How to Get Your First SaaS Users: A Solo Developer Playbook | Tomako
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How to Get Your First SaaS Users: A Practical Marketing Playbook for Solo Developers
You have a working product. The tests pass, deployment works, and a new visitor can create an account. Now you need to find people who have a reason to use it.
That requires a few decisions your code cannot make for you: who to approach, where to reach them, what to offer, and how to tell whether the product helped.
This guide turns those decisions into a practical early-acquisition process:
Define your customer → test one channel → help users reach value → review and repeat.
You’ll build a small marketing experiment and a weekly checklist you can use alongside development. The approach focuses on acquiring early users without paid ads, starting with a product people can try.
We’ll use two hypothetical examples: a database backup verification tool and a freelance invoicing tool. They illustrate the decisions, rather than report real customer results.
Before You Pick a Channel, Define Your Starting Audience
“Developers” and “freelancers” are broad categories. Neither tells you who has an urgent reason to try your product.
Start with a specific customer, situation, and outcome:
A client handover requires evidence that backups can be restored
A project milestone is approved and ready to bill
What do they do today?
Run restore tests manually and assemble the results
Copy project details into an invoice template
What useful outcome can you provide?
A completed test restore with a clear verification record
An accurate invoice ready to send to the client
Condense your answers into one sentence:
This tool helps [specific customer] achieve [useful outcome] when [relevant situation].
For the invoicing tool:
This tool helps freelance designers turn approved project milestones into invoices without re-entering the project details.
Now look for evidence of that problem in conversations, support requests, or interviews. Ask how people handle it today and what makes the current process difficult.
Use their answers to refine your starting audience. A narrower description makes your first outreach more relevant and your results easier to interpret.
Stage 1: Choose One Channel and Run a Small Test
Your first channel should give you access to people who experience the problem you described.
For the backup tool, that might be a community of agency operators or database administrators. For the invoicing tool, it might be a freelance design community where members discuss project administration and getting paid.
Compare channels using three questions:
Are the intended customers present?
Can you find discussions about the problem?
Is there an appropriate way to contribute or demonstrate your product?
Channel
When to consider it
What to check first
A targeted subreddit
Members discuss the workflow you address
Community rules and whether relevant product mentions are welcome
Hacker News / Show HN
You have something people can try and want technical feedback
Demo accessibility and your ability to discuss how and why you built it
Product Hunt
You want to test a public product introduction with its audience
Whether similar products attract discussion from your intended customers
A specialist community or existing network
You can reach people responsible for the task directly
Whether feedback requests, demonstrations, or introductions are appropriate
Reddit’s platform rules prohibit spam, and individual communities set additional expectations. Read those rules before contributing or sharing a product link. Reddit’s spam guidance
Show HN is intended for things people can actually try. A landing page or waitlist alone does not meet its submission guidelines. Show HN guidelines
Message: the problem and outcome you will discuss.
Action: the contribution, introduction request, or demonstration you will make.
Next step: how an interested person can try the product.
Review date: when you will examine the responses.
For the invoicing tool, an experiment could be:
In a freelance design community that welcomes workflow discussions, share a useful method for tracking billable milestones. Offer interested members a demonstration of turning one approved milestone into an invoice.
Schedule an initial review after a week. Use it to examine the conversations and attempts you generated, then decide whether to continue or adjust.
You do not need a three-platform launch calendar to begin. You need one relevant place, a useful contribution, and a clear next step.
Stage 2: Help Interested People Reach Their First Useful Outcome
An expression of interest is the beginning of onboarding.
When someone asks to learn more, explain what they can try, what information they need, and what result to expect. Continue in the current conversation or offer a private walkthrough if they prefer.
For the invoicing tool:
You can try it with a sample project or one of your approved milestones. The first task is to generate an invoice and check that the details are correct. I can send the demo link or walk through it with you.
A sample environment can make the first attempt easier. Later, check whether the product also works in the person’s actual workflow.
Define what activation means for your product
Keep these milestones separate:
Milestone
What it tells you
Visit
Someone reached your site
Signup
Someone created a product account
Activation
Someone completed an action that demonstrated initial value
Continued use
Someone used the product again or continued receiving value
Payment
Someone paid for the product or service
Choose an activation event that reflects the outcome you promised.
For the backup tool, connecting a database is setup. Completing a test restore and inspecting the verification record is a stronger indication of initial value.
For the invoicing tool, creating an account is setup. Generating and checking an invoice from an approved milestone could be the first useful outcome.
Record whether the attempt used sample data or a real project, and whether the person needed your help. Those details make the result more useful than a single activation count.
Observe an early attempt
Ask what the person wants to accomplish, then watch how they approach the task.
Pay attention to:
Where they hesitate.
What they expect to happen next.
What prevents completion.
Whether the output solves the original problem.
A designer might generate an invoice successfully but discover that the payment terms are missing. An agency might complete a restore test but still need a report it can share with the client.
These observations show where the product’s technical output falls short of the customer’s job.
Fix the most consequential blocker first. Explain what changed and invite the person to continue when appropriate.
Create a file named gtm-experiment.md in your notes folder, or paste this checklist into a Notion page. Use one copy per experiment.
