Why does posting on X daily fail to get signups?
Six weeks of daily posts. Building in public. Engaging with other founders. The result: 3 signups, two of whom were already friends.
The issue wasn't the product or the consistency. The issue was the strategy. The build-in-public space is full of people doing exactly the same thing — posting, hoping someone notices, waiting. You're one of thousands of posts someone scrolls past on any given day. Broadcasting to a passive crowd gets passive results.
The fix is to stop waiting for people to come to you.
How do you find the right people to reach out to on X?
Start by identifying 3-4 accounts your ideal customers already follow. If you're targeting indie hackers and solo founders building SaaS products, look at the follower bases of well-known builders in that space — people like Marc Lou or levels.io have audiences packed with exactly the type of users worth talking to.
Then filter those follower lists by bio keywords: "building," "founder," "solopreneur," "launching." These aren't passive scrollers — they're people actively working on something, which means they have real problems and are looking for tools to solve them.
This targeting step matters. Sending a thoughtful DM to the wrong person is just spam with extra steps.
What should you actually say in the DM?
No pitch. No link. One question.
Something like: "Saw you're building [X] — how are you handling getting your first users?"
That's it. The goal of the first message is a reply, not a conversion. When you lead with genuine curiosity about what someone is building, you're not selling anything — you're starting a conversation.
According to LocaliQ's 2026 Small Business Marketing Report, 52% of small businesses spend less than $1,000/month on marketing. That means most founders you're DMing don't have ad budgets — they're looking for scrappy, direct approaches. Your DM fits their world.
X DMs have a significantly lower saturation level than email inboxes. People actually read them, especially when the message is clearly not copy-pasted.
What does the full outreach process look like?
Here's the process broken into steps:
- Pick 3 target accounts your ideal customer profile follows consistently
- Browse their follower lists and filter by bio keywords matching your ICP
- Send one genuine question — no link, no pitch, no product mention
- Let the conversation develop — your product comes up when it's relevant, not before
Done manually, this takes about 2-3 hours a day. You can automate the filtering and outreach queue once you've validated the approach, but start manually so you can refine the opening message.
Running this consistently, you can realistically get 3 or more real conversations per day — not impressions, not likes, but actual exchanges with people who match your ICP.
Is this scalable?
In its current form, X DMs work well for early-stage validation and the first 50-100 users. The window is open now because the inbox isn't saturated the way email became. That will change.
The smarter play is to use this phase to collect feedback, not just signups. A conversation that ends in a 30-minute feedback call is often worth more at the early stage than a signup from someone who never talks to you.
When you do start automating, preserve the personal feel of the opener. The moment it reads like a sequence, reply rates drop.