How to Get Your First SaaS Users Without an Existing Audience

You spend weeks building the product. The landing page is ready. The signup flow works. You finally launch, share the link, and wait.

A few friends say it looks great. Maybe someone leaves a like. Then nothing.

That silence is one of the most common experiences in early-stage SaaS, and it doesn’t necessarily mean your product is bad. It means building the product and getting people to find it are two separate problems, and you’ve only been working on one of them.

This guide is about the second problem: how to get your first customers when you have no audience, no email list, and no marketing budget.

Your first users usually don’t come from sophisticated growth systems. They come from focused distribution: finding people who already have the problem, talking to them directly, making the product easy to try, and learning from what happens next.

Why Getting Your First SaaS Users Is So Hard

It helps to understand what is actually happening, because most of the difficulty is structural.

Nobody knows the product exists. There is no search traffic, no word of mouth, and no established brand sending people your way.

You have little distribution. With no audience, there is nobody waiting for your launch announcement.

Your positioning is still a hypothesis. You may think your product is obvious. A stranger seeing the landing page may not agree.

You don’t know what converts yet. You can’t confidently double down on a channel before you’ve found one that works.

There is little social proof. No testimonials, no case studies, and no familiar names.

You’re probably trying too many things. A post on X, a directory submission, a few cold DMs, a community post, and an abandoned SEO article don’t tell you much when none of them gets enough attention.

Early feedback can be contradictory. One person wants feature A. Another wants feature B. A third person doesn’t understand the product at all.

None of this is unusual.

At this stage, the goal isn’t to build a perfect acquisition machine. It’s to find out who wants the product, why they want it, and what stops them from using it.

That is why the first few users are often more valuable as a learning source than as a growth number.

Users and Customers Are Not Always the Same Thing

People often use “users” and “customers” interchangeably, but they represent different stages.

For an early SaaS, the path often looks like:

Visitor → Signup → Activated User → Retained User → Paying Customer

A visitor looked at the page.

A signup gave you an account or email address.

An activated user actually reached the first useful result.

A retained user came back and continued using the product.

A paying customer decided the product was worth paying for.

You don’t necessarily need to reach the last step immediately.

If you’re still validating an MVP, five engaged users who use the product and talk to you can be more useful than 500 random visitors.

The important thing is to know which milestone you’re trying to reach.

Don’t Try to Get Everyone

One of the easiest ways to make customer acquisition harder is to describe your SaaS for everyone.

Consider the difference:

Too broad:

“Our SaaS helps businesses manage their work.”

More useful:

“Our SaaS helps freelance designers automatically follow up on unpaid invoices.”

The second version gives you somewhere to start.

You can identify where freelance designers spend time. You can find conversations about unpaid invoices. You can write outreach that speaks directly to the problem. You can create content around that specific use case.

A few more examples:

“Scheduling software” becomes “appointment booking for independent physiotherapists.”

“Analytics for startups” becomes “MRR and churn tracking for solo SaaS founders.”

“AI productivity tool” becomes “meeting-notes summarization for agency project managers.”

You are not choosing your forever market.

You’re choosing a group of people you can actually reach and understand right now.

You can broaden the market later. Getting the first users is much easier when you know exactly who you’re looking for.

A Simple Rule: Find People Who Already Have the Problem

You don’t need an audience to start.

You need access to people who experience the problem your product solves.

Start with the easiest places first.

People you already know

This can include:

• Former colleagues
• Past clients
• Friends working in the relevant industry
• Friends of friends
• People you’ve worked with before
• Existing beta users or waitlist members

These conversations are valuable because there is already some trust.

Don’t turn them into a sales blast.

Ask whether the problem exists. Show them what you built. Listen.

Places where the problem is discussed

Look for:

• Niche communities
• Relevant forums
• Founder communities
• Slack or Discord groups where promotion is allowed
• Subreddits that permit relevant posts
• LinkedIn discussions
• X posts
• Industry communities
• Local meetups
• Product communities

You are looking for conversations where people are already talking about the problem.

Signals of intent

The strongest early prospects often leave clues.

Someone asks:

“Is there a tool that does this?”

Someone complains about a repetitive task.

Someone says they are still doing something manually in a spreadsheet.

Someone is paying for a product you compete with.

