Where did your first 10 users actually come from?
I'm Shun, the maker of Ownfeed.
We launched here today, and I want to use this thread to learn from you, not to pitch.
Here's the pattern I kept running into with my own projects: I
'd build something, post the launch, and nobody would come. The only thing that reliably worked was finding people who were already describing my problem on Reddit or X, and replying to them in my own words. Not a DM, not a pitch. Just an honest answer with "I built something for this" at the end.
That's why Ownfeed is a feed instead of an alert inbox or an auto-reply bot. You paste your URL, it reads Reddit, X, Bluesky and Hacker News, and keeps only the posts where your product actually helps. You still write every reply yourself.
What I'd love to hear from other makers:
1. Where did your first 10 users actually come from? Not where you tried, but where they came from.
2. If you reply to strangers' posts, what makes a reply land instead of getting ignored or removed?
3. Is there a community (a subreddit, a Discord, a forum) that was unexpectedly good for you?
I'll share what I see in our own data as it comes in, and I'll answer every reply here.
Replies
Congratulations on the launch Shun Really solid approach. with spam bots ruining standard outreach keeping the human touch is key.
one on one DMs with first 10 users on X and niche founders Slack groups. no hype just manual outreach.
how to make repliies hit the mark: Solve 90% of their problem in the comment itself. People trust it if it is very helpful without the click. Also, a quick full disclosure I built this helps.
Surprising community: private slack groups for indie hackers - way better engagement than public subreddits.
Supporting Ownfeed today
@nabeel_cheema070795Ā Thank you!
"Solve 90% of the problem in the comment itself" is the bar I'm holding myself to ā Ownfeed only finds the thread, the reply still has to earn it. Agreed on the disclosure too.
The private Slack groups point is new to me. Any you'd recommend for indie hackers?
Does Ownfeed show how fresh a post is? A reply on a day-old thread feels late, so I'd want to catch the new ones first...
@oliver_graf1Ā Thanks for the question! Yes ā every post shows its age (3h, 2dā¦). What it can't do yet is sort or filter by it; the feed is ranked by relevance today. "Newest first" and a "last 24h" filter are coming, for exactly the reason you describe.
We haven't launched yet, so no first ten to report. What's worked best so far for getting noticed is close to what you describe: replying to people every day, long before asking for anything. Curious, how many of your first ten came from a single reply?
@farzam_habibiĀ Thanks Farzam! Honestly, none of them came from one big reply ā it was more like one person at a time, and most of them from a thread I'd replied to days or weeks earlier. The daily habit mattered far more than any single comment. Sounds like you're already doing the right thing ā good luck with the launch!
Fair point! I've found the daily habit is the bit that compounds, a useful reply can turn into a conversation days later. Did any one community keep producing once the launch attention faded?
@matheus_paranhos1Ā Yes, but not the big ones. r/SaaS and r/startups spiked with the launch and went quiet. The ones that kept producing were smaller, problem-shaped subs like r/SideProject and r/smallbusiness. Someone posts "I'm stuck with X" there every day, so there's always a fresh thread to actually help in.
Bonus: Reddit threads stay searchable for months, so a reply from week 3 still sends people over in week 10. X replies die in a day.
Which one stayed warm for you after Toone's launch?