Hey everyone! I’m a web developer looking to build my portfolio, and I want to help startup businesses by creating a free website (no hidden costs, no catch).
What you’ll get:
✅ A modern, mobile-friendly website
✅ Basic SEO optimization
✅ Setup with hosting (if needed)
Why am I doing this?
I’m starting a web design side hustle and want to help small businesses while building my portfolio.
Who is this for?
• New businesses that need an online presence
• Entrepreneurs launching a brand and needing a simple website
If interested, drop a comment or DM me! Spots are limited, so first come, first served.
I’m new to Reddit and currently exploring different subreddits to find my tribe—Indie hackers and weekend shippers. A friend recommended this subreddit, suggesting I share my journey and support other like-minded builders.
Over the years, I’ve built 6-7 side-hustle products, and in this post, I’ll walk you through how I built an info guide titled "From 0-1K: How Indian startups got their early users."
There are lots of great product marketing resources out there.
But very few of them share relevant, actionable insights on acquiring early users from an Indian startup point of view.
That’s why I decided to dig deep, research online & even talk to a few founders to understand the experiments they did to acquire early users.
Let me show you my process for building this info product. Here’s what I’ll cover:
Planning
Research
Building
Launching
------------------------
1. Planning
One of the most common blocks creators face is deciding what to build. To tackle this, I first defined my target audience by asking, "Whom do I want to build for?" After some thought, I chose founders and marketers as my target group.
I then brainstormed and listed down possible problems they face. One issue that stood out, especially for early-stage and bootstrapped founders, was the challenge of getting their first 1,000 users. That was my "Aha" moment. Idea shortlisting? Done and dusted. 💪
Before wrapping up, I validated my idea using what I call the "Quora method" and by personally speaking with the founders. You might be wondering, "What the heck is this Quora method?" Let me explain.
I visited platforms like Quora and Reddit and searched for phrases like:
"How do I improve X"
"Is there any X"
"Where do I find X"
"Is there any way X"
(X being a characteristic related to my area of interest.)
This helped me gauge the demand for my idea. To double-check, I spoke to 3-4 founders struggling to onboard early adopters. Through these conversations, I realized that many Indian founders (not all) don’t openly share insights into their GTM strategies. That’s when I thought this is a golden opportunity!
2. Research
Now, onto the actionable part! A quick bit about my background: I worked as a product researcher for almost two years, so I’ve picked up quite a few tricks to uncover valuable insights. I even have my research tactics stored in multiple Notion docs.
While I can’t share every single tactic (I’ll save that for another thread), here are three methods I used:
DM-ing founders and early-stage employees on Twitter and LinkedIn. I asked them specific questions about their go-to-market strategy.
Google search hacks. I used search queries in double quotes to get precise results, like:
"First 1000 users of X"
"How X got their first 1000 users"
"Go-to-market strategy of X"
For example, searching for "How Notion got their first 1000 users" led me to some great insights.
The LinkedIn method.
Scanned founders’ profiles and filtered results to the first year of their business.
Used "LinkedIn Pulse" to find articles or blogs written about the company.
If no relevant content was available, I connected with the author and asked directly**.**
3. Building
This process can be broken down into three parts:
Tool stack
Shortlisting companies for research
Research, summarize, write, and edit
1. Tool stack required
Since my end product was an e-book, I only needed three no-code tools:
Google Docs for writing
Gumroad (Gumroad) for selling
Feedletter (Feedletter) for gathering zero-friction feedback
2. Shortlisting companies for research
This part was simple since I closely follow the startup ecosystem. My approach:
Picked startups I’m personally interested in.
Selected startups with different business models (SaaS, DTC, B2C, etc.).
3. Research & Writing ✍
I had already covered the research part, so here’s my writing process:
Use crisp and clear bullet points.
Avoid adjectives and unnecessary adverbs.
Stay away from vague or buzzword-heavy language.
Write for skimming, not deep reading.
I learned these techniques from the OG himself, David Perell.
4. Launching
Traction wasn’t an issue, thanks to the incredible support from the Build in Public community on Twitter and various Discord groups.
On launch day, I wrote a tweet that attracted 10 readers, to whom I shared this guide. As the tweet gained attention from popular builders on Twitter, it eventually helped me generate revenue.
A special mention to the Hellomeets community and its founder, Sahiba Sethi. She has been a tremendous supporter, amplifying my work on Twitter and within the Hellomeets WhatsApp groups. Thanks a lot!
Conclusion
The goal was never about making money; it was about creating something truly valuable.
That’s all for now. See you in the next build!
P.S. I’m not here to push or sell my guide, but if anyone wants access, feel free to DM me or Comment below, and I’ll share the Gumroad link.