Markdown
# Weekly SaaS Marketing Experiment
## 1. Customer and Value
- Intended customer:
- Problem or triggering situation:
- Current workaround:
- Useful outcome:
- Evidence from conversations or research:
## 2. Channel Test
- Channel or community:
- Why this audience fits:
- Participation rules checked:
- Contribution or invitation:
- Next step for an interested person:
- Review date:
## 3. First Product Experience
- Activation event:
- Sample data or real project:
- Assistance provided:
- Main obstacle:
- Expected next use or value check:
## 4. Actions
- [ ] Make a relevant contribution or invitation.
- [ ] Follow up with people who requested more information.
- [ ] Observe a product attempt when possible.
- [ ] Record questions and obstacles.
- [ ] Address the most important next step.
## 5. Results
- Relevant conversations:
- Trials started:
- Accounts activated:
- Accounts receiving continued value:
- Paying accounts:
- Time spent:
- Unknown or uncertain acquisition sources:
## 6. Next Decision
- Continue, change, or pause:
- Evidence behind the decision:
- One adjustment for the next experiment:
For the invoicing example, the activation field might read: “Generate and check an invoice from an approved milestone.” The follow-up point would be the next billing occasion, when you can ask whether the designer used the tool again.
The checklist should help you decide what to do next. Keep it brief enough to maintain.
Stage 3: Build a Daily Routine You Can Sustain
Give marketing a regular place in your schedule so conversations and trial users do not disappear behind development work.
A 30-minute daily block is a useful starting point for maintenance. Prioritize:
Responding to interested people and helping active trials.
Finding or contributing to relevant conversations.
Recording what happened and preparing the next action.
Let the current bottleneck determine the time allocation. If a trial user is stuck, helping them may use the whole block.
Reserve separate time for deeper work such as interviews, launch preparation, or a substantial tutorial. The daily block keeps activity moving between those larger sessions.
Turn development work into useful content
Select updates based on what the customer needs to understand.
For the invoicing tool:
Development update: added milestone imports.
Customer problem: approved work gets missed when preparing invoices.
Useful content: a short walkthrough showing how to check approved milestones against an invoice.
For the backup tool, a useful post might explain how to distinguish a failed restore from a misconfigured test environment.
A feature becomes a content opportunity when it helps answer a real customer question. Use that filter instead of treating every commit as something to publish.
Stage 4: Review the Results and Automate Useful Repetition
At the review point, trace what happened between the first conversation and the product outcome.
For small experiments, keep the counts visible. One activation from two trials is an observation to investigate, not a dependable conversion rate.
What you observe
Questions to investigate
Few relevant responses
Did the right people see the message? Was the problem recognizable? Was participation appropriate?
Conversations but few trials
Is the problem urgent? Is the offer clear? Does trying it require too much effort or trust?
Trials but little activation
Are users encountering setup problems, product failures, or a mismatch with their expectations?
Activation but little continued value
When should the need recur? Does the product fit the ongoing workflow?
Continued use but little payment
Who decides to pay? Is the offer clear? Does the value justify the price?
These questions guide the next investigation. Use conversations and product observations to narrow the cause.
Match continued-use expectations to the product. An invoicing tool may be needed at the next billing milestone. A backup tool may keep delivering value in the background without daily logins.
Choose the next move
At the end of the review, make one decision:
Continue when relevant people are progressing and you want to see whether the result repeats.
Change when you have identified a specific problem with the audience, message, invitation, or product experience.
Pause when the channel is unsuitable or the effort is not justified by what you are learning.
Record the reason and the next adjustment.
Automate a task you can clearly specify
Once a repeated task is useful and understood, consider whether a tool can reduce the work involved.
Possible starting points include organizing requested follow-ups, summarizing interview notes for review, or drafting an update from a checked product explanation.
Before choosing a tool, complete this sentence:
When [event] happens, I need [output], and I will check it by [review method].
For example:
When an onboarding session ends, I need a summary of the customer’s goal and blockers, and I will compare it with my notes.
This gives you a concrete requirement. Compare the time saved with the effort needed to review and correct the output.
Start Your First Experiment—and Identify What You Want Help With
You can begin with four answers:
Who needs the outcome your product provides?
Where can you appropriately reach them?
What action would demonstrate initial value?
When will you review the attempts?
Put those answers into the checklist and schedule your first contribution, introduction request, or demonstration.
As you repeat the process, you’ll learn which marketing tasks deserve your attention and which ones you would like help handling.
That is where Tomako fits into this conversation. Tomako is an always-on AI CMO for founders bringing their products to market. If you’re exploring AI support for your marketing workflow, get started with Tomako.
Start with a real customer problem and a small experiment. Use what you learn to shape both your next marketing move and the tools you choose.
Tiny is a co-founder of Tomako, working across the full path from growth strategy to channel execution. His experience spans influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO/GEO, and paid acquisition. As an indie maker and creator, he is especially interested in how small teams can make better growth choices with limited resources. On the Tomako Blog, he writes about channel decisions, practical execution, and lessons from building and growing products.
Tiny
