions, etc.

It's a freemium model so I leave it by saying I'll send over some links. They can sign up, have a play with the free features, and then I can swing some evaluation licenses for the premium stuff if they want.

That's where it ended both times. They didn't sign up, didn't try it.

The first of those was a few months ago, and they were not actively looking to replace what they were using, so I kind of just figured they weren't interested. Maybe that's my bad and I could have pushed more.

The second of those was a few weeks ago. The difference here is that they are actively looking to ditch MonopolySoft. My ex-colleague said that it's up for renewal soon and they don't want to renew it again because it's insanely expensive, so they've already been actively reaching out to vendors and looking at replacements. I figured that being the case, they would move fairly quickly to at least try it out, but nope.

What am I doing wrong? I don't think it's the case of the product being a poor fit, because what they're telling me aligns with what I'm building, and they seem enthusiastic. The demo is only an overview, so I don't think they can be coming to to opinion "this isn't even worth trying" based on that.

I'm wondering whether my approach of "give the free stuff a try some time" could use improvement, but I also don't want to be overbearing. Dunno. I'm an engineer not a salesperson.

Maybe twice is not enough data to read into anything, but these have felt like good opportunities and it's disappointing when they seem to fizzle out.

Solo SaaS founder here.

The topic I see most often around these communities is "How do I get clients?". I don't want to get caught with a working product, but with nobody to use it, so I'm doing my due diligence on that front by being proactive. During my research, I found that the best approach for someone at my level is to build a community around the problem I'm solving and its solution.

Fair enough!

I have 6k followers on LinkedIn and 4.5k on Facebook, but I post only occasionally. I will start leveraging my social media activity to find a few clients with whom I can build a great relationship and cherish their feedback/build around their (business) needs. In the beginning, the goal is to have all clients provide good feedback in a single place, so I'm creating a Discord channel where people can also provide real, direct feedback.

So far so good!

Now... what other options are there? I'm curious what other methods of exposure for building in public are there. Marketing is the biggest problem at my level, and social media manages part of that. Are there other funnels for building in public? What other milestones can one achieve? What platforms can be leveraged in that manner? How can I truly be proactive on this front?

I’m working on an idea for a new search product called CLYCITE. The core idea is simple: instead of giving users a list of links or a black-box AI answer, it would give a direct answer with visible citations, confidence levels, and source quality ratings.

The problem I’m trying to solve is that search today feels broken in a few ways:

• SEO often pushes the most optimized pages, not the most useful ones.
• AI search can sound confident while being wrong.
• Ads make results harder to trust.
• General search does not work equally well for every type of query.
• Non-English users are still underserved.

The direction I’m exploring is:

• citation-first answers.
• transparent confidence / uncertainty.
• source quality scoring.
• multilingual support.
• possibly agent-like research features for deeper tasks.

I’m not here to sell anything I’m trying to find out whether this is a real problem and what would make this genuinely useful.
Would you actually use a product like this? What would make you trust it, and what would make you ignore it?

Watching other founders succeed is p*rn. You get aroused, you feel something, and then nothing changes. I started coding at 16. All I wanted was to launch a product, get those Stripe notifications, flex the dashboard. The idea of a job never resonated, service work never resonated. I just wanted to build something and have people pay for it. So I did what everyone does. Hormozi. Diary of the CEO. Manifestation videos. Course after course. Book after book. And every time I didn't watch a video or finish a chapter, I felt this anxiety, like that video, that book, that's the one I'm missing. That's what's standing between me and the money. Here's what's actually happening when you feel that: your brain is protecting you. Speaking to users is a threat. Cold calls are a threat. Putting yourself out there and being wrong in public is a threat. So your brain builds a story just one more video, just one more framework and you comply, because it feels like progress. It isn't. It's your brain hiding. The answer you're looking for isn't in any YouTube video, any course, any book. I don't care how good the guru is. Get out in the world. Make connections. Speak to your users. Do the thing that makes you uncomfortable, because that discomfort is exactly where your brain is trying to keep you away from. Stop giving your energy to people who need your attention to build their business. Go build yours.

Hi everyone.

(I read the rules and couldn't tell if this is allowed, as it's genuinely 100% free lol - but feel free to remove if breaks rules.)

I'm launching a new service and want to build the portfolio of projects. So looking for some SaaS founders that want free SEO content.

You get 4-5 articles for free.

What I want in return: A testimonial/ability to display your logo under "brands we've written for"

Also doesn't have to be SEO articles, can be general articles you want on your website.

No commitment. No credit card required. No bullshit. No calls. 
No sugar. No artificial sweeteners. No seed oils. No GMO.    

DM if interested 😄

Thanks everyone!

Got my first sale from an open-source tool last week, and it kind of flipped how I think about monetizing software.

Built the thing for myself first. Small problem, small fix. Used it for a while, threw it up publicly without really thinking of it as a "product."