Someone asks for a recommendation in a niche community.

These are much better starting points than randomly choosing 1,000 people and sending them the same message.

How to Get Your First 10 Customers

Your first ten customers or users usually require more manual work than later growth.

This idea is often described as doing things that don’t scale: manually recruiting and helping early users before you worry about building a scalable acquisition machine.

That’s not a weakness.

At this stage, manual acquisition is useful because every conversation teaches you something.

Here are the channels worth trying first:

• Direct founder outreach
• Personal introductions
• Existing professional networks
• Niche communities
• Beta users
• Manual demos
• Founder networks
• Relevant launch platforms
• Early referrals

The important part is not just getting someone to click.

You want to understand why this person cared enough to try.

What good outreach looks like

A weak message:

“Hey, check out my new SaaS. Please sign up!”

It’s about you, and it asks the other person to do work without giving them much reason to care.

A better message might look like:

“Hey, I noticed you mentioned chasing late invoices. I built a small tool that sends reminders automatically, and I’m looking for a few freelancers to try it. Would you be open to taking a look?”

The second message works better because it has context.

It identifies a specific problem.

It explains the product quickly.

And it makes a small ask.

This isn’t a magic script. Some people will still ignore you.

That’s normal.

Send fewer thoughtful messages instead of hundreds of generic ones.

Don’t Try to Scale Before You Know What Works

There’s a temptation to think about how to get 1,000 customers before you have the first ten.

Usually, that’s backwards.

The first ten should help you answer questions like:

• Who actually wants this?
• What problem are they trying to solve?
• What made them sign up?
• What nearly stopped them?
• Where did they hear about you?
• What did they expect the product to do?
• Did they come back?
• Would they recommend it?
• Would they pay for it?

Once you have those answers, customer acquisition becomes less of a guessing game.

How to Get Your First 100 Customers

Getting from 10 to 100 is different.

You should now have some evidence about your best users and where they came from.

The job becomes:

Find what repeats.

For example, suppose your first ten users came from:

• 3 from a niche community
• 2 from direct outreach
• 4 from referrals
• 1 from a launch platform

That doesn’t mean you should spend equal time on every channel.

Maybe the four referral users activated faster and retained better.

Maybe the three community users became strong advocates.

Maybe the launch-platform user never came back.

The numbers are small, but they’re already teaching you something.

Double down on what works

If one community consistently brings relevant users, spend more time there.

If referrals are producing your best customers, build a simple referral habit.

If direct outreach works, improve your targeting rather than immediately abandoning it for another channel.

Add channels one at a time

Potential channels include:

• Content
• SEO
• Partnerships
• Referrals
• Communities
• Directories
• Newsletters
• Product launches
• Founder-led sales
• Product-led acquisition

You don’t need all of them.

You need to identify which ones are worth doing for your product and your audience.

A channel that produces ten highly relevant users is often more valuable than a channel that produces 1,000 irrelevant visits.

What to Do If You Have No Audience

This is where many founders get stuck.

They assume they need followers before they can get users.

You don’t.

You don’t need an audience to start. You need access to people who have the problem.

Audience and distribution are different things.

An audience is a group of people who already follow you.

Distribution is the set of ways your product reaches people who might need it.

A founder might have:

• 200 followers
• 20 relevant community members
• 10 useful contacts
• 5 realistic prospects

That’s enough to start.

You don’t need to “build an audience” for six months before talking to customers.

You can build distribution while getting your first users.

Participate before promoting

Don’t join a community and immediately drop your product link.

Read the rules.

Answer questions.

Share useful information.

Pay attention to the language people use.

Then, when your product genuinely solves a problem being discussed, you have context for sharing it.

Share what you’re learning

Founders often underestimate how useful the building process can be.

Instead of constantly posting:

“Try my product.”

Share:

“I spoke to 10 freelance designers this week. Almost all of them had the same problem with invoice follow-ups.”

Or:

“We changed one part of onboarding after watching three new users struggle with it.”

That content is more useful, and it can attract people who care about the problem.

Build relationships

A few useful conversations can be worth more than a large follower count.

People remember founders who are helpful.

Your first users may come from someone you helped three weeks before you ever mentioned your product.

Where to Find Your First SaaS Users

Different channels are useful at different stages.

