How are both B2B SaaS and B2C SaaS companies finding clients?

There's never been a better time than now to start a SaaS startup. Whether you intend to focus on the B2B space or B2C, SaaS companies are experiencing extreme customer success. The sheer amount of companies that existed before the pandemic, compared to now is outsized and growing at an amazing scale. Many companies changed their work model, enabling millions of workers to work from home. In order for this to be successful at scale, requires technology to fundamentally support the many workers and their ever-evolving task lists.
Customer success is the primary ingredient for the success of many SaaS startups in 2024. By helping their clients achieve their business goals, customers have been more likely to stay loyal to their favorite SaaS products as they grow and succeed.
At the core of every SaaS business strategy, 3 key points stand out:

1. Customer Retention
2. Customer Engagement
3. Customer Satisfaction

Harnessing these three areas helps you build a strong and durable customer base.

Customer success at the forefront of your SaaS company

For B2B & B2C SaaS startups, the customer success departments have evolved from simply handling tickets to collecting and analyzing customer feedback in an effort to optimize the customer experience. This doesn't need to be something reserved for the larger players in the space. As an early-stage SaaS you want your customers to spread the word to their friends and colleagues, about their experience, so going above and beyond is a must! Let's put this idea as a fundamental requirement, and the next set of activities will help you to scale your products at lightning speed!

Stop struggling to get initial users for your SaaS product

Why is Reddit ranking so high in Google Searches? Saas
I [will] make a strong argument that we often cannot see the solution to our problems because we are too close to the problems to see our surroundings in the first place. The more you've optimized and automated your SaaS, the more you realize that there's less to do, up to a certain point. The next thing you typically pivot focus to is growth through marketing or advertising. So you start to post in DigitalMarketing, socialmedia, and marketing for ideas on how to perform outreach, enhance your seo, and even dabble in PPC. If you're lucky, you'll begin to see that there are issues with basic things, because members of Reddit will happily point them out to you.
If you haven't already seen this post, it's a good thread, and I recommend you check it out. The OP reveals some reasons why their product is struggling to gain traction. The community on Reddit is fantastic for providing insights as to what can be useful. Especially in communities such as SaaS, while others sometimes are not so forgiving (cough, cough, Entrepreneur).
Most of us SaaS founders don't actually have the luxury of spending time doing this. It's very much a make-it-or-break-it type scenario. Those of you who feel this way will certainly appreciate the next few bullet points that I will provide that should help you to begin generating traffic to your SaaS landing page [immediately].

1. Find the subreddit or community (Reddit, Linkedin, Facebook, Slack, Quora, X (Twitter) that you think aligns with your product niche.
2. Answer every question that you believe aligns with your target consumer, such as the "How-to's", or "Why's" that appear in the "Best", "Hot", and "New" tabs. Browse through each and every single tab.
3. Post only if you think what you have to add is immensely utilitarian, otherwise, spend time engaging through comments, and providing resources, links, and sources to any material you share.
4. Make sure your profile is optimized, because if you [do] provide any information that stands out, both happy and unhappy users will pounce on your profile to find anything that they can use to their advantage (be ready for the trolls).
5. Check your analytics. You'd be surprised to realize that some posts (that you don't create) will get thousands of views. A small percentage of viewers will then roll into your website to see what you have to offer, for their own reasons.

If 1,000 people visited your website from this tactic, consider that maybe 50 - 100 of them might actually be your customers, maybe even smaller. The better the offering on your landing page, the more likely you'll even get sign-ups for your SaaS with free trial periods, or free offerings!
Repeat this every day, and you're now generating 10,000 - 20,000 (or more) potential clients to your website daily. Some days will be great, others not so great, but you've found a method that now works, and is proven!

Leveraging social media (organically) to scale your SaaS

I like to break social media platforms into 2 categories:

1. Literature-driven communities:
   1. Reddit
   2. Quora
   3. Linkedin
   4. X (Twitter)
   5. Slack
2. Social Media Apps:
   1. Instagram
   2. Tiktok
   3. Pinterest
   4. X (Twitter)

Yes, I purposefully placed "X" in both categories because it had a great mix of both content types, and was originally based on small "tweets", but now it provides a lot more media, and I find myself spending less time reading.
Literature-driven communities are apps that you're potential SaaS customers have to stop and read, to find something interesting, even on mobile. While the "social media apps" are full of videos, and media fighting to hook your attention. This rapid-scrolling behavior is conducive to "doom-scrolling", making it much harder to capture the eye of your potential customers.
I would recommend investing more time into "Literature-driven platforms", as I think you'll get far more engagement without the need to sell your soul for likes, and followers. In fact, I only have about 100 followers on Reddit at this time, yet I still managed to gain 50,000,000+ views on my content in May 2024.
Also, here's another great Reddit Post about finding customers for your B2B SaaS.
https://preview.redd.it/x95xhu7qam5d1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dcb583cf047e3a068ad65f7593e56f343878f5f5

