Cutria

This is such a real insight. I went through the exact same shift.

When you sell services, you're basically responding to demand that already exists. People know they need a designer, editor, or developer—they’re just choosing who.

But with niche SaaS, you're almost like… creating demand from scratch. You're not just selling a tool, you're changing how people think about their workflow.

The hardest part isn’t building the product—it’s making someone stop and say, “wait… this actually is a problem.”

I like your “doctor with an X-ray” analogy. That’s exactly it. You’re diagnosing something they’ve normalized.

From what I’ve seen, the best early traction comes from:

• talking to users 1:1

• showing them their own inefficiencies

• and building with them, not just for them

It’s slower, but way more powerful long-term.

You’re definitely on the right track with this approach.

Man, this is such a sharp and honest insight. You nailed the biggest difference between service work and niche SaaS.

When you're doing client work, the client already feels the pain and is actively looking for a solution. But with a micro-SaaS, especially a niche one, most of your potential users are living in the pain and think “this is just how it is.”

That mindset shift from “selling the solution” to “first selling the problem” is brutal but so important in the early days.

I’ve been through the exact same thing. The best early traction I got wasn’t from ads or landing pages — it was from jumping on calls, showing creators screenshots of their messy WhatsApp + Google Docs workflow, and watching their eyes open.

Quick question for you: How are you currently finding those first users to have these “problem awareness” conversations? Cold DMs, Reddit, Twitter, or somewhere else?

Really good post. This kind of thinking separates the ones who eventually break through from the ones who stay stuck.

I'm dealing with the same challenges your facing, and honestly I think any technical founders will have the same things because its new era for us.

I definitely resonate with this. I haven't built my own SaaS yet, but I tend to build things that aren't obvious solutions to problems people have, for the reasons you stated. It's certainly harder to get to the customer when they don't realize they have a problem, and you can't follow the usual marketing advice. Thanks for sharing your experience with this.

This mirrors exactly what I'm navigating right now. The "doctor with an X-ray" framing is the most useful mental model I've seen for this stage — you're not selling a solution, you're first selling the diagnosis. The part that resonates most is the chaos being normalized. The hardest users to convert aren't the skeptics, they're the ones who've built their entire workflow around the broken process and genuinely don't feel the pain anymore because they've adapted to it. What's working for me in early stages is finding the moment of acute frustration rather than chronic pain — the specific instance where someone says "I can't believe this doesn't exist" rather than "yeah this is annoying." That moment is where the sale actually happens. How are you identifying which creators are closest to that acute frustration point before investing time in the full education cycle?

Settilo is a niche SaaS, and our situation is a bit different. Our users — homebuyers and renters in the US — are fully aware of the problem: they know the neighborhood matters deeply, and they say it explicitly. Our customer interviews confirm this. But their current workflow looks like a patchwork: listings on Zillow, separate Google searches about the area, Reddit threads asking "is this neighborhood actually safe?", and cross-referencing school ratings on a third-party site. They don't search for "neighborhood analytics map" because they don't know that kind of tool exists yet. Instead, they Google "[neighborhood name] school ratings", "[neighborhood name] crime rate" — and land on a dozen different websites, each with a different format, different depth, different data. They find one metric, then go back and search again for the next one. So our job is slightly easier — we don't need to prove the pain, we just need to show that the scattered process can come together in one place. But that "aha, this is exactly what I needed" moment works exactly the same way as your X-ray analogy.

This is exactly the problem I'm running into with competitor intelligence. Founders don't google "competitor monitoring tool" because they don't think of tracking competitors as a thing you automate — they just check a competitor's website once in a while and call it done. They don't realize they're losing hours a month to something that could be a weekly email.

The "doctor with an X-ray" framing is spot on. I've found the only thing that works is showing someone their own blind spot — like "did you know your competitor launched a new pricing page last week?" and watching their face change. That's the moment they get it. No landing page copy does that.