Channel	Best for	Speed	Cost	Main benefit
Direct outreach	First 10	Fast	Low	Conversations and learning
Personal introductions	First 10	Fast	Low	Trust
Niche communities	First 10–50	Medium	Low	Relevant discovery
Launch platforms	Early exposure	Medium	Low	Discovery and feedback
Referrals	10–100+	Medium	Low	Qualified users
Content	Long-term acquisition	Slow	Low	Compounding reach
SEO	Long-term discovery	Slow	Low	Search-driven traffic
Partnerships	Early to growth	Medium	Low–Medium	Access to existing audiences
Paid ads	Later-stage scaling	Fast	Higher	Volume

This isn’t a ranking.

The best channel depends on where your users already spend time and how your product is bought.

A developer tool and a scheduling tool for local businesses may need completely different acquisition strategies.

Launch Platforms Can Help, But They Are Not Magic

Launch platforms can be useful when you don’t have a large audience of your own.

They give you another place where people are already looking for new products.

Depending on your product and launch strategy, relevant platforms can include:

• Peerlist
• PeerPush
• Launch Llama
• OpenHunts
• Nick Launches
• RankInPublic
• LaunchNest
• Uneed
• Fazier
• Other product directories and launch communities

These platforms can help with:

• Discovery: putting your product in front of people who may not know you
• Initial exposure: getting some attention around launch day
• Feedback: hearing from builders and early adopters
• Founder connections: meeting other makers
• Potential early users: giving interested people a reason to try the product

But a launch is still only one part of the process.

A launch platform is distribution, not product-market fit.

It can put people in front of your product.

It can’t make them want it.

And it doesn’t remove the need for a good landing page, clear positioning, useful onboarding, and follow-up.

If you’re launching on Peerlist or PeerPush, Makerio’s existing guides go deeper into the practical launch process for each platform.

Don’t Judge a Launch by Upvotes Alone

Upvotes and reactions can be useful signals, but they aren’t the final goal.

A launch that gets 100 likes but no relevant signups may be less useful than a launch that gets 15 interested visitors and three activated users.

Look at:

• Relevant visitors
• Signups
• Activated users
• Conversations
• Feedback
• Retention
• Paying customers
• Referral users

The funnel matters more than the vanity metric.

You want:

Discovery → Click → Signup → First Value → Continued Use

not:

Post → Likes → Feel good → Nothing happens

How to Get Beta Users for Your SaaS

When the product is early, beta users can be one of the best ways to get both users and product feedback at the same time.

The key is to make the request specific.

Instead of:

“Check out my product.”

Try:

“I’m looking for five freelance designers to test an invoice reminder tool. I’m especially interested in feedback on setup and the reminder workflow.”

That tells people:

• Who the product is for
• What it does
• Why you’re asking
• How many people you want
• What feedback you’re looking for

Make the beta easy to join

Don’t create unnecessary friction.

Give people a simple way to get started.

You can offer:

• Free access during the beta
• A discounted plan later
• Early access to features
• Direct communication with the founder

And tell them honestly that the product is still early.

Talk to beta users personally

Analytics will tell you that someone dropped off.

A conversation can tell you why.

Ask what they expected.

Ask what confused them.

Ask what they were trying to accomplish.

Then look for repeated patterns.

Ten engaged beta users can teach you more than 500 passive signups.

Make Your Product Easy to Try

Getting someone to visit your website is only half the job.

The other half is helping them reach value quickly.

Think about the funnel:

Discovery → Landing Page → Signup → First Value → Continued Use

Common friction points include:

A confusing landing page

A new visitor should understand what the product does and who it is for without studying the page.

Too many signup fields

Ask for what you need to get the user started.

You can learn more later.

An unclear CTA

Don’t make visitors guess what happens next.

Too much setup

If users need to configure ten things before seeing the value, many won’t get there.

Slow onboarding

The longer the gap between signup and first useful result, the greater the chance the user disappears.

One useful test is simple:

Watch someone unfamiliar with the product use it without helping them.

Pay attention to where they hesitate.

Those moments are telling you where the product is harder to understand than you think.

Ask for Feedback the Right Way

“What do you think?” sounds reasonable, but it usually produces vague answers.

Ask questions based on actual behavior.

