Public-pain posters convert 5-30x in cold outreach
Sourcing customer-discovery interview targets for an early-stage tool
Targets sourced from public-complaint surfaces (subreddit posts, GitHub issues, public blog rants) convert at 15-30% on cold DMs; targets sourced from neutral activity signals (repo authorship, job title, follower count) convert at 1-5%. The frameworks all converge on this (Steve Blanks earlyvangelist criteria #4, Mom Test - if they havent Googled a workaround its not a real problem, PG startup ideas). Public complaint = already cobbled together a workaround = proven motivated buyer.
When asked to build a customer-discovery target list, ask what qualifying public-signal source should filter the list BEFORE sourcing instead of curating a neutral-activity list and then trying to qualify it after.