Ask HN: Should I Promote My SaaS to get first 100 Customers without budget
Bootstrapped founders: how did you get your first 100 customers without spending on ads? I'm interested in tactics that actually worked in 2026, not generic marketing advice.
"That's awesome! I'll try it out."
Not a single person tried it out. I also emailed every other business owner within a 30 mile radius to give it a go, for free. Nothing.
This wasn't my first rodeo, either. I've built so many projects since 2015 in the hopes of having a SaaS business.
I've completely given up on "SaaS", especially in the current year, with the rise of LLMs and perhaps hundreds of thousands of new projects released daily. It's completely draining, and I've burned through so much money trying to "make it". Never again.
Don't pitch the product, talk about researching for the product (which is what you'll be doing anyway, but some of those initial interview people may become your best advocates). People that genuinely have the problem you want to solve will want to help.
Steve Blank has a nice segment on the ideal people to involve here in The Four Steps to the Epiphany, calling them Earlyvangelists. One big thing to look for is that people have identified a problem that you're solving, tried to solve it themselves, and in an ideal scenario have a budget for a better solution (see https://www.votito.com/methods/earlyvangelists/ for more).
_The Mom Test_ book is an excellent interview guide for this stage, and you'll figure out the questions to ask from there. here's my checklist from when I used it a while ago (not verbatim from the book, so best to actually read the book).
- how do you currently solve X - and how much time do you spend on it? can you show me how you do it? - what happened the last time X came up? talk me through the last time it happened. - if not solved, why not - have you tried finding a different solution for it? - why do you bother doing it? - what are the implications of that? - what else have you tried? - who else should I talk to? - anything else I should have asked?
to find if the problem you want to solve even matters at all: - how much time do you spend on it each week? - which tools and services are you using for it? - what have you already tried doing to improve this? - what are the 3 big things you’re trying to fix or improve right now?
The first thing to understand is that there is no one size fits all. You have to start somewhere keep iterating. Ok you probably already knew that but wanted to preface anyway to set expectations.
Overall, You have to start with the WHO. Who is this product really for ? If your answer is generic or covers various horizontal segments, you are going to struggle a lot more. NO one builds a product that covers various horizontal segments on Day 1 and succeeds generally. You have to go really really niche and specific. The problem is that this scares new founders who think that if they don't think or aim big (translates to trying to sell to too many segments), they will fail or not make enough money to make it a real business. This is totally false thinking. Take it from a guy who has done it for 12+ years and still fails.
Once you have defined the "Who" (note that this may change with time but you have to start somewhere based on your best assumption as of now), you should have it written down very specifically. For example, don't say "I have a CRM". Instead say "I have a CRM that helps B2B SAAS founders in this specific way".
Also, 100 customers is too ambitious and unrealistic in early days. Start with getting first 5-10. Get them in first. Condition your mind that it is ok to have a really small set of customers who hopefully love your product. With that, you now have to go hunting also known as "outbound" in salesy terms. Sorry no magic wand here if you were expecting a different answer. You of course can do the usual like submitting to directories,writing blog posts etc and you must do all those as well on the side as everything adds up.But the most important thing is manually reaching out to prospective customers.
So now the question is: how do I find those prospective customers ? This will again depend on the "WHO". But more importantly, where do they typically hang out ? I don't mean necessarily in person (that of course helps a lot) but also online.
One tip is to look for customers in your niche already who may be using a competitor product. Websites like builtwith etc can give you a decent list of those customers (not 1005 accurate but they are reasonably accurate).
Bottomline is that you have to do manual outreach every day (minimum to 50 people if you can). Don't sell them the product. Start asking them for a conversation.
All the best. Happy to help if you have more questions.
So would love to know if something is working tbh
I know people say cold emails work, but it's brutal and goes to spam most often than not. Maybe it works when you are emailing as a person talking of something and it's low these days too, but trying anywhere near selling even if it's something that would help them a lot it's gone.
Content marketing - I have to check more of the latest report to say this. But the post hyper specific blogs/information isn't working at least when you are targeting AI savvy users cuz most use AI overviews or similar
Micro tools - there are too many to compete with and AI makes up one so easily these days
Communities in slack/reddit advise when you are selling to B2B has become shovel sellers echo chamber instead of gold miners, it's everyone trying to pitch
Something I do see working, just because there is AI doesn't mean everyone want to take the overhead of creating pushing it up and maintaining, at least in few communities I have seen they are very much open to solutions, but there is not as much paying power.
I am sorry if I sound pessimistic, I would love if someone could prove this wrong lol.