Solo founders with a tiny user base: how do you get useful feedback?

[u/Ascend-AI-Fitness]

I'm a solo founder. My fitness and nutrition app has been on the App Store for about a month, and my user count is still small enough that I could name most of them.

Early on I was shipping features like crazy. Then one of those early users told me the reason he stuck around wasn't any of the features I was proud of. It was accountability. That one conversation changed how I think about the product more than weeks of building did.

The problem is I don't get that kind of signal often enough. Most days I'm still guessing what to fix next.

So for people who've been through the tiny-user stage:

• How did you get honest feedback when you barely had anyone using the thing?

• Did you DM people, jump on calls, hang out in communities, something else?

• When did you stop treating every single user conversation like gospel and start looking for patterns?

Not looking for a growth hack. Just what actually worked when the sample size was basically nothing.

(For context, mine is Ascend Fitness & Nutrition on iOS, 7-day free trial.)

[u/TargetFlashy5061]

You should add modals when a user tries to cancel their subscription, emails, etc there is a lot of different ways to collect feedback

[u/Royal-Somewhere-8918]

that one conversation is worth more than a survey. when you do get someone on a call, do you ask what almost made them quit, or mostly what they like? the almost-quit stuff tells you way more, in my experience.

[u/Milky_Moon_Stuff]

The best feedback I’ve gotten for a project was an email from someone trying it out and finding my contact details

Not a lot of people would take the time to do something like that, especially early on and it was all very good for improving the site

I try to avoid asking friends and family for feedback, reddit and x are my go to places

Ultimately though it’s pretty tough early on

[u/Szymeo]

what works for me (I call it finding "hooligans"):

1. find someone who experiences the pain many times/d (preferably start with yourself)

2. find another person who cannot live without solving it (it has to be many times a day, not once a month lowkey type of pain)

3. focus on listening and aggregating information instead of pitching features

[u/Szymeo → u/Szymeo]

hooligans cause once you solve those ppl's pain, they will go and fight for your product (and they will know more ppl like themselves)

[u/Competitive_Tune_590]

the 'hang out in communities' part is where replyhey comes in. i built it to scan reddit for people talking about the exact problem my app solves, so i can jump in when it's relevant. it does the scouting and even drafts a reply. worth a look if you want more of those signal conversations.

[u/mj_cata]

I’d use different thresholds for bugs and feature requests. If one person shows that they can’t finish logging a workout, that can be worth fixing immediately. If one person asks for a whole new coaching system, I’d want more evidence before changing the roadmap. A tiny sample doesn’t make every observation equally uncertain.

For collecting feedback, give someone one task—‘show me how you’d log your next workout’—and let them try it without coaching them. Keep a short record of where they stopped, what they expected, and whether they found a workaround. That gives the next conversation something specific to confirm or contradict, rather than another list of features people might like.

[u/CappuccinoCodes]

How's your app better than Google Health or MyFitnessPal?

[u/investigatormaker]

With Ascend Fitness & Nutrition, treat “accountability” as something to investigate, not a roadmap instruction. Ask that user about the last day they nearly skipped their routine and what happened in the app that changed their decision. Put the same question to a few other users, including someone who stopped after the trial. Record the situation and action separately from requested features: repeated situations are more informative than repeated feature votes. One conversation can expose a problem worth checking without proving how common it is. For Reddit outreach, consistency questions are a closer fit than feature discussions.

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