Curious how the 1-on-1 approach is scaling for you. At what point do you think you'll have enough pattern recognition from those conversations to write marketing that does the "showing the problem" part without you being in the room?

wow..

This is a profound realization, Evgeny. The concept of 'normalized pain' is exactly what prevents innovation in legacy workflows. I’m currently building Flex (an AI agent for desktop automation), and I face this daily. Users have spent a decade doing manual Alt-Tabbing and data entry; they don't search for a solution because they think the friction is a 'feature' of using a PC, not a bug.

I love your X-ray analogy. I’ve found that showing a screen recording of the tool doing 10 minutes of their work in 30 seconds is the only way to break that 'normalization.' Since you’re only 4 days in with Cutria, are you planning to build a 'Chaos Calculator' or something similar to help users quantify the time they’re losing before they even sign up?

Going through exactly this right now. I built a CSV/Excel comparison tool — the people who need it most (accountants doing manual reconciliation, analysts writing throwaway pandas scripts) don't search for "data reconciliation tool" because they've accepted the pain as normal. They just think VLOOKUP + eyeballing is how it's done.

What's working for me so far: finding the conversations where they're already complaining about the symptom. Reddit threads asking "how do I compare two huge spreadsheets" or Twitter posts about reconciliation nightmares. They know the pain, they just don't know a category of tool exists for it.

Your doctor/X-ray analogy is spot on. You can't sell the pill until they see the problem.

That sounds right and as someone who likes to make stuff, I run into this alot.

Thanks for crystalizing this concept.

Curious to hear your thoughts, another item along the same thread for SaaS products is either social or product proof. (ie: Benchmarks, testimonials, etc.)

I found it hard to get metrics on how things improved. I personally go more the consultant/service route, introduce tools, and get a first hand look at their impact.

But please let us know if you have other ways or strategies of getting your SaaS impact in the markets.

That’s a really insightful point. Most people don’t realize how much of a shift it is until they actually try selling to a niche.

I think the hardest part isn’t just pointing out the problem, it’s helping them see the pattern in what they’re already doing. Because from their perspective, it doesn’t feel chaotic. It feels normal, just how things are.

What I’ve noticed is, once you reflect their workflow back to them clearly, they start connecting the dots themselves. That’s when the “aha” moment happens. They see the pattern, and suddenly everything clicks.

I’ve been exploring this idea from a slightly different angle like more about helping founders understand what’s really happening in their workflow over time, rather than just adding another tool to their stack.

I’d love to hear when you talk to users, what’s the exact moment they realize there’s a problem?

I’m still figuring this out as I go.

What I’ve seen so far is that people don’t have a sudden realization. It usually happens little by little.

At first, they think everything is fine. It’s just how they’ve always worked.

Then, when I walk through their process with them, they start to notice small issues.

The real shift happens when I make it more concrete. For example, how much time they lose, how many back-and-forth messages they deal with, how often they switch between tools.

That’s when it starts to click.

I also noticed that showing works much better than explaining. If I just tell them their workflow is inefficient, it doesn’t really land. But if I reflect their process back to them, they can see the problems on their own.

I like your idea about automating that “X-ray” step. It feels like a more scalable version of what I’m doing manually right now.

If I were starting again, I would probably focus earlier on making that process more repeatable. Even something simple that shows “you are losing X hours per week” could be really powerful.

It really feels like helping people see the problem clearly is just as important as the product itself at this stage.

Really solid journey. What would you do differently if you started again?

This is such a realistic breakdown, especially the part about selling the problem before the product.

I've noticed that this is where the majority of technical founders struggle. Not building, but transforming chaos into something tangible enough for users to feel.

Because, as you mentioned, the problem isn't always that the workflow is broken; rather, it's been normalized.

I've been looking into something similar from a different perspective: instead of manually educating users each time, what if some of that "awareness step" could be automated?

For example:

- User inputs how they are currently working.

- The system identifies inefficiencies (time loss, back and forth, scattered tools).

- Show them a clearer, optimized workflow before introducing the product.

