Most "how to get your first 100 users" posts give you the same advice: launch on Product Hunt, post on Indie Hackers, build in public on X. Useful, but it's the advice every other founder is also getting. By the time you act on it, you're 1 of 50 builders posting that week.
This post is about the channels nobody competes for, because nobody has the patience to dig in.
I'll walk through what buyer intent actually sounds like on each of the four major social platforms, what to search to find it, and how to know within a day which platform matters most for your idea.
The platform mistake
Most founders pick a platform because that's where they hang out. If you live on X, you decide your users live on X. If you scroll Reddit, that's your channel.
Both might be wrong. Your users live wherever they're talking about your problem out loud. That's almost always not the platform you'd guess.
A B2B founder building a developer tool might assume X. The actual signal lives in Reddit's r/devops or in YouTube comments under DevOps tutorials.
A consumer app founder might assume TikTok. The actual signal lives in YouTube reviews of competitor apps.
You don't pick the platform. You let the data pick it.
Reddit: the place where people ask for tools by name
Reddit is the most obvious channel and still the most underused. Subreddits are categorized by interest, posts are searchable, and people post asking for tool recommendations several times per day in any active community.
What buying intent looks like:
- "What's a good tool for X?" (asking for recommendations)
- "I'm tired of using Y for X" (complaint with implied search)
- "Anyone here using Z? Worth it?" (evaluating a competitor)
- "Looking for an alternative to X" (literal churn intent)
Search patterns that work:
looking for [category](inr/yoursubreddit)tired of [competitor]wish there was a tool that [specific function]alternative to [competitor]better than [competitor]
When Reddit dominates your signal: B2B SaaS in technical categories, tools used by hobbyists who congregate by interest, anything where users want privacy or anonymity around their problem.
X (Twitter): short, raw, public complaints
X is faster than Reddit. People complain in real time, before they've even thought through the problem. The signal is shorter and louder.
What buying intent looks like:
- "Can someone recommend [category]?"
- "Just spent 3 hours on X. There has to be a better way."
- "Switching from [competitor] to anything else"
- "Why does no one make a tool that does [thing]"
Search patterns that work:
recommend [category]anyone use [competitor]looking for an alternative tobetter than [competitor]frustrated with [category]
When X dominates your signal: founder-facing tools, anything productivity-related, tools where the buyer is actively building in public, consumer apps with a heavy power-user crowd.
The risk: replying to strangers on X gets dismissed as spam fast. The bar for the reply is high.
YouTube: review comments are unfair
This one is underrated. Under every competitor's review video sits a list of buyers explaining what's missing. They've already invested 10+ minutes watching. They're qualified.
What buying intent looks like:
- "Tried this, doesn't do [feature]. What does?"
- "Looks great but [pricing/UX/missing thing]"
- "Switched from [other competitor] for [reason]"
- "Anyone know a tool that does [thing]?"
Search patterns that work:
[competitor] review[competitor] vs [competitor]best [category] tools 2026[category] tutorial
When YouTube dominates your signal: SaaS in mature categories with active reviewer ecosystems, prosumer tools, anything where the buyer researches before buying.
I covered this channel in depth in the YouTube playbook.
TikTok: the channel founders ignore
The newest, the loudest, the most underused. Captions are the new SEO. Comment sections are full of "what do you use for X" questions. Almost no Reddit-only lead tools cover this.
What buying intent looks like:
- A creator video describing the exact pain you solve
- Comments saying "I need this" under tutorials
- "Drop your favorite [category] apps below" prompts
- Stitch/duet videos calling out missing features in competitors
Search patterns that work:
[problem in plain English](e.g. "my resume keeps getting rejected")[category] tips/[category] hackshow to [task your tool automates]apps for [audience]
When TikTok dominates your signal: consumer apps, anything visual, productivity tools demoable in 30 seconds, fitness/health/finance/learning apps. Skip if your product is enterprise B2B with no consumer surface.
Full playbook: the TikTok post.
How to know which platform matters most for you
You don't have to guess. Run all four in parallel and let the signal decide.
There's no shortcut for the actual searching — every platform has its own format, search behavior, and rate limits. So you either spend the weekend doing it manually or you use a tool that runs all four in parallel and ranks the results.
That's why I built Gorilla. Paste your idea, it expands into 20+ phrasings, hits Reddit + X + YouTube + TikTok at once, scores every match for buying intent. The first run usually surprises you — the platform you expected to dominate often doesn't, and the one you ignored produces the best leads.
What to do once you have the data
Whatever you find, the next steps are the same:
- Pick the platform with the highest concentration of buying-intent posts.
- Reply to 10 of them. Be useful first, link second, ask nothing.
- Track which replies get a click and which get ignored.
- Refine your reply template based on what worked.
- Run another search next week with sharper queries.
Founders who get to 100 users in 90 days mostly do this. Founders who don't are usually still trying to pick the perfect channel before sending a reply.
The cost of guessing
Every week you spend guessing the right channel is a week your competitors are talking to your buyers. The point of running across all four platforms is to skip the guess. Cost: 15 seconds and a buck. Output: a ranked list of people asking for what you're building, on the platforms you didn't think to check.
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