Marketing for Founders

This is a collection of practical marketing resources to get the first 10 / 100 / 1000 users for your SaaS / App / Startup.

TL;DR: This is a collection of practical marketing resources to get the first 10 / 100 / 1000 users for your SaaS / App / Startup.

Let’s face it. Marketing is tough, especially if you’re a technical founder moving the first steps with your startup.

While there’s a ton of advice out there, most of the time it's about scaling some VC-funded startup with a big marketing budget to $1,000,000 ARR and 100,000 users.

Inspirational? Sure. Actionable? Not really.

This is why you’ll find here a practical collection of startup resources, tips, and some tools to help you:

🎯 find the first users for your startup
📣 promote your SaaS without a budget
🚀 build your Go-To-Market strategy

Ready to get started? Just pick a topic:

📣 Places To Launch Your Startup
😾 Marketing for Product Hunt Launch NEW! - 📷 Social Media Marketing
❄ Sales & Cold Outreach
📈 SEO
🤖 LLM SEO, AEO, GEO
🦊 Marketing on Reddit
💌 Email Marketing
🧲 Content Marketing
💸 Ads
👩🏫 Influencer Marketing
💑 Affiliates and Referrals
🛠 Free-Tool Marketing
🎯 Landing Pages, Messaging and Positioning
🎰 Pricing
🔥 Conversion Rate Optimization
💡 Idea Validation
⚗ User Research
🧨 Other resources

PS. Leave me a star ⭐ or say Hi on X/Twitter if you find this useful!

Launch platforms, software directories, and communities are an easy way to get the first users for your startup and a tiny, steady flow of people to your SaaS. Some of the following may not be relevant for your product, but (hopefully) can give you ideas on what to look for.

Launch platforms:

Betalist
Fazier
Uneed
Microlaunch
Peerlist
Indie Hackers
Hacker News
ProductHunt
SideProjectors
LaunchIgniter
PeerPush

Software directories:

Toolfolio
toools.design
OpenAlternative
LibHunt
SaaSHub
SaaS Genius
G2
TrustPilot
Capterra
There's an AI for that
Alternativeto
SourceForge
Softonic
TrustMRR

Lifetime deals platforms & groups:

AppSumo
RocketHub
StackSocial
SaaS Mantra
Saas Warrior
LTD Hunt
KEN Moo
Lifetimo
Prime Club
SaasZilla
SaaSPirate
ProductCanyon
Dealmirror
Dealify

Subreddits (always check the rules before posting anything):

Sideproject
Selfhosted - use flair "Product Announcement"
Webdev - use flair "Showoff Saturday"
Startup_Ideas
Indiehackers - use flair "Self Promotion"
Internetisbeautiful
Roastmystartup
Alphaandbetausers
Iosapps - use flair "Dev - Self Promotion"
Saasbuild
BuyFromEU - use flair "European Product"
Buildinpublic
Scaleinpublic
ShowMeYourSaaS
DevelopersIndia - use flair "I made this"
Androidapps - use flair "Self Promotion"
iOSProgramming - use flair "App Saturday"
MVPLaunch
Macapps
TheFounders - use flair "Show"
Apps - use flair "App"
Chrome_extensions - use flair "Self Promotion"
LaunchMyStartup
ProductHunters
Startups_promotion
TestMyApp
ProductivityApps
ShowYourApp

PS. You can find more websites to launch your startup here (thanks Sandra) and, if you're running an AI startup, here.

PPS. You can find a few tips for writing a great launch post here.

Product Hunt is still one of the most effective ways to get early users (if you can pull off a successful launch). Yes, it takes a lot of preparation, promotion and follow-up work but hitting #1 on Product Hunt can get you a ton of honest feedback, downloads, users and PR buzz.

Use these guides to plan your launch strategy:

How to rank #1 on Product Hunt
How to successfully launch on Product Hunt
Product Hunt launch step-by-step guide + templates
Product Hunt Launch Workbook

Managing multiple accounts across all social media platforms can be pretty intense (there’s a reason why it’s a full-time job); however, there are a couple of strategies worth trying: building in public and social listening.