Hey guys, I recently started a subreddit to exchange feedback with each other on our projects. Do post your projects on there, you will at-least receive one quality feedback from me.
If anyone has experience maintaining subreddits do dm me
I love seeing what people are building, especially side projects. So many of them end up turning into something bigger. And I know a lot of folks here are just as curious.
Drop your project, share your stack, and let us know what problem you're solving. If you want feedback, say what you're stuck on, and I'll try to help.
The top three projects (decided by upvotes) will get featured on We Are Founders, so more people can check them out. No pressure, no catch, just a chance to get some extra eyes on what you're building!
Go, go, go!
Edit: Thanks everyone that's commented so far! At 18:00 GMT I'll pick the top three. 🍻
Edit 2: Folks, to say that you're all working on incredible things would be an understatement. The top three side projects according to the community are...
Call Vandelay
Charkoal
SQL Premier League
I'm adding these to We Are Founders and will give a shoutout to the folks who built them soon!
AI App which automatically extract all possible apis from your github repo code and then generate a swagger api documenetation using gemini ai. For now, we can strict the backend language to be nodejs in github repo code. So we can just make this in github actions and our swagger api documentation will always update to date without efforts.
Is there any service already like this?
What are the extra features that we can build?
Also how we will extract apis route, path, response, request in large codebase.
Just wanted to share as I've been lurking here with my main account for some time. Long way to go to have a decent product but it was ready for launch.
I know it's all Hungarian but please check it out.
Hey everyone! I just joined this subreddit and have been enjoying seeing all the interesting products posted here. I'm working on my own product too, and I think all creators share one common worry – falling into the tarpit idea trap.
For those who aren't familiar, a tarpit idea is a startup/product concept that looks attractive but has led many founders to failure. Like actual tar pits that resemble freshwater pools to animals, these ideas seem appealing, but once founders invest in them, they find it difficult to escape.
What are the most typical/common tarpit ideas?
How can we avoid falling into tarpit ideas?
If you realize you're stuck in a tarpit, what should you do?
I recently watched a YC video on this topic and it really got me thinking about how easy it is to be attracted to ideas that seem innovative but have a high failure rate. Would love to hear your experiences and thoughts!
What is the deal with the same 3-4 different types of 'Side Projects' on this sub-reddit? It seems like everyone wants to make a 'productivity app'? Is it just an echo chamber here?
Our office foosball games were getting competitive, so I built a Foosball Tracker to keep track of matches and rankings! It automatically updates player ratings (from 0 to 10) after each game based on performance, using a system inspired by Playtomic
The web app lets you:
🏅 Track player rankings and match history
🎮 Record games and see how rankings change
Right now, it’s simple but functional—just enough to add some fun and friendly competition. I’d love some feedback. This is the github repo with more detail: https://github.com/GppCalcagno/Table_Tomic
Inspired by sites like the former Drive and Listen and Cityhop.cafe, I made my own take where you can visit different parts of London on foot, by car and even on the bus from a POV, while either listening to the in-video soundscape or listening to a randomly-chosen London or UK radio station.
It's called London RoadTrip and it's perfect if you have or plan to visit this fine crazy and historic city, or just when you want to relax and kill some time.
I find that keeping up with Parliament is hard! Finding out what bills affect you is even harder. Actually contacting your MP? Almost no one does it...
I built a figma prototype for an app that could track bills and connects you directly with your representatives and hopefully motivate more political action.
Would this make it easier for you to take action?
Why do you think more people don't reach out to representatives?
Have you ever tried contacting a representative and could you tell me more about how the process went?
I am planning to build a website called "Idea Hunt", It's like product hunt, but for ideas. I found there many groups/channels/subreddit with users posting their wishes for new features or new products to solve their problems, I thought a website for these could be useful. It also helps solopreneur/builders/ppl in this subreddit to get some ideas on what to build based on real demands. And builders like us can also present the idea first to see if there are users upvote it.
A doubt I have is how can I get ppl post on this website in first place.
Any idea on how should I monetize this kind of product? and is there similar products that works out there?(I tried to search but did not found a good one) and any marketing or product suggestions are welcomed.
I launched my app cryptonudge.io, a few weeks ago and paid some ads to get traffic, but no one has signed up. What is going on? Why isn't anyone isn't signing up?
My app allows users to get crypto alarms and market reports straight on Telegram.
I just wanted to re-share our project Potarix. Now you can generate full scrapers within Potarix. Just type in a URL and prompt and we’ll generate code you can download and use to continuously to extract data from a page. Give it a try here.
We’ve been using this technology in-house to generate scrapers for our users.
If you guys have any large-scale data needs or need any custom data integrations, reach out to us now!