SaaS Distribution Playbook & AI Guidance for Founders
The post really drives home the "classic distribution vs. product problem." The user's experience of copying a successful SaaS but failing shows that simply replicating a product without a solid distribution strategy is a surefire way to fail. This underscores the need for tools and guidance that focus on market reach, not just product development. The comments echo this, stressing the critical importance of audience building and effective distribution.
Niche Opportunity: The challenge of distribution for early-stage SaaS founders, especially those working on AI products or coming from a product-first mindset. They need systematic, actionable guidance on how to get their product in front of the right audience.
SaaS Opportunity: A 'Distribution Playbook as a Service' platform or an 'AI-assisted Distribution Strategist.' This SaaS would offer:
- Curated Playbooks: Actionable, step-by-step guides for different distribution channels (e.g., Product Hunt launches, content marketing, community building, cold outreach, influencer marketing) tailored for various SaaS models (B2B, B2C, specific niches).
- AI-Powered Strategy: An AI component that analyzes a founder's product, target audience, and resources to suggest personalized distribution strategies, content ideas, and outreach messages.
- Tool Integrations: Seamless integration with common marketing and sales tools (CRMs, email platforms, social media schedulers) to facilitate execution.
- Performance Tracking: Dashboards to monitor the effectiveness of different distribution efforts and iterate.
- Failure Analysis & Prevention: A module that helps founders diagnose why their previous attempts (like copying) failed and how to build a unique distribution advantage.
Expected Revenue: High. Distribution is often the biggest bottleneck for early-stage startups, as this post clearly shows. Founders are willing to pay significant amounts (e.g., $99-$499/month, tiered subscriptions) for tools that genuinely help them acquire customers, accelerate growth, and avoid costly marketing mistakes. The market of new SaaS founders and 'builders on X' is substantial and growing, and this specific pain point is almost universally experienced.
Origin Reddit Post
r/saas
I copied someone's SaaS and it backfired just like everyone said it would
Posted by u/Ok-Leg7112•07/17/2025
To give background I was following a bunch of builders on X during the start of the AI wave (cursor, [bolt.new](http://bolt.new), etc). I followed one particular guy, we'll call him Bob. Bob
Top Comments
u/Ok-Leg7112
Np would love to hear yours
u/shopnoakash2706
Audience first, product second!
u/[deleted]
Those are great lessons, thanks for sharing your journey.
I've struggled with distribution too, happy to share my thoughts.
u/stalk-er
Thats super cool! Did it work well?
u/Ok-Leg7112
Haha you got me. And 1000% and I for some reason didn’t expect that. Viral trends change constantly so to keep up with that felt like a big lift. If I had subs I would but that’s a different
u/creminology
I think a great product comes from a vision, a vision that evolves over several years. What you see in the visible product is just the tip of the iceberg. The vision must run deeper.
OP copi
u/HorrorEastern7045
It sounds repetitive but building an audience is more important than building the product.
u/Perfect-Ad2641
That was in the 90s. Now software is a commodity
u/Apart-Employment-592
Same here, I find it very hard to get some eyeballs on my product without audience.
I feel like audience is even more important than the landing page or the market validation.
I’ve recently
u/Master-Guidance-2409
SALES SALES SALES SALES.
it aint even about the fucking software. i guess this is the hardest part as tech people, was the hardest part for me to accept as well. its always about getting qu
u/leros
You have learned that building the product is less than half the work.
u/Ok-Leg7112
Yep exactly. I haven't started anything new yet. Looking at my options now. Trying to attack something that I'm very passionate about.
u/Ok-Leg7112
About 1 but a lot of hours in that month
u/Ok-Leg7112
Wow yeah that's way more intense than mine lol. Glad to hear you're back. Good luck my friend
u/HorrorEastern7045
OP has mentioned, he had difficulty paying for traffic. In that case, growing your audience is a better way from my perspective. What do you say ?
u/outdoorszy
nobody said that
u/Ok-Leg7112
Stitching videos together, adding text to the video, adding music to the video, etc. All the main social media style edits that someone would want
u/blakdevroku
Copying idea seriously isn’t bad, the guy had followers he sold to. The problem most of the time isn’t the idea, you probably didn’t do any research on the product, you only copied blindly.
u/Ok-Leg7112
lmao thank you for this comment Nate. You're right though, I have no practical experience solving my own problems. Just trying to learn :)
u/gr4phic3r
you have the followers or you need to fake clicks/views/profiles to pretend a busy platform or you need a lot of money to promote.
u/koderkashif
The post and comments here are so .....