The launch went way better than I expected. Didn't even check the page until the next night, opened it, bunch of notifications. Somehow it had climbed to #5.

Cool, but I still didn't think anyone would actually pay for it. The whole thing is open source. You can clone the repo, set it up yourself, use it for free.

Then a few days later I showed it to another indie maker (he quite famous). He looked at it for maybe a minute and went, "you could sell this."

Felt weird. But fine, let's test it.

I kept the repo open source and packaged a paid version on top: no manual setup, bundled app, auto-updates, easier install. Basically the version you'd want if you didn't want to think about it.

Got my first sale the next day.

The thing that actually surprised me was the second launch. Barely any traction. Like, single-digit upvotes. Someone still paid.

That's the part I keep chewing on. They weren't paying for the code, the code is sitting right there. They were paying so they didn't have to set anything up or deal with updates or babysit it. Convenience.

Open source and paid used to feel like opposites to me. Now it feels more like the repo is the trust layer and the paid thing is the "I don't want to deal with this" layer. Same product, different audience.

Anyway, one sale isn't much. But it definitely changed where my head is at.

Founder here
spent a few weeks going through postmortems of failed SaaS products
the cause of death was almost always the same
not bad code
not bad design
not bad marketing
they built something before confirming anyone actually wanted it
the founder had a hypothesis and treated it like a fact
the scary part is how rational it felt to them at the time
"i have this problem so others must too"
"i got positive feedback from friends"
"there's no competition so the market is wide open"
all of these feel like validation
none of them are
real validation is finding strangers who are already suffering through a bad solution
not friends who say "yeah that sounds useful"
what's the closest thing to real validation you've seen work before building?

Is paid advertising always a part of a successful SaaS?

Or are their people here who pulled it off on sharing/mouth-to-mouth/SEO?

Just looking for opinions. They go hand in hand? Or not?

And if you did without. How did you succeed?

And if you did with: which are the best paid advertising options?

The biggest risk with AI customer service is not the AI being too weak. It is the AI being too confident.

I’m building in this space and the lesson is clear: FAQ-only bots are not enough.

For ecommerce, AI support needs:
- live order/store data
- policy grounding
- approval gates before refunds or money movement
- audit logs
- human escalation
- model routing
- safe defaults

Otherwise one wrong answer can create a real liability problem.

Disclosure: I’m building Hire Fortuna in this space, so I’m biased, but this is exactly why we designed it around approval-gated workflows rather than letting a bot free-run customer support.

Hey r/Saas,

This is CJ, I created many Saas businesses.

My mind, constantly looking for a new idea to build and launch and make money out of it.

So, like i usually do, i was doing some marketing tasks, and I found that it’s very hard to follow same thing everyday.

My tasks include sending cold emails and warming up existing users.

So I planned to automate it.

See earlier I setup my email sequences to keep my existing users warm, but it was not bringing any results.

I built that email sequence without validation thats why it was not bringing any results.

So back to present, I decided to test different variants of my email subjects and flows. But I had no system.

So I went back to the hardest mode a tech entrepreneur can switch to: manually typing and sending emails and keeping record on paper to see what works.

Over past 4 days I sent only 150 emails. Every day 6 hours planning, reading about emails, questioning existence. Reframing and then sending.

150 emails
10 engagements
0 sales (no problem)

But i found something that was broken. My understanding of my customers personas and thier pain points.

When i emailed people, while brainstorming and checking their accounts one by one I got to know that i have got agencies, vibe coders, and developers.

Previously it was not clear. Given this clarity I thought this manual outreach is taking so much tjme so i started streamlining what i was doing.

After investing 2 more days i built internal crm that shows all of my users in a single view, and what they do.

I used it today, sent 100 mails and zero results.

So i deleted, got back to manual mode

Sorry for wasting your time. I’m going back to send those messages manualky.

I dont feel like completing this post.

Bye
CJ

Get my product if you think it will help you
Indie kit - best ai starter kit that even got AppSumo campaign support alongside 100+ other feaures

Vibemastery (dot) io - if you suck at vibe coding. Or ai coding. This course cna help you out. Plus you save ai costs

So, let's assume you've found a nice service for finance and trading management that you've been looking for for some time. It has a nice UI and a key feature that its competitors don't have.

However, the only payment option for the subscription is crypto (USDT). How would you react to this, and how will it influence your decision?

The question is obviously about me developing this service. When it comes to billing implementation, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I need a payment option in fiat currency for my MVP. Implementing this will require a great deal of bureaucratic hassle in my country.

Since I don't know how many people are ready to pay in crypto, I can't plan on this and make a final decision. Could you share your opinion in the comments?

What indian Saas founders are using these days to collect USD/international payments.

Are you using Stripe Atlas, LemonSqueezy, Paddle, Razorpay, PayPal, or something else?

Any issues with taxes, failed payments, or subscriptions?