It's almost like giving them the "X-ray" automatically.

It appears that the real opportunity in early-stage SaaS is not just distribution, but rather the development of mechanisms that reveal problems at scale.

Curious: have you discovered any patterns in how users react when they first "see" the problem clearly?

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Definitely agree. Man, I got banned a while back for asking simple questions. I did not know Reddit yet, or karma system, and I thought that my posts were not going through bc of server/connection issues. Tried posting questions on a few threads and got banned. I did not use it for a long time after that, until recently, once I figured out karma 😅. Somewhere I saw that Reddit uses predictive analytics to predict if you are spam/bot or not before you even post.

This hits close to home — literally just ran into this trying to post about my own tool today.

The 3 Golden Tickets idea is solid. The current system optimizes for time-on-platform, not quality. Someone with 10k karma from posting memes has more voice than a first-time founder sharing something genuinely useful.

Discord communities have been better for me personally — lower friction, faster feedback. X works if you already have an audience. Neither fully replaces Reddit's search discoverability though, which is the real reason everyone keeps coming back despite the pain.

This feels real. I faced the same issue.

Reddit protects quality, but it blocks new voices. A new user cannot even ask a simple question without karma. That pushes people to fake engagement first.

Your 3-strike idea makes sense. Give people a chance, then let the community decide. Good posts will survive. Bad ones will die.

Right now, the system filters effort, not quality.

For audience, I see better results on X, LinkedIn, and some niche communities. Reddit works, but it takes time to earn trust.

Honestly? This hit home.

I’ve had the exact same experience. Spent way too long crafting a genuine post for a niche subreddit, only for it to get auto-nuked by filters. And the worst part? The mods never reply when you ask why. You’re just… silenced.

The “golden tickets” idea is interesting, but here’s the problem I see: bots would just burn through them instantly. Three posts is nothing for a spam script. So while I love the spirit of what you’re proposing—trusting humans first—I think Reddit’s filter problem is actually worse than karma walls. It’s shadow removals. You don’t even know you’ve been ghosted unless you check from a different account.

That said, to answer your last question:
I’ve had way better luck in smaller Discord servers (not the giant ones—those are just noise). People actually talk there. Also, Indie Hackers and certain LinkedIn niche groups have been surprisingly good for genuine convos about product pain points. X Dot Com is a cesspool for engagement bait unless you already have a following.

But yeah, Reddit feels more like a walled garden every year. It’s not killing bots—it’s killing curiosity.

You’re not wrong — Reddit optimizes for survival, not discovery. The karma wall works against spam, but it also filters out exactly the kind of thoughtful first-time posts you wrote.

Your 3-ticket idea is interesting because it shifts trust to the community instead of front-loading friction. Might not fully stop bad actors, but it would definitely surface more real voices.

Reddit is a lost cause at this point for new users. There are no incentives for change. Luckily, other communities are (being) formed.

This is the most honest take on platform dependency I’ve read all week.

I learned this lesson in the most brutal way possible: my entire Medium infrastructure was nuked overnight without a single explanation.

Reddit, Medium, X—they aren't "communities" for business; they are digital landlords. If you're a newcomer trying to plant seeds in their soil, you're not a founder, you're a sharecropper. The Karma system is just a social credit score to keep the "tenants" in line.

I only found stability (and hit $10k/mo) when I stopped caring about Karma and started building my own Sovereign Bunker. You have to treat these platforms as a volatile traffic source, never as a home.

Harvest the attention, but store the value in a place where no moderator or algorithm can touch it.

Reddit marketing is now just a name. There is no marketing (organically) possible on Reddit. I hope your proposed idea reaches out to the Reddit people otherwise, this platform is just gonna kill organic growth

Agree with this. Too much in the name of restricting spam, marketing or advertising. The entire point of these social models should be to freely express and let the audience decide whether to downvote or upvote it. I am not encouraging spamming but bot surveillance can sometimes obscure meaningful and useful posts.

