As businesses scale, certain metrics seem to become much more valuable for decision-making.
Not just revenue, but things like:
customer retention
response time
conversion rate
operational efficiency
workflow bottlenecks
Curious which operational metric became most useful for your business and why.
Hey everyone,
With 5 years in fitness and 5 years in coding, I got sick of using Strava, MyFitnessPal, and a lifting app separately.
So, I built a free all-in-one tracker:
I worked hard on this and need honest feedback on the App. DM me your email after downloading and I’ll upgrade you to Premium for a free week!
Play Store Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fitsense.ai
I've nudged a lot of early users for feedback and the response rate has been kind of depressing. I've tried email, in-app prompts, DMs, Slack, and a few calls. Most of the time it's silence. When people do answer, it's often one word or so vague that I can't really use it.
The awkward part is that these are people who seemed engaged enough to sign up and try the product. Then when I ask for a few minutes of feedback, they disappear. I keep wondering if it's the channel, the timing, or just the way I'm asking.
At this point I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious or if this is just normal early-stage founder pain. I'm mostly trying to figure out which channels actually produce usable replies from real users, and what kind of prompt or timing gets people to respond instead of ghosting.
What has actually worked for you?
I’ve been working on a website for a product called QuickProof and would really appreciate some honest feedback.
Here’s the link: https://www.quickproof.ai/
It still feels a bit rough in terms of layout and clarity, so open to suggestions on design, structure, or anything that stands out. If you’re a designer/developer and your ideas resonate, I’d be open to connecting and working together to improve it
For me, it was creating an Open Claw skill for my SaaS. But honestly, it felt more like luck than a repeatable strategy.
I couldn’t maintain the momentum afterward. SEO and posting on X didn’t really bring many results, so now I’m thinking about trying outreach next.
What worked for you?
I've been running a small SaaS for appointment-based businesses for about 6 months. It sends automated SMS reminders, handles confirmations, and tracks no-show rates.
Currently priced at $29/month. Thinking about moving to $49/month based on the value it delivers (average salon saves $800-1,200/month in recovered appointments).
My questions for r/entrepreneur:
I've mostly been selling through cold outreach to salon owners — conversion is decent but slow. Any advice from people who've grown B2B SaaS targeting local businesses?
Happy to share more details about what's working and what isn't!
Hey everyone,
I’m building a small wellness app called Rueh.
The idea is simple: instead of browsing through a generic meditation library, you write one sentence about what you’re feeling, and Rueh creates a short personal calming audio around that moment.
Example prompts:
- “I feel anxious, but I don’t know why.”
- “I can’t sleep because my thoughts won’t stop.”
- “I’m nervous before a flight.”
- “It’s Sunday evening and I already feel stressed about Monday.”
I launched the first version recently and learned a few things pretty quickly.
At first, I positioned it as an “AI meditation app”, but that didn’t really land. People don’t wake up thinking they need an AI meditation app. They think, “I can’t sleep”, “my head won’t stop”, or “I need to calm down before this flight.”
So I’m now positioning it around specific moments instead of the technology.
I also changed the funnel so people can listen to sample audios before signing up, because asking for an account before someone hears the product created too much friction.
Right now I’m trying to figure out the best growth path.
The options I’m considering:
Short-form content
Posting daily reels/TikToks based on very specific moments, like “POV: it’s 3am and your brain wants to discuss your entire life.”
Community-led growth
Going into sleep, overthinking, student stress, or flight anxiety communities and creating calming audios from real comments.
Micro-influencers
Partnering with small creators in sleep, anxiety, mindfulness, student life, or fear-of-flying niches.
Paid ads
I tested Meta ads, but it feels too early and too expensive before the funnel is fully proven.
My question:
If you were trying to grow this from 0 to the first 1,000 real users, what would you focus on first?
Would you double down on organic short-form content, community posts, influencers, SEO pages, or something else?
Link for context:
Open to honest feedback, especially on positioning and first-user acquisition.
Hi,
I’m testing a lead qualification workflow for outreach and ran into a scoring question I’d like feedback on.
One audited lead ranked first with a score of 85/100.
The lead had several positive signals
However, the recommended action was “ignore for now” because the company appears to be a service provider in an adjacent or overlapping space, making it a possible competitor, partner, or poor direct outreach target.
So the score is technically saying:
“This company shows strong opportunity signals.”
But the action is saying:
“This is not necessarily a lead you should contact right now.”