OP still has many ways to make it work, one of them is partner with someone who has distribution
u/mbuckbee
He could also have been lying about sales and revenue numbers.
u/koderkashif
Market is just like this Un-useful and vague comment topping all other valuable comments
u/GolfHotel123
My old job used a piece of software called PeopleDoc, worst UI I have ever used and it was basically a glorified Google Drive folder which would only store PDF files.
Sold for 300 million in
u/graysonhyc
Hard truth for devs indeed. Have you tried paying influencers?
u/Bart_At_Tidio
This is a great lesson to learn now. It's too bad it had to come after all that hard work, but you definitely won't forget it now!
Distribution matters a ton. Let's build on that now: Next,
u/HorrorEastern7045
Please use the downvote option to bring it down. Comments only boost it more towards the top.
u/Ok-Leg7112
I haven't but someone saw this post and might be interested. Yeah feel free to check it out it's [reelrabbit.io](http://reelrabbit.io)
u/koderkashif
okay how many months did you take to build it
u/Ok-Leg7112
Yeah I definitely could trim it down. I had a lot to say lol. Also yeah I'm super down!
u/Ok-Leg7112
Agreed - I definitely learned a lot and I'm not super bummed about it. A good learning experience all around that is for sure
u/Ok-Leg7112
Not throwing it away by any means. Just done adding features until I can find some users. It's in a usable spot to test the market so my plan is to do cold outreach and try to find some users
u/unclekarl_
Many technical cofounders like to think that the product they’re building is the most important aspect of the company. You constantly hear “no product, no company”.
But in reality, the busi
u/Ok-Leg7112
Yep exactly. React, Node, Firebase. Vercel + render for hosting
u/stalk-er
What exactly did you do with ffmpeg? It’s a powerful library but really drains cpu and gpu
u/One_Grapefruit_2413
Rather than growing the audience, which takes a ton of time. You could simply contact others who have the audience you want and ask them to promote your product.
u/Ok-Leg7112
just hard to get super customized without going into the depths on the package. It's insane that it's open source because of what it can do but for my use case I couldn't find much help onlin
u/PuzzledPoorProfessor
IMO, waiting for a problem that hits you harder is also not a great strategy. What if that problem has already been solved?
In business world most of the problems are already solved and yo
u/g2hcompanies
It’s funny they say the first time founder focuses on product, second time founder focuses on distribution, and the third time founder focuses on the customer.
u/SelfinvolvedNate
Ya'll say its not about the product then consistently pump out shitty AI products that are not capable of practice solving problems.
u/stalk-er
Tldr whats your complain
u/Content-Garbage-5248
What sort of video processing did your product do?
u/elongio
The in the actual fudgery...
u/Master-Guidance-2409
when i went to school they use something called peoplesoft, (prob not the same thing but it, but the name reminded me of it).
it was some student course management/erp software and it fuckin
u/Available-Mud-4095
That makes a lot of sense — appreciate the insight. I’ve definitely fallen into the trap of building too much before validating interest. Cold outreach and talking directly to people sounds s
u/HorrorEastern7045
It sounds repetitive but building an audience is more important than building the product.
u/thewillft
Sounds like a classic distribution vs. product problem. Hard lesson to learn but valuable. Have you moved on to building something else?
u/Ok-Leg7112
Haha I'm in the midst of that last part now. But I think DMs and offering free trials for sure. Just DMing a bunch of people and just saying hey I made this thing, I think it could be useful
u/Master-Guidance-2409
i been thinking about this and you know whats funny, is this is essentially the current gaming market model, first FPS, then battle royales, now extraction shooters.
some hit and some miss.
u/Perfect-Ad2641
Lol
u/Master-Guidance-2409
back when APIs look like this "
int WINAPI wWinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
PWSTR szCmdLine, int CmdShow)
u/brianbbrady
I don't think you are done. You just need to figure out a way to improve engagement. There are great models out there for engagement strategies. Pick one that you like and try it out. My
u/Ok-Leg7112
yep, I'm still building that and this process has helped that grow so that's a positive!
u/Substantial_Bee_7257
Exactly, you’re right, you can have the solution to world hunger. But if no one knows about it, you won’t get any sales.
u/moonboots
Wait you are 20hr in?
u/Hylaar
SALES?! I thought it was…
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
u/hikip-saas
Those are great lessons, thanks for sharing your journey.
