Challenge
Walter was building SpotFacts, a tool that pulls interesting statistics and data points for content creators and researchers. He thought people would want it. He had no proof.
Running surveys as a solo founder felt pointless. He'd tried browsing Reddit and had seen people asking for data sources and research tools, but those posts were scattered across dozens of subreddits. He'd find one, then not see another for days.
What he really wanted was a way to watch all those communities at once and see how often people described the problem SpotFacts was built for.
"I had a hunch people needed this, but I couldn't back it up with anything concrete. I needed to see real people asking for what I was building."
Solution
Walter set up a product with keywords around data sourcing, fact-finding, and research tools. He wasn't trying to sell anything yet. He just wanted to see what came back.
Within hours, posts started showing up from subreddits he hadn't considered: r/dataisbeautiful, r/journalism, r/ContentCreation, r/researchmethods. People were describing the exact workflow SpotFacts was built for.
He used the quality scores to decide which threads to read first. He didn't pitch anything. He just read, noted the words people used to describe their problem, and tracked how often similar requests came up. That became his market research.
After two weeks, he started replying with genuine advice and mentioned SpotFacts when it fit. People were interested.
Results
Demand confirmed in 3 weeks
Over 120 posts matched his product in three weeks. Many included detailed descriptions of the exact problem SpotFacts solves. Walter didn't need a survey. The conversations were already happening without him.
Real requests shaped his roadmap
Reading the posts, Walter spotted features people kept asking for that he hadn't built yet. Bulk export came up a lot. So did Google Sheets integration. Both went to the top of his roadmap.
An audience before launch day
By replying to threads early, Walter ended up with a group of people who wanted to know when SpotFacts shipped. Several of his first beta users came from Reddit threads the product had flagged.
"LeadsRover helped me identify the kind of posts I should look at. That also helped me validate the market and my idea. I went from guessing to knowing."
