The First 100 Customers Machine

Find people who are already asking for what you sell, today. 90 search templates, a Claude skill that scores and answers them, and a 30-day plan to your first 100 users.

By Dan Shipped (@danshipped). Last verified: October 2026.

You built the thing. It works. And nobody is using it.

You posted it once on X. A few friends liked it. You thought about Product Hunt and decided you weren't ready. Then you went back to adding features, because building feels like progress and selling feels like begging.

Here's the part that changes the mood: right now, today, someone on Reddit, Hacker News, X or LinkedIn is typing "is there an app that..." about the exact problem you solved. Someone else is complaining that your competitor raised prices again. Someone is writing "I'd honestly pay for something that..."

They aren't waiting for your launch. They're asking now, in public, and most of those posts get two lazy replies and no good answer.

This guide is a machine for finding those people every day and answering them so well that some of them become your first customers. No ads, no audience, no budget. Just search, judgment and honest replies.

Who this is for: solo founders, indie hackers and vibe-coders with a working product and few or zero users. Freelancers and small agencies looking for clients (the same system finds "looking to hire" posts).

Who it's not for: anyone who wants to blast 1,000 automated DMs. This system is manual on purpose. That's why it works, and why it doesn't get you banned.

What's inside

Start here: your 5-minute win

Goal: in 5 minutes you'll have at least one real post, from the last 30 days, where a stranger is asking for what you built.

Minute 1. Pick your tool.

• Using Claude with skills (Claude Code or a Claude app with custom skills): copy the skills/demand-hunter folder into your skills folder (Claude Code: ~/.claude/skills/demand-hunter/; Claude apps: upload the folder as a .zip in Settings, under Skills).
• Using anything else: open skills/demand-hunter/PROMPT.md and copy Prompt 1.

Minute 2. Describe your product in four lines.

What it does: [one sentence]
Who it's for: [role / niche]
Price: [$ or free beta]
Competitors or workarounds: [2-5 names, or "spreadsheets", "doing it by hand"]

Minute 3. Run it. You get a Demand Profile (the words your customers use), 24 to 40 queries across 8 intent types, and a table of clickable links for Reddit, Google, Hacker News, X and LinkedIn.

Minute 4. Click the first three links in the "Switching" and "Looking for a tool" rows. They're sorted newest first.

Minute 5. Paste the best post back into the same chat with Prompt 2. You get an intent score (0 to 10), a rule-risk warning, and a reply draft that helps first and mentions your product only if the community allows it.

No AI tool handy? Take template #1 from the query bank, "alternative to [COMPETITOR]", and paste this into Google with your competitor's name:

site:reddit.com "alternative to [COMPETITOR]" after:2026-07-01

That's the whole idea in one line: people who already pay for your category, asking out loud for something else.

Chapter 1: Why the bottleneck moved to distribution

A question keeps showing up on founder forums: "If AI can rebuild your SaaS in a weekend, what's your moat?" Another one: "Can AI agents help solo founders find their first customers?" And the quieter one, under every launch post: "Almost gave up on my side project."

They're the same problem. Building got cheap. Getting noticed didn't. When anyone can ship a working app in a weekend, the scarce thing is no longer the code; it's knowing who has the problem, where they talk about it, and being the one who answered them first.

Most founders try to solve this by broadcasting: post on X, launch on Product Hunt, hope. Broadcasting asks strangers to care about you. The method in this guide flips it:

Don't make demand. Find demand that's already been expressed, and answer it.

A post that says "is there a tool that does X?" is a raised hand. Nobody has to be convinced the problem exists. You only have to be helpful, honest and specific, faster than everyone else.

That's the mechanism. Everything below is how to run it every day without burning out or getting banned.

Chapter 2: The Demand Ladder (8 kinds of buying intent)

Not all posts are equal. "I hate doing my invoices" and "FreshBooks just raised prices, what's a cheaper alternative?" are both about invoicing, but only one person has a budget and a deadline.

The query bank sorts every search into 8 intent types, strongest first:

How to use the ladder: spend 70% of your search time on rungs 1 to 4. Use rungs 5 to 7 for interviews and to learn the language your landing page should use. Rung 8 is your main ladder if you sell a service.

The full bank (queries/intent-queries.md) gives you 90 templates with [PRODUCT], [COMPETITOR], [PROBLEM], [TASK] and [AUDIENCE] slots, an intent rating for each, and the surfaces where each one works best. If you only run ten, run the starter set at the bottom of that file.

One rule that doubles your results: run every good query twice, once with the category word and once with the pain word. People who need an invoicing tool rarely write "invoicing tool". They write "clients not paying".