Building in Public - it’s the easiest social media marketing tactic. In a nutshell, it’s about using your personal profile to share expertise, product updates, and behind-the-scenes content:

How to Build in Public as a Founder
The Ultimate Founder-Led LinkedIn Guide
LinkedIn CEO/Founder playbook
199 LinkedIn post examples
6 hacks to get the most out of LinkedIn
The Ultimate Founder & Team LinkedIn Playbook
Turn Building in Public into your most profitable GTM channel
How to market to developers on Twitter
SuperX Twitter Analytics extension - to find top performing tweets from other accounts
Find your Following and How to Dominate Twitter/X by Dagobert Renouf - 2 courses by OG Build in Public creators

Social listening - tracking and joining online conversations on topics related to your Startup is pretty helpful to get in touch with users and learn more about them:

Social Listening: Identifying High-Intent Mentions to Grow Your SaaS
Sample set-up from Simple Analytics
F5 bot - a free tool to track mentions on Hacker News and Reddit
BOFU Keyword Ideas - to brainstorm keywords to track

Other Social Media Marketing Guides:

Organic Growth Guide for TikTok and Instagram
Pinterest Growth Guide
How to Market a Viral App through organic UGC

Most people hate cold outreach and everything connected with direct sales. Yes, depending on your approach, it might be hard to scale and time-intensive, but cold emails and DMs are the most straightforward way to get in touch with potential users, collect precious early-stage feedback and find the first customers for your startup.

So, how can you find people on target? What should you write in your messages? And how can you scale cold outreach? Here are a few ideas to set up your SaaS sales strategy:

The Ultimate Framework to build your Ideal Customer Profile
Before there is Ideal, there is Early (Customer Profile)
Ideal Customer Profile tips from Posthog
How to analyze your early customers to validate your ICP
B2B Ideal Customer Profile Template
How to do startup sales with no experience
Master LinkedIn Sales Navigator in < 90 min
The GTM Outreach Playbook: From Triggers to Demos
The Ultimate Guide to Sales Product Demos
4 Must-Have Email Templates in SaaS Sales
The Cold Outbound Handbook
The ultimate guide to setting up a cold email growth system
The Best Outbound Tech Stack for Early-Stage Startups
The cold email that started ConvertKit
Tally's early-stage DM strategy - you can find the full story here
Sales emails examples from top companies
Got saas clients doing this strategy
How Our Client Booked 25+ Meetings & 10+ New Logos Using Clay + YC
Examples of proven sales plays to create a sales pipeline
How to create a high-converting Sales Deck
How to sell to developers (tldr: you don’t, sell to their boss)
The enterprise sales playbook - Lenny's Podcast

Should you focus on SEO in the early days of your startup? Probably not, SEO takes time (and backlinks), but this doesn’t mean you should neglect it either.

SEO is the foundation for many startups, and it can get you a steady source of traffic without having to spend anything other than the time to do it.

These guides and tips will help you get started:

The Ultimate SEO Guide for Early-Stage SaaS
How to Prioritize SEO in Early-Stage Startups and MVP Development
SEO strategy from Simple Analytics
Non-obvious SEO advice for startups
Use-case-led SEO: A strategy for sustainable organic growth
The Future of SEO is User-Generated Content
The HyperGrowth Partners Guide to AI-powered Programmatic SEO
Danny Postma's SEO Blueprint - the SEO course for makers
How to do keyword research for SEO and AEO

PS. If you're new to SEO and don't know where/how to start check out LearningSEO and The Complete Guide to Programmatic SEO.

PPS. If you're building iOS apps also check these two ASO guides: Create an App Store listing that ranks and Rank higher on App Store

How to get recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini is probably the most popular question from founders in 2025. And it’s easy to understand why, you can get mentioned by a citation tomorrow and start showing up immediately, even if you’re an early-stage startup.

So, where can you learn how to get found in AI search?

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product
How to get recommended by ChatGPT
A hands-on guide to ranking across AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google
How Vercel is adapting SEO for LLMs and AI search
How Tally Turned AI into Their Top Acquisition Source
What Companies Are Doing TODAY to Rank High on AI Engines
A playbook for making AI discovery the best new channel for high-intent leads
AI & LLM SEO Course: Get ChatGPT, Claude & Perplexity to Recommend You

Everyone says Reddit is the go-to platform to get initial traction and the first users for your product. There’s a community for almost every topic, plus more and more people (and LLMs) are using it to bypass SEO garbage and find what real humans actually think.

