Get Early SaaS Customers Without an Audience or VC

Most founders waste months building product before they’ve earned the right to. The faster path—especially if you’re bootstrapping in the US—is to buy (or borrow) conversations: with the exact people who would pay for the thing.

That’s the core thread running through Rob Walling and Ruben Gamez’s listener Q&A on Startups For the Rest of Us: how to find early customers when you don’t have an audience, how to think about vertical vs. horizontal SaaS, what no-code risk actually matters, and when a prosumer SaaS model helps (or hurts) a lean startup.

This post is part of the Solopreneur Marketing Strategies USA series—practical marketing moves for one-person businesses that need leads and revenue without venture capital, big ad budgets, or a sales team.

Finding early customers with zero audience

If you have no audience and no VC, your only unfair advantage is focus. You don’t need followers; you need access to real buyers and fast feedback.

Rob shared a stat that should reset your expectations: less than 5% of the companies he’s seen funded (TinySeed portfolio) started with any meaningful audience. The default path isn’t “build an audience first.” It’s talk to people first.

Start with research, not “pitching your idea”

The most reliable early-customer move is simple: tell people you’re researching a problem, not selling a solution.

That framing matters. When you lead with a solution, people either:

• Try to be polite and say “cool idea” (useless signal)
• Argue with your implementation (not the problem)
• Ghost you

When you lead with the problem, you can learn:

• What they currently do (and what they hate about it)
• What they’ve already tried
• What “good enough” looks like
• What they’d pay to fix

A line that works well in cold outreach:

“I’m researching how [role] handles [job-to-be-done]. I’m not selling anything—could I ask you 6–8 questions on a 15-minute call?”

Where do you find people to talk to?

If your network is zero, you still have options. Here’s a solopreneur-friendly list that doesn’t require an audience:

1. LinkedIn search + cold DMs (best when job titles are clear)
2. Cold email (best when companies list staff emails)
3. Niche communities (Subreddits, Slack groups, Facebook groups)
4. Review sites and competitor feedback (Capterra/G2-style patterns)
5. Founders who already sell in the space (failed or successful)

The counterintuitive advice from Rob: don’t post “what problems do you have?” in communities. Lurk first.

Lurking gives you two advantages:

• You learn the language people actually use (so your landing page doesn’t sound like a brochure)
• You spot repeated pain points without biasing the answer

If you see the same complaint every week (“Eventbrite fees are brutal” / “coupon codes are a mess” / “check-in is chaos”), you’ve found a real thread worth pulling.

Pay for conversations when you need speed

Bootstrapped founders often hear “don’t run ads.” The smarter version is: don’t run ads for scale before you have positioning.

But running small, intentional ads for research can be a strong move.

• Send traffic to a landing page offering an interview
• Or run a short survey that pre-qualifies respondents
• Offer a small incentive if the audience is truly cold

Ruben did this in the early days of SignWell using Twitter ads—not for ROI, but to pay for data.

For US founders, the practical hierarchy is:

• Google Ads if there’s clear intent (“best e-signature API”, “conference ticketing software”) and you can afford the clicks
• Meta if you can target by interest/behavior and your problem is common
• LinkedIn if you can target by job title, but expect higher cost and more manual tuning

No-code MVPs: the risk founders worry about is the wrong one

If you’re building with a no-code tool like Bubble, the anxiety usually sounds like: “What if I can’t export the code later?”

The blunt answer: that’s real risk, but it’s rarely the first risk that kills you.

Early-stage, your biggest threats are:

• Nobody pays
• You can’t reach buyers consistently
• The problem isn’t painful enough to trigger switching

Treat no-code like a prototype you may rewrite

Ruben shared a useful mental model: if you build a no-code product and it works, you should expect that it may be rewritten later.

That’s not failure. It’s normal. Lots of “real” codebases get rewritten too.

