After Everything Failed, Here’s How We Hit 24,000 Users

Hey Product Hunt,

I’m Nikola, a bootstrapped builder who’s tried launching a handful of products with @whoisrade during our 6-products-in-12-months challenge last year. Rade’s been in the B2B startup world for 20 years. We thought that experience would make B2C SaaS’ product growth a sure thing. It didn’t.

Our first step into B2C was @Olovka, a $9.95/mo writing tool for students and researchers. We were excited, did a spiffy Product Hunt launch, wrote blog posts, posted on socials… but after the initial buzz, growth dropped off hard.

Here’s what we tried (and what didn’t work):

• PPC/ads: Not viable at under $10 a month. We’d be waiting forever to break even, and being bootstrapped, that wasn’t an option.

• Content, SEO, social: Glacially slow, especially at the start.

• Communities, DMs, cold outreach to journalists: Some nice conversations, but barely any adoption.

• UGC Videos on TikTok: didn’t manage to make them go viral.

• “Growth hacks:” Felt disingenuous, didn’t stick.

Honestly, there were weeks of nothing. It was frustrating to see the dashboard stuck on “no new users.” I know a lot of Product Hunt makers have hit this wall too - especially when moving from B2B playbooks to B2C reality.

What Finally (Quietly) Worked

The thing that (slowly, then suddenly) got us results was finding where our target users already spent their time and just participating - not pitching.

For Olovka, that place turned out to be YouTube. Every day there were videos about “AI tools for students, writing, and productivity,” with thousands of viewers.

Instead of shilling our product, I started leaving genuinely helpful comments, sharing tools that worked (including Olovka), giving practical advice, or answering questions. It felt less like marketing, more like actually being part of the discussion.

It was a slog to do this manually, so I built the process into a tool for myself to find relevant videos, generate natural-sounding comments that mentions Olovka, make sure comments stayed at the top of the comment section, and track which ones picked up traction.

Did It Really Do Anything?

Surprisingly, yes. Over about 3 months:

• Olovka went from 500-something signups to over 24,000

• Organic and direct traffic finally took off

• Conversion rates were higher than launch week

• We saw way more people Googling our brand

• SEO improved because of more mentions and curiosity

If you want the stats and what the process looked like, I put everything in a case study: https://rumora.ai/case-studies/olovka

My Takeaway (For Other Makers Here)

If you’re building a SaaS and you’re stuck, all I can really share is what I wish I’d heard: Find conversations your audience is already part of. Add something useful. Don’t force it.

I still don’t have a silver bullet, but I’m happy to chat or answer any specifics - no slick sales talk, just an honest experience from another builder.

Thanks for reading - if you’re in the same boat, hang in there. It took us a lot of trial and error before anything clicked.

P.S. We’re quietly launching @Rumora on Product Hunt tomorrow - that tool we built for ourselves and decided to open up for other makers.

— Nikola & @whoisrade