Find your first users in conversations that already exist

A new product does not have a funnel. It has a URL and a hope that someone with the problem will trip over it. The more reliable version of that hope is to go where people already ask strangers for a recommendation.

Start with the question, not the announcement

“Show HN: I launched a thing” is a different post from “Ask HN: what are you using for this?”. The second one is a person in the market. The first one is you. Keyword alerts treat them as the same event if they share a noun. They are not.

Useful searches sound like speech. “Looking for a tool that…”, “anyone recommend…”, “alternative to…”, “how do you handle…”. If you cannot imagine typing the query yourself while frustrated, it is probably a bad query.

Where this product looks

LaunchRadar searches Hacker News and Bluesky. Those are public, and the APIs used here do not require a user account. X can be added with a bearer token on the server. Reddit is intentionally absent. If your buyers live on a private Slack or a Discord, no public search product will see them, including this one.

How to reply without becoming the spam

Answer the question they asked. Mention your product once, with the URL, and a plain description. Do not invent customers, do not paste a wall of features, and do not follow up from a second account. If the post is not actually a fit, do not reply. A short list you act on beats a long list you feel guilty about.

LaunchRadar will draft a reply angle, and on Pro a fuller draft. It will not post it. That limit is the product, not a missing integration. The morning email is there so you can do the human part before the day fills up.

A small way to start

Paste a URL into the free sample and read five scored posts. If the searches are wrong, that is useful information: the page is not explaining the product, or the buyers do not talk this way in public. If a post is real, reply to it yourself. Create a free account when you want that check on a schedule.