How to find your first customers (2026): Reddit, X and Product Hunt

Why public conversations work

Your first customers usually cannot be found in a database. They are in public: asking a question on Reddit, complaining about a tool on X, commenting on a YouTube review, or launching a project on Product Hunt. They have already named the problem. You do not need to convince them they have it.

The advantage of public conversations is timing. A post asking "does anyone know a tool that does X" is a live need. Reply within the same day and you are one of two or three options. Wait a week and the thread is cold.

The disadvantage is volume. There are a lot of public conversations and most of them are not about your thing. This guide covers what to search, what to skip, and how to keep the person once you have found them.

Finding customers on Reddit

Reddit has subreddits for almost every niche and job. The conversations are long-form, the questions are specific, and the threads stay searchable for months. It is the most consistent source of first-customer conversations for most B2B SaaS founders.

Where to start:

1. Use the free subreddit finder to map your niche to the communities where buyers ask for help. Type what you sell and get a list with a direct Reddit search link for each subreddit. Free, no signup.
2. Search Posts, not Comments. You want the person who started the conversation, not someone who already got an answer.
3. Sort by New to find threads that are still live. Relevance is useful for learning how people describe the problem.
4. Reply with something useful. Mention your product in one sentence only if it is the honest recommendation, after you have already helped.

Phrases that tend to surface live needs: "looking for a tool that", "any recommendations for", "how do I get my first customers", "struggling with". A longer list of static example phrases is on the buyer-phrase keywords page.

The full motion is at how to get your first customers from Reddit.

Finding customers on X (Twitter)

X is useful for founders who sell to other founders or to people in tech and creative industries. The conversations are shorter than Reddit threads, but they move faster and the search tools find intent phrases across millions of posts.

How to search:

1. Use X Advanced Search. Search for the problem phrase, not your product name. Try "looking for a tool", "does anyone know how to", or "frustrated with" plus the job you do.
2. Filter by recency. Posts from the last seven days are more likely to still want a reply.
3. Reply in public before DMing. A useful public reply establishes context and the person can see who you are before you message them directly.

Founder CRM can find people on X in your own Chrome session. You describe who you want, the flow reads recent posts, and it keeps the ones that match. You still write every reply yourself. The full guide on the X motion is at X (Twitter) lead gen for founders.

Finding customers on Product Hunt

Product Hunt is where founders look. The people commenting on launches are often founders themselves, and many of them have DMs open. It is a small pool, but it is a high-intent pool: they read product descriptions for a living and they will tell you what they think.

Two useful places:

• Ask posts: the Product Hunt Ask section has founders asking for tool recommendations, early feedback partners, and co-founder connections. These are live requests.
• Recent launches in your category: makers of products in adjacent categories are often customers for each other. Look at launches from the last 30 days and find the makers with DMs open.

Founder CRM can find Product Hunt makers in the Chrome you are already signed into. You do not need to export a list or use a third-party scraper.

Finding customers in YouTube comments

Tutorial and review videos in your niche have comment sections full of people asking for recommendations. These are people who found a video about the problem you solve. They already know they have the problem.

How to use it:

1. Find two or three videos that review or explain a tool in your category. Tutorial videos titled "how to do X" work well.
2. Use the free YouTube comment finder to filter those comments for buyer-intent phrases. Paste the video URL or search by keyword. No signup.
3. Reply in the comments or note the person for a direct message, depending on the platform norms.

The full guide on the YouTube comment motion is at YouTube comment lead gen for founders.

Making it a daily habit

Finding your first customers is not a one-day project. The people who succeed usually describe the same pattern: fifteen minutes in the morning, the same few channels, a short list of new threads, and one or two replies.

A simple daily checklist:

1. Check the two or three subreddits where your buyers ask for help. Three new relevant posts is a good day.
2. Run an X search on one or two intent phrases. Reply to anyone with a live question.
3. Glance at new Product Hunt Ask posts and recent launches in your category.
4. File anyone you replied to, with the thread and a follow-up date.

The whole session should take fifteen to thirty minutes. If it takes longer, you are reading too widely. Narrow the subreddits and the search phrases.

Add Founder CRM to Chrome to keep the list in a side panel next to the conversation. It is free.

Tracking who you talked to

The biggest reason first-customer outreach fails is not finding the wrong people. It is losing the right ones. A reply that gets a positive response turns into nothing because you never looked back.

Write down four things for every person you reply to:

• Who they are, and the thread or post URL.
• What they asked, in their words.
• What you said.
• When to look again.

A notes app is enough for the first ten. A spreadsheet is enough for the first fifty. After that, you need the reminder to surface on the right morning, next to the thread, without opening a second tab. That is the job Founder CRM is built for. Details at track outreach from public conversations. Trust notes: safety and no auto-DM. Category page: Reddit CRM for founders.