# Why finding customers is still so hard

My frustration with paid acquisition, and why I wanted a way to find the people already asking for help.

By Salman · 2025-03-22 · perspectives

Canonical: https://reacherx.com/blog/why-finding-customers-is-hard

You can build a useful product and still struggle to find someone who needs it. I kept running into that gap. It is the problem I wanted ReacherX to solve.

This article adapts a thread I wrote in March 2025. It is my view of customer acquisition and the reasons behind the product.

[An empty hand surrounded by social platform icons, with the original thread's headline about the cost of finding customers.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GmrQm9VbMAEGB7P.jpg)

The artwork from the original March 2025 thread.

## The work starts before you meet a customer

Outreach, search traffic, content, and advertising all offer ways to reach people. Each asks something different of you.

Writing content takes time. Search visibility takes patience. Ads require a budget, creative work, and repeated testing. Outreach asks you to find the right person and understand why they might care.

For a founder or freelancer doing this alone, that can become a second job.

## Paying to learn is expensive

My frustration with ads starts with the order of events: you spend money before you know whether the campaign will bring customers. Platforms give you reports, but no conversation with each person who saw an ad.

I wanted to start with something more concrete — the person, the problem they described, and the context — and decide for myself whether I can help.

## Start with a need someone has already expressed

A public post asking for a recommendation is a useful starting point. So is a complaint about a workflow your product improves.

That is why I was more interested in searching for customer needs than buying another round of impressions. A real conversation gives you something specific to respond to.

> I want to read what someone needs before I decide what to say to them.

This does not make ads useless or outreach effortless. It changes where the work begins.

## Why I started building ReacherX

The original idea was a search engine for finding customers. Describe what you offer, find people talking about a matching need, and understand the conversation before reaching out.

The goal was to make that work accessible to people who do not have an acquisition team or the time to become advertising specialists.

That March thread introduced the idea. [The product vision](/blog/finding-customers-should-be-easier) explains what I wanted to build around it.

[Read the original thread](https://www.reacherx.com/threads/1903563762189345072).