What do I do here? I’m trying to decide how this should be represented in a useful lead qualification system.
Would you prefer?
My concern is that a sales rep may see an 85/100 score at the top of the list and assume it should be contacted immediately, even when the recommended next action says otherwise.
For anyone working in outbound prospecting: how would you structure this so the ranking remains useful and not misleading?
Backlinks are critical for developing trust and for SEO and GEO. They are a grind and buying them is bad practice. What are some of the best practices and successful ways to obtain? Which directories are free and the best?
If you've been denied by your bank for funding for your business what was the reason? Was it low credit score? Or was it due to no having enough revenue? Or any other reason?
I build IndexerHub, a tool that gets your pages indexed on Google, Bing and AI search engines fast. One month of real data and honest lessons below.
Apr 15 to May 14. 1,766 visitors. $1,294.55 in revenue. $0.73 per visitor. 0.69% conversion rate. Traffic up 317% from the previous period.
For a micro SaaS these are not viral numbers. But they are real, they are growing, and every piece of it is traceable. Here is what I learned building to this point.
The micro SaaS content trap
Most micro SaaS founders write content that is too broad. They target keywords with decent volume that attract people who are vaguely interested in the topic. That traffic looks fine and converts poorly because those visitors are learning, not buying.
The content that actually converts for a micro SaaS is written for one specific person at one specific moment. For IndexerHub that person is someone who just launched a site or published a batch of content and cannot understand why Google is ignoring it. Every article I write is aimed at that exact moment.
I use EarlySEO for this. It helps identify the specific questions my target users are actually searching for at the decision stage and structures content around them. The format it enforces is simple but it works. Answer in the first paragraph, supporting context after, plain language throughout, nothing padded. That format converts because the person reading recognises their situation immediately and feels like the article was written for them. It also gets picked up by ChatGPT and Perplexity which cite direct-answer content in their responses. Those AI-referred visitors are some of my best traffic because they arrive pre-qualified and already evaluating solutions.
The Reddit strategy that actually works
You can see from the graph that almost every traffic spike has Reddit as the source. But none of those posts were promotional. Every single one shared something genuinely useful. How Google's crawl schedule works, why new pages stay invisible for weeks, how the Indexing API actually processes requests, what IndexNow does differently from traditional crawling.
Useful posts get saved, shared and commented on. They build the kind of trust that makes someone check out your product when you mention it naturally. The moment a post feels like an ad it stops working. The moment it feels like a founder sharing something they actually know it starts compounding.
Indexing your own content first
This one felt obvious in hindsight but I still had to be intentional about it. I am literally building an indexing tool and I still had to make sure my own content was being submitted immediately after publishing. Content sitting unindexed for weeks while you are building momentum is wasted effort. Everything I publish goes straight to Google's Indexing API and Bing's IndexNow the same day. That habit changed how quickly new content started driving traffic.
Measuring the right thing
I track revenue per visitor above everything else because it tells me whether the traffic is qualified. $0.73 per visitor means the channel is working. The conversion rate at 0.69% tells me there is room to improve the onboarding but the traffic quality is not the bottleneck.
Faurya gives me this visibility and it is completely free with no card required. Connects to Stripe and shows revenue per visitor, conversion rate and page level attribution. For a micro SaaS where every decision has to count that data is not optional. It is the difference between guessing what to work on next and knowing.
317% traffic growth, $1,294 in revenue, and a system that is starting to compound. That is what one month of focused micro SaaS growth looks like.
I am gearing up to start another business but am very concerned about tracking the performance and financial data - it seems like there is so much room for error that can run your business into the ground if not done well or efficiently or focusing on the wrong metrics..
How do you personally keep track of everything across 2+ businesses and what tools have you found useful?
Thanks for your help!
Lately I have been thinking about how vulnerable small businesses are to simple email mistakes. One accidental click from an employee can turn into invoice fraud, account access issues, or customer data problems really fast.
We had a situation earlier this year where someone almost clicked a fake supplier email that looked completely legitimate. Since then we started paying more attention to awareness training internally instead of only relying on spam filters.
One thing I noticed is that employees usually do fine spotting obvious scam emails, but realistic ones are a different story entirely. We experimented with some phishing simulation tools including AutoPhish just to see where people struggled most, and honestly the results were surprising.
Curious how other business owners are handling this.
Are you actively training employees for phishing attacks or mostly relying on email security tools alone?
