I'm on a small team building an early-stage product, and I'm struggling with where to put our limited time and acquisition budget.
Some of our community posts haven't been approved. On X and Facebook, where we've been able to post, reach has been limited.
I understand why communities have rules around promotion. The difficult part is balancing the time it takes to participate meaningfully with the need to reach potential users. I'm also unsure when paid acquisition is worth testing at this stage.
What we're looking for is a small group of people who will use the product and give honest feedback.
Hey Product Hunt - Cary here, co-founder of Netlio
We built Netlio around a problem we kept seeing: when a specific professional goal appears, people often do not know who can actually help move it forward.
Most networking tools begin with a contact list or a search box. Netlio begins with the goal.
One principle guides the product: if someone already in your network is relevant and there is a credible relationship path, that is usually the best place to start. The context and trust may already exist, so reaching the right conversation often takes less time and effort.
But your current network will not always be enough.
Expanding beyond it is valuable and sometimes necessary. It usually involves a longer path: identifying the right person, establishing relevance, finding a credible way to reach them, and writing a first message worth answering.
Netlio supports both paths, in that order:
- start with a specific professional goal
- identify the most relevant people
- understand why someone matters and why now
- evaluate a credible relationship path
- prepare a practical first message
- expand beyond the current network when needed
The goal is not to help people collect more contacts or send more messages. It is to help them choose one more relevant conversation and approach it with better context.
If you try Netlio, I would especially value feedback on one question: did the recommendation give you enough context to decide whether to act?
Thanks for taking a look.