Also I believe if people, especially entrepreneurs with low marketing budgets are promoting their products occasionally, it shouldn't be frowned upon. Maybe we can cap the number of posts by promotional nature per month. That goes a long way rather than just remove the entire post.

Finally, someone spoke about it, I feel your pain. You spend so much time writing something good, and your post instantly got removed. I like your solution each user should get 3 tickets if the user use a ticket and post something valuable, they should recive his ticket back what he used also karma. If the user uses the ticket in a bad way the community can downgrade that post and he lost the ticket as well.

Honestly felt this—spent more time earning karma than actually sharing anything useful. Your 3-strike idea makes sense, at least it gives real people a fair shot.

When I started developing last summer I built a portfolio site thinking that alone would get me work (it didn’t). When I went to showcase the portfolio site, thinking surely reddit was the place for it, instant ban on three of the five groups and post removed on the other two. I understand why they built Wall Maria, but damn. Talk about discouraging.

I had an 4 year account with more than 600 natural karma that is been collected without even caring or even know about karma after 300. But when I tried to promote an app that is been working on more than a year suddenly without any reason i fot shadow banned. In the right time when i was trying to use Reddit for some good for myself. I created a new account, now whenever i try to post something in any subreddit a bot rejects the post one for being my account new, one for not having karma.

reddit is a total black box for founders. the karma grind feels like a part-time job just to get a single link through. your golden ticket idea is interesting but i wonder how they'd stop bot farms from burning through them instantly. anyway, glad you're finding other places like ih

I have a tool that can help you build karma. Interested?

Reddit is a lost cause at this point for new users. There are no incentives for change. Luckily, other communities are (being) formed.

The part about having 0 subscribers but still getting excited every time you close a task hit home. Most people only see the success stories, not the months of building before the first paying customer shows up.

What I found especially interesting was that Cutria came from solving a real operational problem first. Saving a team 2 hours a day is a much stronger starting point than trying to invent a problem from scratch.

Also, the "hardcore mode" challenges are real. Founders in a lot of regions have to spend energy solving payment and platform issues that people in bigger startup hubs never even think about.

Since you're heading into the marketing phase, I'd focus less on ads and more on validating where your early users already spend time. This guide on GTM planning for startups has some practical ideas around that: https://foundersbar.com/gtm-for-startups

Wishing you luck on the journey to those first 300 customers. The first few are usually the hardest because you're still figuring out who gets the most value from the product.

Hey, saw you integrated Paddle — quick question: when a subscriber cancels, do you have any way to intercept it before it goes through? Pause offer, discount, anything?

Really relate to this — I'm at a similar stage with my own SaaS (started a couple months ago, also 0-to-1 mode). The payment gateway stuff sounds brutal, especially having to work around Stripe not being available.

On the marketing side since you mentioned knowing nothing about it: the thing that's helped me most so far is just picking 2 channels and going deep. For a tool like yours I'd look at where SMM agency owners hang out — maybe Twitter/X build-in-public and a couple relevant subreddits. Start by being helpful in those spaces before promoting. Also, Product Hunt is worth a launch once you've got your Google Play version live — having all three platforms ready makes a stronger pitch.

Good luck with the Play Store approval. The waiting is the worst part.

laravel + flutter is a solid combo for a solo dev. really feel you on the stripe/payment gateway mess. being outside the 'supported' countries is basically playing on nightmare mode. i went through that paddle approval loop recently too - it's a grind but definitely beats dealing with local banks that don't understand saas subscriptions

This is how real products start.

You solved one real problem for one real user. Then you watched how they used it. That is the best validation.

I like how it evolved step by step. Notepad to assets to workspaces. That shows real demand, not assumptions.

This is the right way to build. Start small, stay close to the user, and expand from usage.

When did you realize this could be a SaaS and not just a side tool?

solving a specific pain point for a friend is the best way to build a saas. no guessing involved. the transition from a simple web app to a full workspace for video teams makes a ton of sense. keep pushing!

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