Find beta users on Reddit and Hacker News

Beta users are easiest to find before you have anything to show, because the people who want your product already describe it in public. Watch for people asking for the thing you are building, then reply as the founder building it. Oetzi does the watching and the scoring, drafts the reply in your voice, and waits for your approval.

What does someone asking to be a beta user actually post?

They rarely use the word beta, they describe the gap. On Reddit: "does anything exist that just does X without the whole suite, or do I have to build it". On Hacker News, inside an Ask HN thread: "I wrote a script for this, am I missing an obvious tool". On X: "someone please build a thing that does X, I would pay today".

All three are the same signal: someone has the problem, tried the workarounds, and is asking strangers for a tool. That person answers a beta invite, because you are answering what they just asked.

How do I describe the beta user signal in one sentence?

Write the conversation, not the keyword. Something like "people asking whether a simple tool exists for X, or saying they built a script for it themselves". That becomes native searches across X, Reddit, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Hacker News, and Substack Notes, plus a scoring rubric, and seven days backfill immediately.

How does the intent score sort beta candidates?

Every match is scored 0 to 100 for buying intent with the reason written out, and tagged buyer, current customer, feature request, or competitor user. For a beta search you want high scores with a buyer tag. Feature request matters too, because someone asking a competitor for a feature you already built is one message from trying yours. Find live conversations where people are actively evaluating covers the difference between deciding and venting.

What do I do with a match?

Reply in the thread, in public, as yourself. Two reply variants are drafted in your voice, and nothing goes out without approval. Say what you built, say it is early, and ask if they want it. An answer that mentions what you built works. A pitch does not.

Tracked links and the outcomes ledger are free, so you see which threads turned into signups. If a thread drew a crowd, pull the people who engaged with it for 1 credit, refunded when fewer than three come back.

What does finding beta users cost in credits?

Reading and the inbox are free. A sweep of one signal across every platform is 2 credits and refunds when nothing qualifies, so one beta signal swept three times a week is about 24 credits a month, inside the 100 included with the $49 plan. The free tier gives 10 credits with no card that never expire, which is five sweeps. Drafting a post about your beta is 1 credit. Reddit monitoring covers where most of these threads live.

Questions

How do I find beta users on Reddit without getting banned?

Answer the question that was asked and disclose that you built the thing. Subreddits remove promotion, not participation. Because matches are scored for buying intent, you spend replies on the few threads where someone asked for a tool, the one context where a founder comment is welcome rather than reported.

How many beta users can I expect from public threads?

Nobody can tell you that honestly, and any tool that gives you a number is guessing. What you control is how many real asks you see and how fast you answer. Backfill shows seven days at once, matches carry an intent score, and the outcomes ledger records clicks and signups so month two runs on your own data.

Is this different from a keyword alert for my category name?

Very. Nobody types your category name before you have users. An alert on a term you invented returns nothing, and one on a common word returns everything. Here the signal is a sentence describing the conversation, compiled into native searches per platform and scored for intent, so you get people describing the problem rather than saying a word.