Opening up to friends, family, and colleagues as early customers

As you launch your product you're typically stuck in a paradoxical situation of needing to convince new clients with testimonials from previous clients. It's not easy to convert potential users without any data or feedback. It's much easier to do this when you have traction, but that's now always the case for a new SaaS founder.
Here are a few methods you can use to attract clients of your product early, in exchange for much-needed testimonials and referrals:

1. Offer your product to your "inner circle". This includes friends, family, colleagues, connections on Linkedin, or members of your social club.
2. Give discounts, and extended trial periods. It may cost you next to nothing to give your product out to testers, but having received a testimony repays you 100-fold!
3. Run surveys on Survey Monkey, or Usertesting.com - Not only will you get structured feedback from prospective users, but some of these testers might be willing to stay on, and use your product for an extended period.
4. Offer lifetime deals to early adopters. This may not be very fun, but it's a real opportunity to start bringing in revenue, validating certain functions and capabilities, and again, creating testimonials that you can use to convince new clients that your service works.

Consider this your beta trial (B2B SaaS) period. B2B SaaS founders typically will leverage their existing network at the beginning due to a high likelihood that they have some level of corporate experience (at least I hope!) going into their new venture. To get started, all you need is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which represents the leanest version of your app idea. Customer feedback will significantly add value to the long-term outlook of your product at this stage.

Using analytics to optimize your sales funnel

How to build a SaaS sales funnel
This next section is dedicated to BareMetrics, who inspired many of the lists that you'll see.
First, let's talk about what a SaaS sales funnel actually is, according to BareMetrics:
"In sales and marketing, the “funnel” refers to the process of qualifying leads and converting them to customers. You pour in leads at the widest part at the top of the sales funnel. As you work on converting them through the sales process, the funnel narrows. The bottom of the funnel is where your hottest qualified leads pour into your business as customers.

The traditional sales funnel is broken down into a few stages as leads engage with your brand:
Awareness: This is where your prospects become aware of your product and your brand. They’re just learning who you are, what you do, and that they have a problem you can solve.
Discovery: This is the phase where prospective leads are doing some initial research, narrowing down the products and services that can help them solve their issue.
Evaluation: In this phase, prospects are conducting more serious evaluations, weighing the pros and cons of making a purchase, as well as comparing you to your competitors.
Intent: This is the final phase of the funnel before a purchase is made. Logic, numbers, and value-driven communication are the keys to making that final persuasive push.
Purchase: This is where leads have ultimately decided that your brand meets their needs. They then join the ranks of your paying customers! Your work isn’t done, though: You still need to help them through the welcome and onboarding phase.

For your SaaS business, you have one key additional stage you need to consider: retention. Unlike other retail businesses, you don’t just want your customers to make a one-time purchase. You have to continue persuading them of your continued value each month. In this phase, you can also use the insights you gather about the customer and their behavior to upsell with features that meet their specific needs (and, in turn, increase your average revenue per user)."
Beautifully written (in my opinion). Retention also deserves much of your focus here as a SaaS entrepreneur. You have to convince customers month-over-month that you're not only maintaining quality, but the product has a roadmap for improvement. The use case that attracts initial customers doesn't necessarily guarantee that they will keep coming back. You're going to have to keep an ear out for what they are saying, and use as many opportunities as you can to understand what their needs are. I did something like this on Reddit within the dating app space.

Learn which metrics you should be tracking to optimize your SaaS sales funnel

Hubspot CAC Recovery Chart - SaaS companies
Hubspot has a great write-up about 15 metrics that you should be tracking. Here they are (below):

1. Customer Churn
2. Revenue Churn
3. Customer Lifetime Value
4. Customer Acquisition Cost
5. Months to Recover CAC
6. CAC: LTV Ratio
7. Customer Engagement Score
8. Qualified Marketing Traffic
9. Leads by Lifecycle Stage
10. Lead-to-Customer Rate
11. Customer Health Score

Every SaaS startup is different, and what they use to track overall growth and retention varies from company to company. Generally, most experts can agree that at a minimum, if you're team is focusing on optimization, these items should be reviewed every day, if not weekly within your organization.

What tools you should be using to optimize your SaaS sales funnel

Best analytics dashboard for my SaaS product - Mixpanel
My favorite tools for tracking data throughout your sales funnel are as follows:

1. Unbounce / LeadPages - Landing page tracking and optimization
2. Hotjar.com / Inspectlet
3. Mixpanel.com / Google Analytics
4. Squarespace.com / Wix / Webflow
5. Stripe.com / Square / Braintree
6. Mailchimp.com / Hubspot / Constant Contact

I also included some variants in this list. Notice that I did not include any ad platforms here. I know many marketing agencies would kill me, but it's not a necessary tool. Most of us have been taught to spend money on ads, to start tracking users to your platform, but if you're not generating at least 10,000 monthly visitors to your website organically (today), then you should take the organic route. Here's a resource on how to start getting clients for your SaaS startup. Only when you've exhausted all other ways of generating organic traffic, you should invest in advertising.
For me, it may be worth it to bring in another resource, who can guarantee me organic traffic with proven strategies, than pay for a PPC campaign, full of bot clicks from bot farms!