No-code is a tool for:

• validating demand
• proving distribution
• learning what features actually matter

One caution: complex no-code logic can become hard to maintain or transfer. If your system turns into thousands of conditional rules, your “simple MVP” becomes an internal maze.

A practical solopreneur rule:

• Use no-code when speed beats elegance
• Avoid no-code when your product depends on deep technical differentiation (performance, security-heavy workflows, or complex integrations)

Horizontal vs. vertical SaaS: don’t mix up market shape with sales motion

A lot of founders treat “vertical” as meaning “enterprise sales” and “horizontal” as meaning “self-serve.” That’s a mistake.

Vertical vs. horizontal describes who it’s for.

• Vertical SaaS: built for one industry (dentists, property managers, conference organizers)
• Horizontal SaaS: built for a function across industries (e-signature, analytics, help desk)

Sales motion is separate:

• self-serve vs. sales-led
• low ACV vs. high ACV
• low-touch onboarding vs. high-touch implementation

Rob’s stance is one I agree with: if you want to build to $1M–$5M ARR without VC, higher price points make the math easier. Lower churn, fewer customers needed, and more room to fund marketing from revenue.

The hidden trade-off: “simple self-serve” usually needs massive volume

The indie dream is a $20/mo tool that runs itself.

It exists. It’s just rarer than people admit, and it often plateaus.

Why? Because low price points require:

• high traffic volume
• strong onboarding
• tight activation
• churn management
• more support than you expected

If you’re a solo founder, that combination can become the job.

A healthier framing:

• If you go low price, you need a wide funnel (SEO, content, partnerships)
• If you go high price, you need a narrow funnel (target accounts, outreach, demos)

Pick the one that matches your skills and your patience.

Prosumer SaaS: great funnel, brutal churn

Prosumer SaaS sits between B2C and classic B2B. Think creators, freelancers, hobbyists-with-budget, and “small teams that act like individuals.”

Rob’s practical warning: prosumer buyers are often price sensitive and churn-prone, meaning you must plan for a wider funnel.

The pattern that works: a low-end plan + an upmarket path

Many successful bootstrapped SaaS products work because they combine:

• an accessible entry plan ($8–$29/mo)
• higher tiers where revenue concentrates ($300–$2,000+/mo)

Rob mentioned a portfolio-wide pattern: in dual-funnel businesses, a minority of accounts often drives the majority of MRR.

That’s why copying GitHub/Notion pricing without the rest of their model is risky. Big companies can subsidize free plans with enterprise contracts and massive distribution.

For a solo founder, the safer approach is:

• Start with a clear paying use case
• Build an upgrade path that’s obvious (more seats, compliance, advanced permissions, API, workflow automation)
• Avoid “free forever” unless you have a measured conversion plan

A bootstrapped lead-gen checklist (what to do this week)

If you’re building a SaaS in 2026 without VC, here’s a simple execution plan you can run in 5–10 hours:

1. Define one buyer: role, industry, and a specific job-to-be-done.
2. Write 10 interview asks (LinkedIn DM or email). Keep it short.
3. Lurk in one community for 30 minutes a day for a week. Screenshot repeated complaints.
4. Pull 25 leads (job titles + companies) and send outreach.
5. Build a one-page landing page with:
   • who it’s for
   • the painful outcome you fix
   • one CTA: “Talk to me” or “Join the waitlist”
6. Run a $50–$150 research test (optional): ads to a survey or interview booking page.

Do that and you’re no longer guessing. You’re doing solopreneur marketing the way it actually works: small bets, fast learning, clear next steps.

What to do next (if you want leads without VC)

Most companies don’t fail because they can’t build. They fail because they can’t reach buyers predictably.

If you’re following this Solopreneur Marketing Strategies USA series, the throughline is consistent: distribution is a design constraint, not a “later” problem. Choose your market, price, and product shape based on how you can get leads while staying profitable.

If you had to get your first 10 customer conversations in the next 14 days, which channel would you bet on: cold outreach, niche communities, or a small paid research test?