For example:

• What were you expecting to happen?
• What confused you?
• What almost stopped you from signing up?
• What did you try to do first?
• What would make you use this every week?
• What were you using before this?
• What would make you pay for it?
• What’s missing?
• Who else would you expect to use this?

These questions reveal more than:

“Do you like it?”

You are looking for useful information, not compliments.

Look for patterns

One person asking for a new feature is an opinion.

Three people getting confused by the same part of the onboarding flow is a pattern.

Keep a simple feedback log.

Tag feedback as:

• Positioning
• Onboarding
• Bug
• Missing feature
• Pricing
• Usability
• Acquisition

Then look for repetition.

Don’t build a feature just because the most vocal user asked for it.

Your First Users Are Also Product Research

Your early users aren’t only a source of revenue.

They’re also a source of information about the product itself.

They can reveal problems in:

Positioning

Your headline might explain the product differently from how customers understand the problem.

Messaging

The words customers use can be much better than the words you originally put on the landing page.

Onboarding

A step that seems obvious to you may be confusing to everyone else.

Pricing

A user may love the product but still not understand why it costs what it costs.

Use cases

Someone might use the product differently from what you originally expected.

That’s valuable.

It is much cheaper to discover these things with ten users than with 1,000.

What Not to Do When Looking for Your First Users

Early-stage founders are often tempted by shortcuts.

Some aren’t worth taking.

Don’t buy fake users, reviews, or upvotes

Fake engagement creates numbers without creating demand.

It also makes it harder to understand what real users actually think.

Don’t spam DMs

Sending the same message to hundreds of unrelated people is not customer acquisition.

It’s noise.

Don’t mass-post your link

Dropping the same launch link across every community you can find usually produces little useful engagement and can get you removed.

Don’t join vote exchanges

A vote from somebody who has no interest in your product isn’t the same as genuine discovery.

Don’t pretend to have traction

Fake numbers can make an early product look bigger temporarily, but they don’t help you build something people want.

Don’t run ads before understanding conversion

Paid traffic can amplify a working funnel.

It can also amplify a broken one.

If your landing page doesn’t convert relevant visitors, spending money to send more people there doesn’t solve the core problem.

Don’t build forever

More features won’t automatically create distribution.

Sometimes the best next step is not another feature.

It’s another customer conversation.

Don’t obsess over vanity metrics

Followers, impressions, likes, and launch votes can feel encouraging.

But the real question is:

Are the right people trying the product and getting value from it?

A Realistic 30-Day Plan for Getting Your First Users

You don’t need to follow this schedule perfectly.

Think of it as a starting framework.

Week 1: Get clear

• Define your ideal early user in one sentence
• Talk to 10 potential users about the problem
• Rewrite your positioning based on what you hear
• Make sure your landing page explains the product clearly
• Prepare a short demo

Week 2: Start reaching people

• Contact 20–30 relevant people with personalized messages
• Participate in relevant communities
• Publish useful lessons about the problem you’re solving
• Recruit a small group of beta users
• Launch on one relevant platform

Week 3: Learn

• Follow up with people who tried the product
• Watch new users go through onboarding
• Ask specific feedback questions
• Fix recurring problems
• Ask active users for referrals

Week 4: Find what repeats

• Identify where your best users came from
• Look at activation and retention
• Double down on the most promising source
• Publish what you’ve learned
• Improve the weakest step in your funnel
• Repeat

The objective isn’t to complete a checklist.

It’s to leave the month knowing more about your customers and having at least one acquisition channel worth pursuing further.

What to Measure When You Have Very Few Users

At the beginning, your data will be small.

That’s okay.

You don’t need a giant dashboard.

Metric	What it tells you
Relevant visitors	Are the right people discovering you?
Signups	Does the offer interest them?
Activation	Do they reach the first useful result?
Retention	Do they keep using it?
Conversations	Are people interested enough to talk?
Paying customers	Is the product creating commercial value?
Referrals	Are users willing to recommend it?

Early on, conversations and activation can tell you more than raw traffic.

Later, retention and revenue become increasingly important.

Don’t rely too heavily on universal conversion benchmarks. SaaS products vary too much by pricing, audience, product type, and buying process for one generic number to tell you whether you’re doing well.

Need an Initial Push? Makerio Can Help

You can absolutely do your entire launch yourself.