Create comparison content with competitors

Just recently I found a thread in SaaS talking about their journey with SEO. After 6 months of implementation, their strategy now brings in passive sales, due to their commitment to content creation. Many SaaS founders are admitting that creating "comparison content" with competitors is a great way to leverage a larger brand's presence in the SERP space. I highly recommend you invest in creating feature matrices detailing where, why, and how you stand out from other competitors on the market.

What you should do after you've gained thousands of new customers

Let's do a short recap to identify how we've gotten here.

1. We officially launched our SaaS
2. We invited our inner circle of friends, family, and colleagues as initial testers of our B2C SaaS, and leveraged our professional network for B2B SaaS.
3. We offered discounts, trials, or lifetime deals in exchange for feedback and testimonials.
4. We've highlighted initial success stories as case studies on our SaaS brand website, to help us convince new clients
5. We've set up a sales funnel (feedback loop) to track conversion success at every core inflection point using top tools like Mixpanel, Unbounce, and Stripe.
6. We're implementing organic social media strategies that drive 10,000+ visitors to our SaaS landing page every month, which helps us optimize our sales funnel (5).
7. We've invested in a customer retention strategy, equal to our outreach strategy. Tools such as Mailchimp (newsletters), and SMS marketing (Twilio.com) work well here.
8. We've exhausted growth, and need to further 10x our user base. Now's a great time to consider influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, or paid ads.

The decision to invest in a team or organic social media assets to continue growth, or take the path of investing in ad campaigns for growth really depends on where you see yourself in 2 - 3 years. Some people want to build a SaaS product that helps them live a simpler life, assisting in an exit from the traditional corporate 9 - 5 pm. Others desire to take the VC route, raise funds, and scale to extraordinary heights, eventually going public through an IPO.
No matter what your decision is, none of this can happen without achieving success in steps 1 - 8. For some SaaS founders, they will achieve every point mentioned within 6 months, while others might take 6 years. A good example of this slow and steady approach is Mailchimp of course!

Getting customers for your SaaS is easier than you think

This article will single-handedly provide you with the links and resources needed to build a customer base within your first 6-months of launch. Within 2 - 3 months you could even exceed the 1,000 user mark. For some 100 customers is also great, it just depends on who you're targeting (B2B vs. B2C). Make sure to focus on customer success, get those testimonials, and establish dominance by giving your loyal clients a bespoke experience!
If you found this article helpful and are ready to continue executing, feel free to grab a copy of our book The Growth Checklist. It's the only book around that guarantees growth within 30 days, or we'll fully refund you the value of the book. If you've already purchased a copy, and are struggling to execute upon any strategies, you can simply book a meeting with me here.

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1. Linkedin
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3. The Growth Blog (24 Hour Designs)
4. Quora
5. Medium

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Thank you so much for reading.

