Find the launch communities where you belong

Most launch lists are just the biggest communities, which is why launches land in front of people who do not have the problem. Better to find where your problem is already discussed, then show up there before launch day. Oetzi finds those threads across seven platforms and shows you where they cluster.

How do I find the right communities to launch in?

Work backwards from conversations. Instead of asking which subreddit is largest, ask where people posted about your problem in the last seven days. That is your launch list.

In practice a signal returns "what do you all use for X" in a subreddit you had never heard of, an Ask HN thread from three days ago, a LinkedIn post from a practitioner with a small following, and a Substack Notes reply. Four places, all specific, none obvious.

How do I describe the signal in one sentence?

Describe the problem conversation, not the launch. Something like "people discussing how they handle X and asking each other for recommendations". That becomes native searches across X, Reddit, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Hacker News, and Substack Notes, plus a scoring rubric, and seven days backfill immediately. Run it for two weeks before you launch. The point is not the matches yet, it is where they come from.

How do intent scores and tags sort a launch list?

Every match is scored 0 to 100 with the reason written out and tagged buyer, current customer, feature request, or competitor user. Group them by where they came from and read the tags.

A place producing buyer tags with high scores is a launch venue. One producing competitor user tags is where a switching pitch works. One producing mostly low scores is a place to participate in for months before mentioning a product. Presence discovery is free, and so is a content plan per presence.

What do I do before launch day?

Show up early. Answer three or four scored matches in each candidate community, no link and no pitch, so by launch day you are someone who has been helpful there rather than a new account with an announcement. Drafts come in two variants in your voice and wait for approval.

On launch day, post where the evidence pointed. Find customers on Reddit covers the etiquette that keeps a launch post alive. Reply checks run two and eight hours after publishing, drafting an answer to each comment.

What does building a launch list cost in credits?

A sweep of one signal across every platform is 2 credits and refunds when nothing qualifies, so two weeks swept every weekday is about 20 credits, the whole research phase. The $49 plan includes 100 credits, and the free tier gives 10 with no card that never expire.

Launch posts are 1 credit per drafting run, with reruns and edits free. Publishing through Postiz, post metrics, tracked links, and the outcomes ledger are free, so you see which community sent people. Hacker News monitoring covers where timing matters most.

Questions

How do I find launch communities for a niche product?

Sweep a sentence describing your problem across the seven platforms and note where matches come from. Niche communities show up because the conversation does, not because they are big. Seven days backfill immediately, so a two-week run tells you which venues produce people actually asking rather than people who happen to be nearby.

Should I launch everywhere on the same day?

No. Launching in a community where you have never posted reads as an ad, and most of them remove it. A better sequence is two weeks answering scored matches in three or four candidate venues, then a launch post in the one or two that produced the most buyer tags, then replies to every comment in the first eight hours.

Is Product Hunt a launch community?

It is a launch venue, not a community where your problem gets discussed, so treat it as a line item rather than the plan. The communities that matter for a niche product are the ones producing real threads about your problem this week, and those are the places worth showing up in beforehand.