I spent 6 weeks posting on X every day and got 3 signups. Then I tried this instead.

I was doing everything right. Or so I thought.

Posting daily. Building in public. Sharing my progress. Engaging with other founders. Following the whole "just show up consistently and the audience will come" advice.

6 weeks. Every single day.

3 signups. Two of them were people I already knew.

The problem wasn't the product. The problem was I was playing a passive game in a passive crowd. Everyone in the Build in Public space is doing the same thing - posting, hoping someone notices, waiting.

Nobody was coming to me. So I decided to go to them.

I made a list of 3-4 accounts that my ideal users follow. Indie hackers, solo founders, people actively building SaaS products. Think the Build in Public crowd - followers of Marc Lou, levels .io, that orbit.

Then I looked at who follows those accounts. Filtered by bios with words like "building," "founder," "solopreneur," "launching." These are people actively working on something. They have problems. They're looking for tools.

Then I sent a simple DM. No pitch. No link. Just one question relevant to what they're building.

Something like: "Saw you're building [X] - how are you handling getting your first users?"

That's it.

The reply rate was nothing like I expected.

People actually responded. Real conversations started. Some turned into signups. Some turned into feedback calls which were honestly more valuable at this stage.

Here's why this works when posting doesn't:

Posting on X is broadcasting. You're one of 10,000 posts that person scrolls past today. A DM is a tap on the shoulder. It lands differently. The inbox isn't saturated the way email is. People actually read DMs on X, especially from someone who's clearly done their homework and isn't blasting a copy-paste pitch.

The manual version of this process:

Step 1: Pick 3 accounts your ICP follows religiously

Step 2: Go through their followers list, filter by bio keywords that match your ICP

Step 3: Send a single genuine question -no pitch, no link, just curiosity about what they're working on

Step 4: Let the conversation happen naturally. The product comes up when it's relevant, not before.

This takes 2-3 hours a day manually. I've since automated most of it.

Currently averaging around 3 conversations per day that actually go somewhere.

If you're a solo founder stuck in the "posting into the void" phase, try this. The window on X DMs is wide open right now. It won't stay that way.

Happy to answer questions below.

(PS - I'm automating this whole process and have a few beta spots open if anyone's curious)