I've struggled with distribution too, happy to share my thoughts.
u/wadleo
Sad but very educating, thanks for sharing
u/Ok-Leg7112
Products good in my biased opinion. I honestly just don't think I found the right users. Partly because I didn't try hard enough lol. Will be revamping my efforts shortly
u/-praesul-
it takes a lot to admit and reflect on this so you are already better than most
u/koderkashif
Improve your demo video bro. make it concise.
Would you like to join weekly saas founders meeting? pls dm me your email.
u/Tochiez
Lol.. as hard as coding and building a product is, building a market is infinitely harder in my opinion. I see businesses take off faster if there's an audience already.
u/moonboots
That’s very quick work.
u/Ok-Leg7112
I'd create a landing page without all the crazy video editing stuff and do cold outreach to people and see if they'd actually buy it. Literally just talk to people on X that are in your marke
u/Physical_Fig_3103
been there and it's absolutely OK ! don't loose hope. Try another product this time warm up your account. All you need is 1 product to succeed
u/Ok-Leg7112
Exactly! Just gotta keep at it
u/Ok-Leg7112
I followed him from the bottom. He's a genuine guy just building cool things. I don't think he was lying
u/Ok-Leg7112
Nah closer to 80-100 hours
u/wlynncork
I'm fascinated, please share your website please!
I also created something like bolt and I think we need more bolt SaaS.
Think of bolt but for different types of software, since all the promp
u/Master-Guidance-2409
and where do these products go? according the AI hype everyone should be a millionaire by now with AI. SALES matter, product fit matters. pain points matter.
u/BlackHatSEO93
It's hard to sell people on automation or AI these days if you are not a big brand unfortunately
u/Saber-toothed-cat
You may have heard of the saying “the biggest failure is failing to learn from your failures”. Glad that you fetched some lessons. Keep it up, you only need to succeed one.
I’m at the point w
u/ff56k
Don't see it as a waste, you'll be surprised by how what you built today affects you further down the line. In a world where unique value propositions stand out, the combination of skills and
u/Ok-Leg7112
Yeah and it still does! [Reelrabbit.io](http://Reelrabbit.io) if you want to check it out :)
u/Ok-Engineering-8369
Been there. Thought “I’ll just build it better and cheaper” was a strategy turns out it’s a reaction, not a business plan.
A rough rule I follow now: never clone something unless I *persona
u/Ok-Leg7112
Right! And I don't think it's too late too. I plan to do some cold outreach to find people. The project is completely dead, I just need to work harder lol
u/SelfinvolvedNate
Is it any good? All the example videos I saw in your demo looked like obvious AI slop garbage. No one is sustainably growing with that. If this product was any good at all, why haven't you us
u/indiekit
It's tough when you build too much too soon. Always validate demand first with a simple landing page or a no-code MVP and use a boilerplate like "Indie Kit" to launch faster. What tech are yo
u/Ok-Leg7112
It's so true. The thing was before it was hard to develop something so the development meant a lot more. Now that isn't the case so it's ALL about sales and distribution. I always shed a smal
u/aski5
lmao happens in every industry I guess. Being known is far more important than being good
u/Substantial_Bee_7257
But you cannot build an audience if the product isn’t good. The one cannot exist without the other.
Not to say it is impossible to market a shit product
u/koderkashif
how many months you took to build this and now ready to throw it away?
u/HorrorEastern7045
No, you are absolutely right. I didn't mean to say product is not important, its very much important, without the product there is nothing to sell.
I'm just saying building an audience is c
u/thewillft
Sounds like a classic distribution vs. product problem. Hard lesson to learn but valuable. Have you moved on to building something else?
u/koderkashif
Have you tried partnering with someone who has distribution?
can you show us what you've built?
u/Available-Mud-4095
Really appreciate you sharing this so candidly. It’s a great reminder that distribution and true problem understanding can’t be copied — they’re earned. Your line “when you solve a problem, y
u/Ok-Leg7112
1000% - not giving up although it sounds like I am lol
u/Ok-Leg7112
I really did feel the problem because I was struggling with making content for my previous projects. So when I saw Bob make his, I wanted to use it for my projects. That's what sorta sparked
u/strobe229
What else was this person selling? Courses? Something else?
I often find that these "build in public" types literally lie about their sales and make it look easy like 50k MRR fell into thei
u/HorrorEastern7045
Yup 💯
u/punktechbro
Sounds like ReelFarm if I’m not mistaken OP
I think he struck PMF pretty fast and acquired quite a bit of the X audience of mobile app builders looking to use it
Also AI UGC and its hype is