How much time does this actually take to set up?

About ten minutes for five keywords and one alert channel. The part worth spending longer on is the Brief, and the relevance floor on your phone channel — set the floor too low and you will have a channel nobody reads within a fortnight, which is the failure mode for every tool in this category.

What should a solo founder track first?

Your name, two competitors, and two phrases describing the problem you solve. The problem phrases are the ones that pay: they have no brand name in them, so almost nobody is watching them, and they catch people before the comparison shopping starts.

Will it post replies for me?

No, and it never will. FishOut drafts a reply and puts it in front of you; sending happens from your own account, on the platform, by you. Automated posting is how a brand gets banned from the subreddits that matter to it.

Is the free plan actually usable?

For one product with a couple of keywords, yes — 10 keywords checked hourly across Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, GitHub and Google News, up to 500 relevant mentions a month, AI triage on every post, unlimited team members, and full API, MCP and webhook access, with no card. What it does not include is reply drafts, which start on Plus.

What if I ignore it for two weeks?

That is the case to design for. A high relevance floor on a phone channel, with noise going to Filtered as it arrives, means you come back to a short inbox sorted Best first and a Daily brief saying what is worth your time, rather than four hundred rows — and a short queue is one you will actually read.

For Founders · Solo and small teams

Social listening for founders — FishOut

You already know the best leads are in public threads. The problem was never that they are hidden — it is that finding them costs an hour a day you do not have, and the hour is not the same hour every day.

Start free See pricing

[01] THE JOB/ FOUNDERS

What founders are actually trying to do

Nobody is going to do this for you, so it has to survive a week where you do not open the tool at all. That means the setup has to be aggressive: a Brief that says what to ignore, so the noise lands in Filtered before you see it; a channel that reaches your phone, with a high relevance floor; and a Daily brief that tells you what is worth doing today. A founder who checks a dashboard on Monday is a founder who has stopped checking by the third Monday.

[02] WHERE TO LOOK/ PLATFORMS

Where people describe a problem before they know a product exists to solve it. "Is there anything that…" is a buying signal with no brand name in it, which is exactly the kind your competitors are not watching for.

How FishOut monitors Reddit →

Hacker News

Small volume, high consequence. A Show HN comment thread or an Ask HN recommendation can be the whole week, and it moves fast enough that finding it two days later is finding nothing.

How FishOut monitors Hacker News →

X

The complaint about the incumbent, usually posted in frustration rather than as a question. Low intent per mention, but it is where switching gets talked about out loud.

How FishOut monitors X →

Worth adding once you are selling to a job title rather than a person. Slower and more considered than the other three, and a reply there reaches the buyer rather than the user.

How FishOut monitors LinkedIn →

[03] WHAT TO TRACK/ KEYWORDS

Four keyword shapes that work here

A keyword is a search FishOut runs continuously across every platform you have enabled — a Brand, Competitor or Topic keyword, with an optional Means… line and filters that apply before any AI reads a post. The shapes below are ordered by how much they tend to be worth, which is almost the reverse of the order people add them in — a brand name is the first one everybody adds and the smallest source of anything new.

keywords · founders

your brand name

A Brand keyword, obviously. But it is the lowest-volume keyword you will have, and if it is the only one you add, the tool will feel empty and you will stop opening it.

two competitor names

Competitor keywords, and the highest-value shape there is. Somebody complaining about the incumbent is a lead who has already done the hard part of deciding to switch.

three problem phrases

Topic keywords, and the actual job: "shared inbox", "handling support email", "email is a bottleneck". No brand name, so almost nobody is watching them, and they catch people before they start comparing products.

alternative to <incumbent>

Explicit switching intent. Low volume, near-perfect precision, and the one keyword worth an immediate phone alert.

[04] HOW TO SET IT UP/ VIEWS AND AGENTS

The setup that survives a busy month

An agent is a rule you write: when a post matches conditions on relevance, label, Reply call, sentiment, keyword or platform, then label it, assign it, notify a channel or draft a reply. None ship pre-built. The one below is the one worth writing first for this job, and it takes about a minute.

Fix the Brief before anything else

At sign-up FishOut reads your website and drafts a Brief — what you do, who it is for, what to ignore — along with your brand terms, a few competitors and topic keywords. Spend two minutes editing it. Every post is read against it, and the ones that do not fit go to Filtered with a reason rather than into your inbox.

Start with five keywords, not fifty

The Free plan gives you ten, but five is the right number for a first week: your name, two competitors, and two problem phrases. If your name is also an ordinary word, add a Means… line so the other meaning stays out. Add more once you know which shape is actually producing.

Put only the best on your phone

Telegram with a high relevance floor — high enough that a buzz means something is worth reading now. Everything else waits in the inbox, sorted Best first, and the Daily brief picks out what is worth engaging with that day. This is the setting that decides whether the tool survives a bad week.

Work from Reply now and Leads

Two built-in views do most of the work. Reply now is every post where the Reply call says answer it; Leads is people asking for recommendations, comparing tools or describing a problem on your topic and competitor keywords. On Plus a draft in your Voice is one click away — FishOut never posts, so you edit it and send it from your own account.

agent · leads to me

When the subject is A topic or A competitor, the post is labelled Asking for recommendations, Comparison or Has a problem, and the Reply call is Reply now

Then assign it to you, draft a reply, and send it to your Slack

[05] WHEN WE ARE THE WRONG ANSWER/ HONESTLY

F5Bot may suit you better

If all you want is an email when your name appears on Reddit or Hacker News, F5Bot does that free and has done for years. It has no AI triage, no inbox and no drafts, so what you are buying with FishOut is the triage rather than the finding — but if you have five minutes a week and one keyword, be honest that the free tool is enough.

Read the full FishOut vs F5Bot comparison →

What this costs. The Free plan covers 10 keywords across Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, GitHub and Google News, with AI triage, every alert channel, the API, MCP server and webhooks included. LinkedIn, TikTok and X, reply drafts and agents start on Plus at $19/mo.

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