I Launched Three Products Last Year. My Total User Count Was Zero
Last week, I did something that made my stomach turn.
I was scrolling through Reddit and saw a post from a founder. He’d spent a year building and launching three different SaaS products. Three. All polished, all functional, all solving what seemed like a real problem.
His final tally? Zero users. Zero traction. Zero hope.
It hit me like a ton of bricks because I’ve been that guy. We’ve all been that guy. We pour months into building something beautiful, we launch it on Product Hunt, and we wait for the world to notice.
And then… nothing. Crickets.
I see it every day in founder communities. "My product is perfect, why won't anyone sign up?" "I got 500 upvotes but my churn is 100%." "I'm a builder, not a marketer."
We’re all building in a vacuum. And we're all doing it wrong.
The Dirty Secret About "If You Build It, They Will Come"
Here's the lie every tech founder tells themselves: a great product is enough.
Those launch day leaderboards and "trending on Hacker News" posts? Complete theater. They're a dopamine hit, not a business model. A launch day is a single firework, not a sustainable source of light. You’re not building a business. You’re buying a lottery ticket.
The real kicker? I’ve seen founders spend more time perfecting a button's CSS than talking to a single potential customer.
That's not product development. That's being a starving artist.
What Actually Works (Based on Painful Failures, Not TechCrunch Hype)
I decided to burn my old playbook. No more "build in silence." No more "launch and pray." I started over with a new rule: no code without confidence.
Here's what I learned:
1. Your "First Step" Shouldn't Be Your Code Editor
Pick up the phone. Or LinkedIn. Or your email. Your job isn't to build a solution; it's to find a problem so painful people are already trying to solve it with duct tape and spreadsheets.
Two concepts that changed everything for me:
The Mom Test - I know, it sounds cliché. But can you talk to your target user about their problem without ever mentioning your idea? If you can get them to tell you how much the problem sucks and what they've tried to pay to fix it, you've struck gold. If they just say "Oh, that sounds neat," you have nothing.
Confidence Per Line of Code - This is the metric that matters. Before you write a single function, ask yourself: "On a scale of 1-10, how sure am I that someone will use this?" If the answer isn't a 9 or 10, you shouldn't be building. You should be talking.
The test? If you can't find 5 people who will commit to trying your buggy, half-baked MVP, you have no business building it.
2. Build Your "Design Partner" Squad
Forget "beta testers." That’s too passive. You need a small, committed team of future customers who will build the product with you.
Design Partners - These are 3-5 people (for B2B) or 15-20 (for B2C) who feel the pain you're solving right now. They agree to weekly check-ins. They get to use your broken software for free. In exchange, they tell you exactly what to build next.
The "Fake Door" Test - This is how you recruit them without a product. Buffer did this perfectly. They put up a landing page that said "Schedule Your Tweets." If you clicked, a second page said "Cool, we're not ready yet, but enter your email to get access." They validated interest. Then they added a pricing page. When people clicked a plan, they knew they had something people would pay for. That’s how you find your first partners.
Your ability to find these people is the first, most important validation of your idea.
3. The "Marketing" Reality Check
Can we talk about the elephant in the room? Every founder thinks "marketing" means posting on Twitter.
I saw this perfectly last week. A founder launched his app and his entire strategy was one tweet. The comments were brutal: "Who is this for?" "How is this different from X?" "Why should I care?"
The lesson? If your marketing plan is an "event," you've already lost. The best founders build marketing systems, not launch parties.
My "First 10 Users" Playbook (And What It Actually Costs)
For my last project—a simple tool for freelance designers—here’s the exact process I used:
Found 20 freelance designers on LinkedIn who had "Figma" in their profile.
Sent 20 personalized DMs asking about their biggest invoicing headache (not pitching my product).
Had 5 phone calls and found 3 people willing to be Design Partners.
Wrote ONE blog post titled "How Freelance Designers Can Avoid Scope Creep in Figma Projects."
Shared that article with my 3 partners and in 2 design communities.
Total monthly cost: $0
Result: My first 3 die-hard users who helped me build the right features, and one article that started bringing in a trickle of perfect-fit customers through Google. All for less than the price of a fancy domain name.
The 90-Day Test That Will Save Your Startup
Here's your homework. Stop building. Now.
Pick ONE of your "failed" ideas to resurrect this week. The one you still believe in.
Identify your biggest blind spot (Can't find users to talk to? Don't know where they hang out online? No idea what to write about?)
Find ONE "pond" where your ideal customers live—a subreddit, a Slack group, a forum.
Spend the next 30 days there, but you're not allowed to mention your product. Just answer questions and be helpful.
After 30 days, reach out to 3 people you helped and ask for a 15-minute chat about their problems.
Cancel your plans to build any new features until you've done this. (Yes, even that one you "know they'll love.")
The Truth About Building a Product That Doesn't Fail
The best product isn't the one with the most features or the cleanest code. It's the one that people actually use to solve a problem they care about.
Your product development should feel like a conversation, not a monologue in a dark room.
The real question isn't "Can I build this?"
It's "Can I find five people who will beg me to build this?"
Start there. Your sanity will thank you.