The Idea

The idea was simple. Every day, folks like us scroll through tons of subreddits in search of user pain points or potential startup ideas. I thought, what if I could ease this manual labour by creating an AI agent to do the job for you? Not only that, but it would also send a daily email with the top posts, a suggested solution (i.e., a SaaS idea), and a sentiment summary of the comments section.

The process was simple: sign up on my site → select 3 subreddits → get a daily email containing a list of the 7 top posts from those subreddits. I also created a dashboard where you could see the top 20 posts for that day. I added a “Hot Subreddits” feature to show the top 10 subreddits by count of such posts. There was also a clustering feature that highlighted when a single pain point was being discussed across multiple posts. These were the core features of my micro-SaaS.

The Validation

This is not my first side project. I’ve built tons over the last two years. Half of them got zero traction because the idea seemed awesome in my head, but no one else found it awesome. I realized there's a very simple way to figure out if people actually like your idea, just create a landing page with a "Join Waitlist" CTA. That’s it.

Use that landing page to sell your idea. Post it on relevant subreddits, Twitter communities, Peerlist. Comment on Reddit or X posts where people might be talking about what you’re building. (SnoopSignal actually helps with this too.)

If you get more than 50 signups, build the MVP as fast as possible. Don’t make your early users wait because they’ll just forget about it. I built the MVP of SnoopSignal in 2 days. I had 70 waitlist signups in the first 2 days.

My MVP had only one feature. Sign up, select subreddits, and get the email. Nothing else. All the other features came later through feedback and future development.

That’s how I validated the idea.

The Distribution

Once the MVP was built, I created a beautiful welcome email template and sent it to all the waitlist users. I also included a 50% discount code, but it didn’t lead to any conversions. Out of the 70 people on the waitlist, 36 signed up on Day 1. In the meantime, I continued posting on the same subreddits and Twitter communities to announce that the tool was live. Slowly and steadily, traffic started coming in.

After the initial posts on six subreddits, everything else was just word of mouth. Even I wasn’t sure where the traffic was coming from,it just kept coming. Within two weeks, I had 450 signups. That was a strong signal that I had hit a pain point. Out of those 450, 30 people were opening their emails daily.

One underrated way to bring traffic to your site is through SaaS directories. I know there are millions of them out there, but you only need to post to the top 5–10. A lot of these directories gave me a launch date 3–4 months into the future, but I still registered anyway. Find the free SaaS directories (they’re rare, I couldn’t find one) and submit your tool.

I don’t recommend launching on Product Hunt on Day 1. I haven’t mastered the PH launch myself, but I’ve learned that unless you already have a decent user base, you won’t gain any visibility there. I launched on PH after getting 200 signups and still ended up with only 5–6 upvotes.

The Retention

Getting new users is one thing, but retaining them is just as important. They’re the ones who will bring in new users, if you take care of them. I ran promotional email campaigns like “Give me feedback and I’ll unlock 1 week of Pro.”

The conversion was low, but the users who responded were genuine. They weren’t just looking for free stuff, they actually wanted to help improve the tool. The idea for the clustering feature came directly from this feedback.

Later, I ran a lifetime deal offer where I made 50 Pro spots available at $49 each. That’s where I got my first 3 paying customers.

The Exit

Even after building, I stayed actively involved in promoting SnoopSignal through my Twitter handle, commenting on subreddits, reaching out to existing users, and asking them to share it within their network. The marketing grind never stops. Building gets you early users, but after that, it's all about marketing. Be shameless, no one’s going to sell it for you. You have to do it yourself. I even added the website URL in my Twitter profile name.

One fine day, someone DMed me on Reddit and asked if SnoopSignal was for sale. That’s when it hit me oh! I can actually sell this if I don’t want to continue pouring my energy into it. I didn’t end up selling to that person, but I posted about SnoopSignal on the r/microacquisitions subreddit. That led to 4–5 inquiries, and after a lot of negotiation, I sold it to the best buyer.

One of the potential buyers didn’t close the deal, but we ended up making a great connection. And that matters. Talent will only take you so far, you’ll be seen where you know to look. But with the right connections, you can be seen anywhere.

The Conclusion

Well it has been a good 2 days since the sale. I am now working on a new idea. I believe this has the potential to be 10 times bigger than SnoopSignal. Wanna know more? Just check out this tweet