Chapter 3: Where to search (7 surfaces, one routine)

Every surface has its own syntax and its own kind of buyer. The cheat sheet (queries/search-cheatsheet.md) has the exact operators and editable links. The short version:

Reddit. The biggest source of raw, honest requests. Native search supports title:, selftext:, subreddit:, self:yes and uppercase AND/OR/NOT. Sort by new, limit to the past month: https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=QUERY&sort=new&t=month Check the Comments tab too. Many requests live in replies.

Google on Reddit and forums. Reddit's search misses threads that Google finds. site:reddit.com "alternative to [COMPETITOR]" after:2026-07-01 is the single most useful line in this guide. The same trick works on Indie Hackers, product forums and any community with public pages.

Hacker News. Use the free Algolia search (hn.algolia.com), sorted by date. Best for developer tools, APIs, infrastructure, privacy and technical B2B. Freelancers: the monthly "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" and "Who wants to be hired?" threads are live as of October 2026.

X. Logged in, Latest tab. Operators such as lang:en, since:, min_faves:, -filter:links (drops most promo posts), and to:[competitor_handle] (people complaining directly to your competitor). X's operators drift, so test each query once.

LinkedIn. Search > Posts > Past week. Quotes and uppercase AND/OR/NOT work; keep queries short. Best for B2B, agencies and services. Real names and job titles make fit easy to judge.

G2 and Capterra. Read your competitor's 1 to 3 star reviews and its "alternatives" page. Don't hunt reviewers. Steal the language: if 12 reviews say "support never answers", that's a headline and a query.

Niche communities. The Shopify, Webflow, Notion, WordPress forums of the world, plus Slack and Discord groups. Smaller, warmer, and stricter about vendors. Read the rules, ask a moderator, and these often beat every big platform combined.

The daily routine (30 minutes): open your top 10 links sorted by new, log every promising post in the tracker, reply to the best 3 to 5. Tomorrow, same links. Swap in 5 new queries each week and retire any query that returned nothing twice.

Chapter 4: Score before you reply (the 0 to 10 intent score)

Replying to everything burns time and makes you sound like a bot. Score each post in 10 seconds:

Score = total × 10 ÷ 12, rounded.

• Hot (9 to 10): reply today, DM if they asked for recommendations or replied to you.
• Warm (6 to 8): public reply, log it, wait for them to answer.
• Cool (3 to 5): don't reply. Save the wording: it's a pain phrase or a content idea.
• Skip (0 to 2): wrong buyer, homework, a competitor's employee, a promo post, a locked thread.

The tracker has this rubric built in (tap 0 to 3 for each factor; it computes the score and the label). The Demand Hunter skill scores pasted posts for you and adds a rule risk flag: Low, Medium or High, depending on what the community allows.

Chapter 5: Reply so they want to know more (without getting banned)

Reddit's sitewide rules don't ban self-promotion. They ban spam and manipulation, and each subreddit's moderators set the details. Hacker News and Product Hunt both forbid asking for upvotes. Almost every founder ban comes from the same five habits: new account plus own links, copy-pasted replies, replies that don't answer, hidden affiliation, and vote rings.

The 4A reply is the default frame (full playbook in playbook/reply-and-dm-playbook.md):

1. Acknowledge one specific detail from their post.
2. Answer fully, as if you had no product. Steps, the free option, the trade-off.
3. Aside, disclosed, only if allowed: "Disclosure: I'm building [X] for exactly this, happy to share if useful."
4. Ask one short question to keep the conversation going.

Here's what it looks like on a real-shaped post:

Post (r/freelance): "Client is 45 days late again. I hate sending the 'just following up' email. How do you all handle late payers without sounding desperate?"

Reply: "45 days is rough, and the awkwardness is half the problem. What worked for me: put the late fee and due date in the contract, send a reminder 3 days before the due date, then a firm one at +7 days that restates the amount and the fee, then a call at +14. Template the messages once so you're not rewriting them angry. Check whether your invoicing tool already sends reminders before buying anything. Disclosure: I'm building a small tool that automates this sequence. Happy to share if useful. What are you invoicing from now?"

Notice what's missing: no link, no adjectives, no "check out my app". The reply is useful to every freelancer who reads the thread, and the one line of disclosure makes the curious ones ask.

Three rules that matter most:

• Recommend someone else when they fit. Nothing builds trust faster, and the people you send away remember you.
• Never paste the same reply twice. Each one mirrors a detail from the post.
• If the community bans promotion, drop step 3 entirely. Post the helpful answer anyway. Your profile bio ("Building X for Y") does the selling.