Some founders have an audience, a network, and enough time to spend the day reaching out to people.

Others don’t.

Maybe you have 100 followers.

Maybe you’re launching for the first time.

Maybe you don’t know many other founders.

Or maybe the product is ready and you’d simply like some additional support around the launch instead of spending launch day chasing people through DMs.

That’s the problem Makerio is designed to help with.

Makerio gives your existing launch an initial push through manual founder-to-founder distribution. The goal isn’t to manufacture traction. It’s to help more real people discover the product, check it out, and potentially give genuine feedback.

There are now two support options.

$5 Standard

The Standard option is for founders who want the basic Makerio launch push:

• 50+ founder shares
• Dedicated X shoutout
• Normal support queue
• Genuine discovery and engagement

$10 Priority

Priority is for founders who want more support and faster handling around their launch.

It includes:

• 80+ founder shares
• X shoutout with relevant tags
• Priority support within 2 hours

Priority isn’t replacing Standard.

It’s simply there for founders who want a larger distribution push and want their launch moved to the front of the queue.

Makerio’s support is manual rather than bot-driven or automated traffic. The service also offers a full refund if the promised support isn’t delivered.

Just keep the role of launch support clear.

Makerio can help with distribution.

It can’t guarantee customers, traffic, rankings, votes, or revenue.

Your positioning, landing page, product, onboarding, and follow-up still determine what happens after people discover you.

A Real Example: GhostPrompter

We’ve also used this approach ourselves.

When we launched GhostPrompter on PeerPush, we gave the launch an initial distribution push instead of simply publishing the product and waiting for people to find it.

The launch went on to become the #1 Product of the Month on PeerPush, and we got 20+ trial users and buyers during the early period.

The important lesson isn’t that every launch will produce the same numbers. It won’t.

The point is that getting a product in front of the right people gives you a much better starting point for discovery, feedback, and early users than launching into silence.

Your own launch still matters most. A clear product page, strong positioning, an easy signup flow, and follow-up with interested users are what turn attention into real users and customers.

You can see the GhostPrompter launch on @peerpush_com here.
https://peerpush.com/p/ghostprompter

Your First Users Are Not Something You Wait For

You don’t need a huge audience before you can get your first SaaS users.

You need a specific problem, a specific group of people, and a willingness to do the manual work at the beginning.

Start narrow.

Talk to people who already have the problem.

Reach out personally.

Use communities without spamming them.

Launch where your audience actually spends time.

Make the product easy to try.

Ask better feedback questions.

Then watch what happens.

Your first users will teach you things that no amount of planning can.

And once you know who converts, why they convert, and where they came from, you can start turning that manual process into something more repeatable.

That’s how you go from zero users to the first ten, and eventually from the first ten to the first hundred.

FAQ

How do I get my first SaaS customers?

The most practical way to get your first SaaS customers is to find a narrow group of people who already have the problem your product solves and contact them directly. Start with personal outreach, relevant communities, beta users, referrals, and product launch platforms. Your goal is not to reach everyone; it is to find a small number of people who genuinely need the product.

How do I get my first 10 SaaS customers?

To get your first 10 SaaS customers, focus on manual customer acquisition rather than trying to build a scalable growth system. Talk to potential customers one by one, ask for introductions, recruit beta users, participate in relevant communities, and launch where your target audience already discovers products. The first 10 customers should also help you learn who buys, why they buy, and what nearly stops them.

How do I get my first 100 SaaS customers?

Getting your first 100 SaaS customers usually requires turning the lessons from your first 10 into a repeatable acquisition process. Identify which channels produced your best users, then invest more time in those channels. Depending on the product, this can include referrals, content, SEO, communities, partnerships, launch platforms, founder-led sales, or product-led growth.

How can I get SaaS customers without an audience?

You can get SaaS customers without an existing audience by reaching people who already experience the problem you solve. Use direct outreach, niche communities, professional networks, industry groups, beta programs, referrals, and relevant product-launch platforms. You do not need thousands of followers to start; you need access to a small number of relevant potential users.

What is the best way to get your first SaaS users?

For most early-stage SaaS products, the best starting point is a combination of direct conversations, targeted outreach, beta testing, relevant communities, and founder-led promotion. Make the product easy to try, help users reach value quickly, and talk to them about what worked and what did not. The best channel is ultimately the one that consistently brings the right users for your specific product.

