Lovable made the building part surprisingly fast. A few days of prompting, some back-and-forth to fix the edge cases, and you had a working product. You deployed it. It works.
Now you're waiting for users to show up, and they're not.
This is the part Lovable doesn't help with, and it's the part that trips up almost everyone who builds with it. The gap between "it works" and "people use it" isn't a product problem. It's a distribution problem. And distribution is a different skill from building — one that requires a completely different approach.
Here's what actually works.
The people who need your app aren't waiting to be advertised to
They're already out there, somewhere on the internet, describing the exact problem you solved. On Reddit, they're posting questions. On Twitter/X, they're complaining. In niche Slack groups, they're asking for recommendations.
Your job is to find those conversations and show up in them.
This sounds obvious. The part that's not obvious is that you can't do it by posting "I built an app, check it out." That gets ignored. What works is finding the thread where someone is describing your problem, answering it genuinely, and mentioning — at the end, or in your bio — that you built something for exactly this.
The user who finds you through a relevant conversation is completely different from someone who saw a cold announcement. They were already looking. You were the answer to a search they were already doing.
Find the subreddits and Twitter accounts in your niche
Start with Reddit. Every problem space has at least two or three active subreddits where people discuss it. If your Lovable app helps with productivity, it's r/productivity and r/timemanagement. If it's a dev tool, it's r/webdev or r/programming. If it serves a specific industry, find that industry's subreddit.
Spend a day reading. Look for posts where people describe the exact friction your app removes. Those are the threads you want to reply to.
Twitter/X is faster and more real-time. Search for keywords around your problem — not your product name, the actual problem. "I hate manually X every day" or "does anyone have a tool for Y?" These are the conversations worth finding.
The challenge is doing this consistently. You can't check 5 subreddits and 50 Twitter searches every day and also keep building. Some founders use VibeUsers for exactly this — it monitors Reddit and Twitter/X daily and surfaces the threads where your app would be genuinely relevant, so you skip the searching and go straight to replying.
Related: Best subreddits for SaaS founders and indie makers →
Post in communities where sharing new things is welcome
While you're doing the community participation work, also do a one-time announcement push in the places built for it.
r/SideProject and r/alphaandbetausers are both welcoming to new product shares. Product Hunt is worth doing once you're ready for a proper launch. Indie Hackers has a products section. Show HN on Hacker News works if your app has an interesting technical angle.
These channels produce a spike of attention that fades within a day or two. Don't rely on them for sustained growth. But the initial wave of signups gives you real users to learn from, and sometimes one of those users becomes your most valuable early advocate.
Talk about building it, not just launching it
One of the most effective things Lovable builders can do is build in public on Twitter/X. Not launching publicly — building publicly. Sharing the journey while it's happening.
"Shipped a new version of my Lovable app today — here's the one thing I kept getting wrong with the prompt" gets more engagement than "my app is live, check it out." The builder community on Twitter/X is genuinely interested in how you made the thing, what problems you ran into, what you'd do differently.
This builds an audience of people who are interested in you and your work — and those people, when you eventually say "by the way this is available now and you can try it," are far more likely to try it than strangers who saw an announcement.
What to do with your first users
When someone signs up, reach out directly. Not an automated sequence — a real email or DM from you, asking how setup went and whether anything was confusing.
Most won't reply. The ones who do are the most valuable users you'll have. They'll tell you what's missing, what they expected, what they'd pay for. Pay attention to those conversations more than any metric.
These early users are also your best referral source. Someone who had a real conversation with the founder and found genuine value in the product is far more likely to mention it to someone else than someone who clicked through a landing page and signed up anonymously.
Related: How to promote a vibe coded app → · How to get your first 10 users for your app →
FAQ
Can I get users for a Lovable app without any audience?
Yes. Starting with zero followers is the normal starting point. Community participation — showing up in Reddit threads and Twitter conversations where your problem is being discussed — doesn't require an existing audience. It requires consistency and genuine helpfulness.
Should I launch on Product Hunt?
Worth doing, but don't treat it as your primary distribution channel. A Product Hunt launch gives you one day of attention. The users who find you through community participation are more engaged and more likely to convert to paying users than PH traffic.
What if nobody is talking about my problem online?
That's actually important product feedback. If there's no community discussing the problem you solved, either the community exists somewhere you haven't found yet, or the problem isn't painful enough to generate public conversation. It's worth digging before assuming the first option.
How do I know which subreddits are right for my app?
Search Reddit for the problem your app solves, not for your product category. If you built a tool that helps with repetitive task X, search "X" on Reddit and see which subreddits come up in the results. The communities where people are actively discussing the problem are your target subreddits.
Is it okay to post about a Lovable app if it's not polished yet?
Yes. The communities you're targeting — r/SideProject, r/alphaandbetausers, Indie Hackers — explicitly welcome early, rough products. Being honest about the current state ("this is a work in progress, here's what I'm building toward") is actually more trustworthy than presenting it as finished.