I’m a relatively new dev building a web app on my own. I’ve never worked at a big tech company and don’t have much of an audience, but I’d like real users testing it before I launch so I don’t ship something confusing or low quality. Up to now I’ve mostly built tools where I was the only user, so I don’t have a good playbook for what to do when there’s more than one.

For context, the app lets a user record a short video of themselves speaking and then runs facial-expression, tone, and transcript analysis to generate a report on their communication style.

For people who’ve been in a similar spot: where did you find your first testers, and which channels (communities, platforms, outreach tactics, etc.) were actually worth the effort vs. a waste of time? I’m looking for concrete suggestions to get a small group of people who will give blunt, useful feedback.