Arrive before the brief goes out.
By the time a project is posted to a marketplace it has twenty bidders. Lidar finds the moment before that, when someone is still describing what is wrong.
Our conversion rate dropped about 30% after we replatformed in June and nobody internally can work out why. Analytics look fine, ad spend is the same. At what point do you bring someone external in?
Why it matched. A quantified problem, a timeline, an exhausted internal option, and the person openly asking whether to hire someone. This is a brief being written in real time.
Why the usual channels do not fit.
Marketplaces are a race to the bottom
By the time work is listed it is a competitive bid against people who will do it cheaper. You are selling on price against strangers, which is the worst position an agency can occupy.
Referrals do not scale on demand
They are the best source of work you have and you cannot turn them up when a retainer ends. Every agency has had the quarter where the pipeline was someone else's goodwill.
Cold outreach burns the brand you sell
You are selling judgement and taste. Mass outreach undermines both, and the communities you would send it to compare notes about exactly that.
Where agencies find people worth talking to.
A starting set. The full comparison for this market is in the subreddit guide, and every community has its own page with the rules and the intent we see.
Questions
Communities hate agencies. Does this work at all?
They hate agency pitches. They respond well to someone who answers the actual question with a specific, numerate answer and mentions what they do only when asked. That distinction is the entire skill.
Can I watch several client niches at once?
Each product or niche is its own project with its own subreddits and its own matches, billed separately. Teams running many at once are what the Business plan exists for.
Is the lead quality actually better?
It is different. Lower volume, and the person has described their own problem unprompted rather than responding to an interruption, which makes the first conversation start much further along.
How long before it produces anything?
First matches land within hours of setup, then a fresh batch daily. Conversations depend on you replying well. Give it six weeks of genuine coverage before judging the channel.
Start with agencies in mind.
Paste your website. We read it, suggest the subreddits, and you edit them before anything starts. Every project opens with a 7 day trial.