But Redditors have an almost supernatural ability to detect marketing, and when founders try to sneak in promotional content, it gets downvoted into oblivion (if you’re lucky).

So, how to promote an App/SaaS/Startup on Reddit without getting banned?

The Reddit marketing guide for beginners
How to promote your MVP on Reddit
Reddit post examples to launch/promote a product
The key to self-promotion on Reddit
How OpenPhone used Reddit to get our first 1,000 customers
Tips on marketing on Reddit from Lemlist
The storytelling hack for 10x buzz on Reddit
The key to self-promotion on Reddit

PS. If you're looking for a list of subreddits that allow self-promotion go back to Places To Launch Your Startup, and if you're looking to set up your Reddit social listening strategy go back to Social Media Marketing.

Email marketing can help you with almost anything: onboarding new users, boosting free-to-paid conversions, promoting affiliate/referral programs, and collecting feedback. Plus, it’s often your only option to engage users outside of your product.

The SaaS Email Marketing Playbook
Email Marketing for SaaS 101: Engage, Retain, and Scale
SaaS Email Marketing Strategy: Everything You Need to Know
Lifecycle email planning worksheets from Userlist
How to Build High-Converting SaaS Email Onboarding Sequences
Onboarding Email concepts
SaaS Email Examples on Userlist's blog
Email examples on Encharge's blog
Behavior-based Email Marketing for B2B SaaS
15 SaaS Email Flows Ideas
How to optimize an email automation
How we built our onboarding email flow - PostHog

Just like SEO, content marketing is one of the first growth levers to pull for a startup. This time, instead of creating content to praise search engines, you’ll be sharing it where your audience hangs out and hijacking trends for free exposure:

Getting PR for your SaaS
A how-to guide for writing original content that works
The Ultimate Content Marketing Programs Guide for SaaS
How to effectively create content for developers
A behind the scenes look at MKT1's content strategy part 1 and part 2
How I promote my content - Marketing Examples
Content distribution checklist (thanks to Ross Simmonds)
How to create powerful SaaS Lead Magnets + examples

Every startup will think about adding a paid channel to their marketing strategy sooner or later and Ads are one of the best ways to accelerate user acquisition.

Here are a few guides to help you avoid burning through your budget before getting any return from your Ad campaign:

How to get started with Google Ads for early-stage B2B SaaS startups
The No-Fluff LinkedIn Ads Playbook
How to get started with LinkedIn Ads for early-stage B2B SaaS startups
The guide to advertise your SaaS & Software on Facebook
Free B2B Ads courses from AdConversion
How to SPY on your competitor’s successful ads
250+ DevTool Ads examples
Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned
How to run effective Reddit ads: Meme-Style, Incentive-First Copy, and "Is This an Ad?" Text Posts

Going where the audience is is the first rule of marketing. That’s why partnering with content creators and influencers can help you grow your startup and connect directly with customers.

However, online advice on influencer marketing is often bad and outdated, so let’s take a look at a few firsthand experiences:

Should Influencers be part of your GTM Strategy?
Short Form Playbook from Jenny AI (also watch this video)
How Clerk Partners with YouTube’s Dev Community
5 Pillars of Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns
The B2B Influencer Marketing Playbook used by Lovable, Gamma & n8n

Word-of-mouth is often the main growth driver for bootstrapped startups. Why? Because affiliate and referral programs are easy to set up, cheap (you only pay if the user converts), and build trust and credibility (when users recommend your product, you’re not only getting traffic, but also social proof that it works).

10 steps for a great Referral Program
Your guide to B2B referrals
Your ultimate guide to affiliate referrals for B2B SaaS
8 Affiliate & Referral Email Examples

Free mini tools are your best bet on going viral, generating PR coverage and backlinks, and driving a ton of organic traffic. Plus, it doesn’t feel like marketing (that’s the reason why it’s also called Engineering as Marketing).

