How Polar got its users

The room was other people's GitHub issues, not a subreddit. Polar shipped a GitHub App a maintainer installs on their own repo; it embedded a funding badge at the bottom of the issue bodies the maintainer picked, and split the payout when a PR closed that issue. Nobody got banned because the repo owner chose which issues carried it and could switch it off. Build the thing the room owner installs on purpose, scoped to one item at a time.

done whenTake your product to one repo or forum you do not own. Can its owner switch you on for a single issue or thread, see the value inside a week, and keep it without you following up? If it only works installed everywhere at once, it will read as spam.

Get your name into the config file the community already edits. GitHub lists `polar:` as a funding platform key in FUNDING.yml, so any repo's Sponsor button points at Polar with one line, no link dropped in a comment. Same shape elsewhere: the plugin directory, the awesome-list, the framework's integrations page. Ship the working integration first, then ask for the listing.

done whenWrite down the three files or directories your buyers read before they ever read your site: a package registry, a config schema, a docs integrations page. Are you in any of them? If not, what would the maintainer need to see before adding you?

When the FUNDING.yml news hit Hacker News, the founder answered in the comments himself, including the ugly ones: BountySource shutting down with people's money, countries not supported, how this differs from Open Collective and GitHub Sponsors. He replied with the fee number, Merchant of Record status and the public API, not slogans. Post under the thread about you, and take the most damaging comment first.

done whenName the single worst objection to your product out loud. Does a public answer exist, written by you under your own name somewhere a skeptic will actually find it, or does it only live in private DMs?

One package per framework crowd, merged with people from that crowd. polarsource/polar-adapters carries Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit, Nuxt, Remix, Hono, Elysia, TanStack Start, Express, Fastify, Deno and Laravel, plus a Better Auth plugin, and the contributor list is full of accounts that do not work at Polar. Each adapter is a pass into a different Discord because it speaks that stack's idiom instead of asking anyone to read your API docs.

done whenPick the three stacks your users actually run. Could a maintainer of one merge your adapter as a PR today without touching your internals? If your smallest working integration is longer than a README snippet, no room will carry it.

Be the exit ramp, in one command. Polar's repo list carries polar-migrate: `npx polar-migrate` takes a Lemon Squeezy API key and moves the catalog across. Same for checkout-link, which sells a file straight from the terminal with no dashboard. Free, tiny, linkable, so a founder can paste it into a thread where people are grumbling about their current provider and read as helpful rather than promotional.

done whenIs there a version of your product a stranger can try in one command with no signup? Would you be comfortable pasting that exact command as a reply to someone complaining about your competitor? If not, you have nothing to bring to the room.