How do I find early adopters for a SaaS product?

Find early adopters by looking for people who already complain about the problem, use manual workarounds, ask for tool recommendations, or pay for competing solutions. Niche communities, professional networks, online discussions, and targeted outreach are often good places to find them. Early adopters are usually easier to identify through the problem they have than through broad demographic targeting.

How do I get beta users for my SaaS?

To get beta users, make a specific request to a clearly defined audience. Instead of asking people to simply “try my product,” explain who the beta is for, what the product does, how many testers you need, and what kind of feedback you want. A small group of engaged beta users can be more valuable than hundreds of people who sign up but never use the product.

Can I get my first SaaS customers without paying for ads?

Yes. SaaS founders can get early customers through direct outreach, referrals, communities, partnerships, content, launch platforms, beta programs, and founder-led sales without spending money on advertising. Paid ads can help with scaling later, but early founders often learn more by speaking directly with potential customers first.

Should I focus on getting users or paying customers first?

It depends on the stage of the SaaS. If the product is still an MVP, getting a small number of engaged users can help validate the problem, positioning, onboarding, and product experience. If the product is already validated, the focus should shift toward converting qualified users into paying customers and improving retention.

What is the difference between a SaaS user and a SaaS customer?

A SaaS user actively uses the product, while a customer generally refers to someone who pays for it. A typical early-stage funnel is visitor → signup → activated user → retained user → paying customer. Knowing where a person is in this funnel helps you choose the right acquisition and product goals.

Can launch platforms help SaaS founders get their first users?

Yes. Launch platforms can help SaaS founders get initial discovery, exposure, feedback, and potential early users. However, a launch platform is a distribution channel, not a substitute for product-market fit. The results still depend on your positioning, product page, onboarding, product quality, and follow-up.

Should I measure launch success by upvotes?

No. Upvotes and reactions can be useful signals, but they should not be the main measure of an early SaaS launch. More meaningful metrics include relevant visitors, signups, activation, retention, conversations, paying customers, and referrals. A smaller launch that produces real users can be more valuable than a large number of votes with no product usage.

Is buying users, reviews, or fake engagement a good way to grow a SaaS?

No. Buying fake users, reviews, votes, or engagement creates vanity metrics rather than genuine demand. It also prevents you from learning what real users think and can violate the rules of launch platforms and communities. Early SaaS growth is more useful when the people discovering your product are real and relevant.

How do I turn my first 10 users into more customers?

Start by understanding why your first users signed up and what value they received. Ask satisfied users for referrals, identify the channels that brought them in, improve onboarding, and repeat the acquisition methods that produced the best users. Your first 10 users should help you discover a process that can eventually be repeated for the next 100.

How quickly can I get my first SaaS users?

There is no reliable universal timeline because it depends on the product, target audience, distribution channels, pricing, and how much founder-led outreach you do. A narrowly targeted SaaS with direct outreach can often start getting conversations quickly, while SEO and content usually take longer to produce meaningful traffic. Focus on learning speed rather than expecting a fixed number of users within a specific number of days.

Does Makerio help SaaS founders get their first users?

Makerio provides manual launch support that adds an additional distribution layer around a product launch. The $5 Standard option includes 50+ founder shares and an X shoutout, while the $10 Priority option includes 80+ founder shares, an X shoutout with relevant tags, and priority support within 2 hours. Makerio is designed to support a founder’s own launch efforts and does not guarantee users, customers, traffic, rankings, votes, or revenue.

Final Thoughts

The hardest part of getting your first SaaS users is often not the product.

It’s getting the product in front of the right people and learning what happens after they arrive.

You don’t need thousands of followers.

You don’t need a giant marketing budget.

You need a small number of people who genuinely have the problem, and you need to be willing to talk to them.

Start with ten.

Learn from those ten.

Then find the part of the process you can repeat.

And when you’re launching and want another distribution layer alongside your own efforts, Makerio can help put your launch in front of more founders through manual sharing and X promotion.

Launching soon?

$5 Standard: 50+ founder shares + X shoutout.

$10 Priority: 80+ founder shares + X shoutout with relevant tags + priority support within 2 hours.

One-time payment. No subscription. Full refund if the promised support isn’t delivered.