Would genuinely love to hear what is working for other teams.
I am gearing up to start another business but am very concerned about tracking the performance and financial data - it seems like there is so much room for error that can run your business into the ground if not done well or efficiently or focusing on the wrong metrics..
How do you personally keep track of everything across 2+ businesses and what tools have you found useful?
Thanks for your help!
Hey everyone,
Looking for honest advice from people who’ve launched consumer apps before.
About a month ago, I launched Nexora, an app designed to help couples have deeper and more meaningful conversations together.
Before building it, I spent a lot of time researching who might actually want this. I mainly identified:
new couples who want to discover each other more deeply,
and couples already interested in relationship advice, communication tools, and self-improvement content.
The issue is… I feel like I know where these people are (relationship subreddits, Facebook groups, Instagram communities, etc.), but I’m struggling to actually reach them.
Most relationship communities are extremely strict about self-promotion, which I completely understand. I even tried genuinely helping people in discussions where I thought the app could be useful, but moderators still usually said no when I asked if I could mention it.
So now I’m a bit stuck.
Besides Instagram, Reddit, Facebook groups, and WhatsApp groups: Where would you try to acquire users for this kind of app?
I’d genuinely appreciate any insights, especially from people who’ve marketed niche consumer apps before. Thank you 🙂
I wanted to ask if you are struggling with a lot of leads and how you manage unserious ones.
I know the usual advice is to just ask real customers for reviews, and I get that. But for a new business, having almost no reviews can make people hesitate before calling, booking, or buying anything.
I’m not looking for a huge fake-looking spike or a bunch of copy-paste 5 star reviews. I’m more curious if there are any services that help with realistic-looking Google reviews, slow delivery, and reviews that don’t disappear after a few days.
Has anyone here bought Google reviews before? Did it help with trust or local visibility, or did it end up causing more problems than it was worth?
A lot of SEO and lead gen agencies spend time building prospect lists from Apollo, LinkedIn, directories, Google, scraping tools, or bought databases.
But the list itself is rarely the hard part.
The hard part is deciding which companies are actually worth researching, personalizing, and reaching out to before you burn time on bad-fit prospects.
I’ve noticed that a company can look like a good lead on the surface and still be a terrible outreach target.
For example, a business might have a weak website, poor SEO, no content, and no rankings... but that does not always mean they are a good SEO prospect. Sometimes it just means they do not care nor have any budget for that.
On the other hand, a company with decent traction but clear gaps can be a much better opportunity. Maybe they already run paid ads, recently hired a marketing lead, expanded into a new market, launched a new product, or have content that ranks but is clearly under-optimized.
That changes the way you think about prospecting.
Instead of asking, “Who has bad SEO?” the better question might be:
“Who has enough business momentum, budget, and visible gaps to make outreach worth it?”
For cold outreach, this seems especially important because personalization takes time. If you spend 10 to 20 minutes researching every lead, bad-fit prospects become expensive very quickly.
The strongest prospects seem to have a mix of:
- clear business activity
- ability to pay
- some marketing maturity
- visible SEO or website gaps
- a reason to care
- a realistic contact path
The weakest prospects often have:
- no recent activity
- no marketing investment
- no signs of growth
- a dead or abandoned website (Caution here, this is usually perceived as an opportunity... it rarely is.)
- tiny budget or unclear business model
At the end of the day, lead quality is about whether that company is likely to care about solving it now.
This is why I am building LeadScore Hub. It pre-qualifies and scores SEO Leads to show you Who to contact first, Why, and What to do next. I am developing it to save you time and help you close more clients with fewer headaches.
For people doing cold outreach for SEO, lead gen, or B2B services:
Would that be useful for your business? If so, would you pay for something like that?
I’ve been noticing that a lot of small businesses spend time trying every possible marketing strategy at once, and it gets overwhelming pretty fast.
Some people swear by SEO, others focus on short-form content, paid ads, email lists, partnerships, or just word of mouth. What’s interesting is that two businesses in the same space can grow from completely different channels.
I’m curious from real experience, what actually ended up driving meaningful growth for your business?
Not necessarily the fastest results, but the thing that consistently brought in customers over time.
Working on a subscription-based productivity app and realizing billing can become its own headache once you deal with failed renewals, retries, expired cards, and recovery flows.
Stripe works, but I’m curious what other builders here are using once subscriptions start getting more complex.
Are you sticking with Stripe + custom logic, or using something else on top?