The playbook has 8 rule patterns you'll meet in every community (zero promo, promo-thread-only, ratio rules, account gates, no links, flair, showcase days, feedback-only) and what to do for each, plus 10 complete example replies across Reddit, HN, X and LinkedIn.

Chapter 6: DMs, cold email and follow-ups

DMs go only to people who asked for recommendations, replied to you, or are on a platform where DMs are normal (LinkedIn, X with open DMs). The DM frame: context ("saw your post in r/...") → one extra tip → a permission ask ("Want the link, or would a 2-minute video on your case be more useful?"). No link in the first message. One follow-up maximum.

Cold email is for people with a public, work-related need (a LinkedIn post, a "we're looking for" page). Small volume, written by hand, from your real name. The playbook has 5 scripts (problem-first, switching, trigger event, freelancer offer, and a founder-to-founder feedback ask that gets the most replies) and the basic rules: under US CAN-SPAM you need honest headers and subject lines, a physical postal address and a working opt-out honored within 10 business days. The EU, UK and other places are stricter about consent. This is information, not legal advice; check your local rules.

Follow-ups: public replies get checked at 24 hours. DMs get one follow-up after 3 to 5 days that adds something new. Cold emails get two follow-ups at +3 and +7 business days, then a clean "I'll stop here". Any "no" or "stop" is final.

Chapter 7: Launch everywhere in one week (42 places)

Directories won't build your business, but a coordinated launch week gets you a first wave of users, permanent listings that search engines and AI assistants find, and some social proof. The list in launch/launch-directories.md was checked live on October 4, 2026. Every entry has cost, audience and a tip.

A few things that changed recently and catch founders out:

• Show HN must be something people can try now. No landing pages, waitlists or sign-up walls, and don't ask friends to upvote or comment.
• Product Hunt is free. Launch day starts at 12:01 a.m. Pacific. You can ask people to visit and comment, not to upvote.
• BetaList now charges for all submissions (founders report $39 to $299).
• GummySearch, the Reddit research tool many founders used, shut down on November 30, 2025, citing Reddit's API policy.
• G2 bought Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice in early 2026. Both still offer a free vendor profile.
• Many newer launch sites offer a free launch with a long queue (months, in some cases) and a cheap paid option to skip it. Submit to the free queues early.

The 7-day stack: claim free profiles first (G2, Capterra, SaaSHub, AlternativeTo, Crunchbase), queue the free launch sites a week ahead, then do Product Hunt, Show HN and an Indie Hackers story in the same week, followed by the promo-friendly subreddits and your niche community.

Honest note: don't pay for a "submit to 100 directories" service before you have 10 users. Most of the value is in the first 15 places, and none of it replaces the conversations from Chapters 3 to 6.

Chapter 8: The 30-day plan, the landing page and the interviews

The daily quota is 20 / 10 / 5: 20 posts found and logged, 10 helpful replies, 5 DMs or emails to Hot leads. About 60 to 90 minutes a day. The plan (plan/30-day-first-100-plan.md) breaks it into four weeks:

Be clear on what "customer" means before Day 1. For a paid product, 100 users who used the core feature is a strong month; 10 to 30 of them paying is a good outcome from zero. For a freelancer, 100 qualified conversations and 3 to 10 clients. Your numbers will differ. The tracker shows your real conversion rates by Day 10 so you can adjust.

What to do if replies are zero. The plan has a 10-row diagnosis table. Find the first stage where the number drops to zero and fix only that stage for 5 days. The most common causes: queries in your jargon instead of theirs, replies that pitch before they help, and a landing page headline that describes the product instead of the outcome.

The landing page checklist (plan/landing-page-checklist.md) is 25 yes/no checks. Score 18 or more before you send anyone to your page; every helpful reply you write ends there. The fastest fix is almost always the headline: copy the exact words your customers used in their posts.

The interview script (plan/customer-interview-script.md) follows the three rules from Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test: talk about their life, not your idea; ask about specific past events, not future opinions; listen more than you talk. "Would you use this?" gets polite lies. "Tell me about the last time this happened" gets facts you can build and sell on. One interview a day in weeks 1 to 3 will teach you more than any launch.

Chapter 9: The tracker

Open tools/lead-tracker.html by double-clicking it. It works offline, in any modern browser, and saves to your browser's local storage. Nothing is sent anywhere.