Mini tools are 10x more powerful than free trials
Side Project Marketing: What Is It & How to Do It
Engineering as Marketing (with examples from Hubspot, Shopify & Ahrefs)
Building Free Tools for Marketing (SEO)

Most startup websites are ineffective. They fail to tell who the product is for, what the product does, and why it is better. This means confused visitors, poor conversion rates, and wasted marketing $$$.

Here are a few resources to turn your website into a sales and marketing asset:

How to create a more effective homepage
The only SaaS homepage framework you need
How to create a high-converting SaaS homepage
ConversionFactory's SaaS homepage framework
SaaS Headline Playbook
A quickstart guide to positioning
The definitive product positioning framework and How to differentiate your product
How to create value proposition for developer tools
Developer product positioning and messaging examples that slap
The Ultimate SaaS Messaging Framework for early-stage Startups
Use Social Proof To Elevate Your GTM Efforts
The Ultimate Guide on Case Studies & Testimonials
The DNA of a Great Pricing Page
How to optimize your pricing page
How to create an effective pricing page
The perfect Product Pages for SaaS founders
The Ultimate Guide to the perfect SaaS pricing page (incl. real examples)

“Your product delivers the value added to target customers; with pricing, we capture added value back to build a sustainable business.”

Confused? You’re not alone. Pricing and business model are the toughest things to crack for a startup.

Here are a few frameworks to get your price right:

Pricing: From WTF to WTP (Willingness to Pay)
The Ultimate B2B SaaS Pricing Guide for early-stage startups
Your guide to price testing
Are you leaving too much money on the table?
How to have "the pricing talk" with your customers
Your guide to reverse trials
8 fundamentals about free trials for early stage PLG startups
14 tactical ideas for selling annual plans

Little tweaks can have a huge impact on conversions. Here are a few ideas ready for you to A/B test:

Are you making this website mistake?
Surprising lessons from 20,000 experiments
The most powerful CTA? Hint: It's definitely not "Book a Demo"
23% more trial signups after paywall redesign
One blurry background = 94% more conversions

One of the most common and painful mistakes you can make is having an idea and immediately spending all your time building a product without validating demand first.

Some ideas are great, but most aren’t worth your time. So, how can you validate a startup idea?

The 2/20/200 Idea Validation Framework
The 7-Day Business Idea Validation Framework
How to validate your idea before building your product, wasting money and time
A four-part guide to finding problems your customers will pay you to solve using Reddit
How to not do product discovery
The cold email that started a $100M/yr company
Interview Script: Discovery Phase (before you've built anything)

Talk to your customers! They’ll let you know what to build, what to improve, and what to leave alone!

Sure, but when you’re running a SaaS/App, customers sign up by themselves, learn how to use your product on their own, and only reach out if they need help or support.

So, how do you get feedback? Here are a few resources to get you started:

An engineer’s guide to talking to users
How to get insights on autopilot
No time for Research? 3 High-speed Research Methods for Growth
How to write great product survey questions (with examples)
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit
MaxDiff: the secret to getting the truth from customers about what they actually care about
Journey mapping interviews: a structured approach to analyzing the onboarding experience
A short introduction to Jobs To Be Done
22 questions you should be asking your customers
Jobs To Be Done: Email Invite Template & Interview Questions by Forget The Funnel
Maze Question Bank: over 350 ready-to-go questions for your research projects
Customer interview scripts (thanks to Michele Hansen)
New Customer Script - to uncover the initial part of the customer's journey
Happy Customer Script - to learn from the customers you want more of
Churned Customer Script - if you're struggling with churn
Feature Request Script - when you want to dive deep into a feature request
100+ Growth Hacks for SaaS
GitHub Search Engine Optimization (SEO): how to rank your repository in GitHub search
The Ultimate Playbook for Getting More GitHub Stars
How today’s biggest consumer products got their first 1,000 users
B2B startup marketing for noobs, by noobs
Developer marketing guide (by a dev tool startup CMO)
How we got our first 1,000 users by PostHog
Your guide to quick wins in SaaS marketing
The Product-Market Fit Game
40 things we’ve learned about marketing for developers
How to create a good GitHub Readme
Marketing Skills for Claude Code