Where to find users pre‑product

Founders looking for users before they ship are increasingly skipping broad launches and going straight to places where buyers already ask for help, complain, or hire. (producthunt.com) Product Hunt describes itself as a community of makers, investors, creators, and early adopters, and its launch guide says products can be submitted daily and compete for homepage placement with comments and upvotes. Its forum now also promotes “Alpha Day” posts for first-time launches, giving pre-release teams another place to surface early work. (producthunt.com 1) (producthunt.com 2) Reddit offers a more targeted version of the same hunt. Reddit’s help center says users can search within specific communities, search comments, and use Boolean operators, which lets founders look for phrases that signal pain points instead of waiting for traffic to arrive. (support.reddithelp.com) That shifts the job from “announce the product” to “map the demand.” A founder selling payroll software can search accountant communities, job posts, and competitor threads; a founder selling creator tools can scan newsletter recommendations, YouTube sponsorship markets, and public Telegram channels where audiences already gather. (support.reddithelp.com) (support.substack.com) (promote.telegram.org) The channel mix also reflects how distribution has fragmented in the last two years. YouTube said in March 2024 that BrandConnect helps brands connect with creators, and in March 2026 it expanded that system into “YouTube Creator Partnerships,” with access to more than 3 million creators in the YouTube Partner Program. (blog.google) (blog.youtube) For founders, that means small creator videos are not just brand marketing. They can function as message tests: one creator’s audience clicks, comments, or ignores the pitch, and the founder learns which promise resonates before a full launch. (blog.youtube) (support.google.com) Cold outreach remains part of the playbook, but the better versions are filtered. Third-party guides to LinkedIn Sales Navigator in 2026 consistently point to company headcount, industry, geography, seniority, and recent activity as the filters that narrow a list to likely buyers instead of a generic prospect dump. (artemisleads.com) (powerin.io) Competitor research works the same way. Ahrefs says its Site Explorer and Backlinks reports show which websites link to a rival, which gives founders a list of newsletters, directories, review sites, and blogs that already send attention to adjacent products. (ahrefs.com 1) (ahrefs.com 2) Telegram fills a different role: reach. Telegram says its ad platform serves sponsored messages in public one-to-many channels with at least 1,000 subscribers, making it useful in niches where audiences cluster around a few operators rather than around search results. (promote.telegram.org) Newsletter ecosystems can supply another layer of discovery. Substack’s recommendation system prompts writers to recommend each other, and industry reporting in late 2025 said the company was also testing structured sponsorships for selected writers, giving founders both organic and paid ways to reach concentrated audiences. (support.substack.com) (emarketer.com) The common thread is simple: pre-product user acquisition now looks less like a launch calendar and more like field reporting. The founders who find users earliest are usually the ones who start with live demand signals, then use outreach, creators, newsletters, and competitor trails to get in front of those people before the product is finished. (support.reddithelp.com) (ahrefs.com)