• Add a lead: paste the post title, link, platform and community, tap the four 0 to 3 scores, set a status and a follow-up date.
• Move it right: Found → Replied → DM sent → Talking → Signed up → Customer (or Lost). Arrow buttons on every card; drag and drop on desktop.
• See the numbers: customers vs goal, today's progress against the 20 / 10 / 5 quota, open Hot leads, follow-ups due, a funnel of how many leads reached each stage, and your three conversion rates.
• Find your best channel: leads and customers by platform.
• Back up: Export CSV for spreadsheets, Backup/Restore as a JSON file. Do a backup weekly; clearing your browser data clears the tracker.

Click "Load 4 example leads" on first open to see how a full pipeline looks, then delete them.

Going further

Put the search on autopilot. F5Bot (free) emails you when your phrases appear on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters. Use 5 to 10 quoted phrases like "alternative to [competitor]", not single words. Syften (paid, 14-day trial) covers more sources, including X, Bluesky, Indie Hackers, Stack Overflow, GitHub and Dev.to.

Pull Hacker News posts with one command. The Algolia API is free and needs no key:

curl -s "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?query=%22looking%20for%20a%20tool%22&tags=(story,comment)&hitsPerPage=20" \
| python3 -c "import json,sys,html,re; [print(h['created_at'][:10], 'https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id='+h['objectID'], re.sub(r'<[^>]+>|\s+',' ',html.unescape(h.get('title') or h.get('comment_text') or ''))[:100]) for h in json.load(sys.stdin)['hits']]"

Swap the query for any template from the bank. Add &tags=ask_hn for Ask HN posts only.

Turn complaints into pages. Every repeated competitor complaint is a landing page: "[Competitor] alternative for [audience] that [fixes complaint]". List yourself on SaaSHub and AlternativeTo as an alternative to the same competitors so the "alternative to" searches find you without you.

Turn workflow pain into content. Rung 7 posts ("how do you handle...") are your content calendar. Answer the question once properly in a post or video, then link it (where allowed) every time the question comes up again.

Test a service before you build more software. If rung 8 ("looking to hire") is louder than rungs 1 to 4 in your niche, sell the outcome by hand first. Do it for 5 clients, then automate what you repeated.

Re-run Demand Hunter every two weeks with what you learned: new pain phrases from interviews, new competitors from replies. Your queries should get sharper every cycle.

Limits (read this)

• This is manual on purpose. Searching, scoring and replying by hand takes 60 to 90 minutes a day. It's how you learn what people want. If you automate the replies, you'll get banned and learn nothing.
• It finds demand; it can't create it. If after 10 days of real effort you can't find anyone asking for your category in any wording, that's a finding, not a failure of the method. Look one problem over.
• Small niches give few posts. Fine. Fewer, better conversations. Turn on alerts so you catch each new one on day one.
• Rules change. Platform search operators, subreddit rules and directory prices were checked in October 2026 and will drift. When something breaks, use the site's own filters and read the pinned rules.
• The numbers in the plan are planning targets, not benchmarks or promises. Your rates will be different. Measure them.
• Nothing here is legal advice. Cold email and data rules depend on where you and your recipients are. Check your local rules.
• Reddit's API is not a free-for-all. Commercial use of Reddit's Data API requires Reddit's approval. Don't build a scraper around this guide; search by hand or use tools that have the access.

Want this done automatically?

Doing this by hand works, and you should do it for at least a few weeks to learn your market.

But I kept wishing for one thing: a radar that watches Reddit, Hacker News and X for me 24/7, catches every "is there an app that..." and "alternative to..." post about my product within minutes, scores it, and drops it in my inbox with a ready reply I can edit and post myself.

I'm building it. Working name: Demand Radar. You describe your product once; it runs the queries from this guide around the clock and sends you only the Hot and Warm posts, with the 4A reply already drafted. You still post by hand (that's the part that keeps you safe and human).

If you want it, reply YES to my DM (or join the waitlist when I post it). Early users shape what it does first.

And follow @danshipped for the next drop. I build in public with Claude, and I share the tools as I make them.

Sources checked for this guide (October 2026)

• Hacker News Show HN rules: news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
• Product Hunt launch guide: producthunt.com/launch
• HN Search API (Algolia): hn.algolia.com/api, tested live
• FTC CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide: ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
• GummySearch closing notice: gummysearch.com/closing-time
• F5Bot and Syften home pages (coverage, pricing model)
• Launch directory pricing pages (Uneed, TinyLaunch, Firsto, OpenHunts, LaunchIgniter, Startup Fame, IndieNeed, Launching Next), loaded Oct 4, 2026; OrangeBot launch and AI directory pricing roundups dated Aug 18, 2026
• 2026 guides to Reddit self-promotion rules and X and LinkedIn search operators (operators tested where possible)

Made by Dan Shipped — @danshipped. AI & SaaS — shipped.