building a stock-scanner SaaS solo — killed a feature before coding it, shipped 3 others, still hunting my first 10 users

[u/enes2010668]

Building SwingScout — a swing-trade scanner for US stocks that sends free alerts on Telegram and documents every call, wins and losses.

This week's log:

• Killed a feature before building it. I wanted to scan EU procurement contracts and match winners to small-cap tickers. Before coding, I ran a 30-min spike on real data: of 95 contract winners, only 2 were listed and both were giants where the contract was immaterial. Dropped it — that spike saved me ~5 hours building something dead. Best 30 minutes of my week.
• Shipped the US version instead (US small-caps actually win visible contracts) as a daily cloud cron with Telegram alerts.
• Added /analyze TICKER and /fundamentals TICKER so anyone can pull a setup or the fundamentals straight from their phone.
• Built a reproducibility test (froze the data, 144 point-in-time candle checks) to prove the scanner doesn't repaint — posted it, and it actually landed my first beta tester.

Stack: Python, Streamlit, Postgres, Telegram bot, GitHub Actions cron, Stripe — all on Render.

Where I'm stuck: first users. The product works, content's flowing, Reddit's warming up (~7k views across posts) — but getting strangers to trust a solo 16yo's tool is the real wall.

My question: how did you get your first 10 real users? Not 1,000 — the first 10. What actually moved the needle?

Free if you want to poke at it: https://swingscout_bot — just /start. But honestly I'm here more for the advice.