The Confirmed Hoax Fallacy An Old Argument Raises Its Ignorant Head Yet Again TEMPORAL RECON JUN 8
I was recently invited to write an essay by someone who I respect greatly in their own personal search for truth. He asked that, while an update to Conviction of a Time Traveler is not necessarily in the offing, he did wonder if I might be amenable to a friendly reminder of the evidence provided in COATT nearly a decade ago now.
What spurred his request was that he had noticed recently that several people online had been echoing the ‘confirmed hoax’ trope when discussions would might around to the John Titor series of posts which occurred online back in 2000/2001.
His noticing of this false argument was nothing new; I had also noticed it crop up from time to time over the last 20 years. I hold the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument in special and particular disdain. Why?
Primarily because evidence exists and was provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2009 that Titor was legitimate and, ironically enough, was read by many of the so-called experts espousing the ‘confirmed hoax’ lie. So when these fake experts tell you that the Titor story was a ‘confirmed hoax,’ they are lying to you.
Conviction of a Time Traveler provided new and original evidence that has never, to date, been debunked since its publication; a full 14 years. The evidence provided (which many of these lazy forum participants are aware of) pointed to one, inexorable and inescapable conclusion: Titor was legit. But this evidence, while never disproven, is always ignored. Why is that? We’ll put a pin in that…
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Ironically, not only has the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler never been debunked, but it has also even been plagiarized by lazy authors who can’t be bothered to do original research or, lacking the intellectual horsepower necessary to do even that, fail to provide appropriate attribution to their source material.
So what of this, ‘Confirmed Hoax’ claim? Is it true? HAS the John Titor episode actually been ‘confirmed’ as a hoax?
When someone in a position of pretend authority declares from their cardboard pedestal that the John Titor story is a ‘Confirmed Hoax,’ have you ever noticed they never provide the person who did the confirming?
“Confirmed hoax?” ‘Confirmed’ by whom, pray tell?
When the term ‘Confirmed Hoax’ is used, what imagery comes to mind? I dare say it implies that some sort of shadowy group of learned scholars sat around a big wooden table, carefully assessed and addressed the claims. All the evidence and counter-arguments were carefully measured while hidden away in some stone castle somewhere until a white puff of smoke curls over its stone-tiled rooftops, declaring to the world once and for all,
“Our confirmation is complete. John Titor was a hoax!”
Bullshit.
Here’s the dirty little secret of the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ statements: they are actually shorthand for,
“I don’t have the intellectual capacity to argue in favor or against, so in order to come off like some sort of authority and maintain my fake position of authority, I’ll just take the safest position and simply declare that the Titor story is a hoax, that it was ‘confirmed’ and let’s please just move on to some other topic.”
‘Confirmed Hoax,’ is a coward’s gambit, a bet, that there won’t be anyone to come along to rock the boat and topple these posers off their flimsy stage of pretend authority.
This was the environment I walked into when I first published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010, and apparently, it hasn’t changed in 15 years.
When I first posted on Paranormalis (IIRC) announcing that I had written a book that documented the evidence in favor of Titor’s veracity, the then-reigning Titor authority (‘Darby’) haughtily pronounced, “Present your evidence and we’ll discuss it.”
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It was in that moment that I chose a path that nobody before me had ever embarked upon. I said, “No.”
Nobody had ever said ‘no’ before. There are pages and pages of forum posts by people before me who discovered some of the same bits and pieces that I discovered that pointed to Titor’s truth. And they were excited to show what they had discovered! And, owing to their excitement, and unfortunately, their naivete, they excitedly shared their evidence, wrongfully believing that the forums’ leadership was interested in getting to the bottom of the Titor episode.
Little did they suspect that ‘Darby’ and others were acting as gatekeepers of truth, whose sole purpose was to establish and maintain a lid on the narrative that was the John Titor episode. He, and his ilk gaslighted and bullied these poor naifs into silence by using their fake authority to debunk and explain away the very real evidence they had discovered.
That is, until COATT was published.
Unfortunately for these enemies of Truth, the internet is forever. In my research leading up to the publication of Conviction of a Time Traveler, I had the benefit of not only studying Titor’s posts, but also all the follow-on discussions after their departure.
I reviewed literally years of online forum content and, as I did so, I made a very curious observation: in all the years of discussion after Titor departed, not one piece of evidence ever (ever) caused ‘Darby’ or any of the other fake authorities to question their ‘it’s a hoax!’ position. They NEVER saw a piece of evidence that they didn’t dismiss, mock, ignore or explain away with contortions of logic that would make Wetzel’s Pretzels blush. This is in stark contrast to how someone who was truly in search of truth would act.
If ‘Darby’ and the others truly were curious, isn’t this a little odd? Really? Not ONE piece of evidence ever caused ‘Darby’ to pause and say, “hmm, that’s interesting…”
Not once, ever.
And there are years of forum posts to confirm this.
So, when Darby commanded from his perch of fake authority that I ‘present my evidence so that we might discuss it’ I laughed in his face [paraphrasing],
“No. A real discussion of the evidence hasn’t occurred here for years, and I do not recognize your so-called position as some sort of ‘expert’ on the Titor story. LITERALLY EVERYTHING there is to learn, or study, is published in the Titor posts for all to read. You hold no special knowledge, no special position, no special nothing. I do not submit to your fake authority. You want to learn about Titor, read the book.”
Or words to that effect, anyway…
In the end, the evidence provided in COATT was so unassailable and the argument so solid that ‘Darby’ and his ilk suddenly became more and more quiet as they slowly realized I wasn’t going to wilt under their “authoritay.” Eventually, they slinked away with their rhetorical tails tucked.
But this was not the end of the story! Because ‘time travel’ had become quite the pet interest of mine (owing to the further evidence I discovered after publication), that I continued to post online in various discussion forums. I even wrote numerous essays on a variety of topics, all spurred on by the ‘time travel’ question and all its implications.
Fast Forward Fast forwarding to today, we’re back at the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument again. What was once offered up (“HOAX!”) by Darby and others, is now cold soup served by the latest crop of fake authorities. And what happens when fake authority utters the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ discussion-brake? The same thing that happened a decade ago: the earnest neophyte shrugs their shoulders secure in the false belief that others smarter than they have studied the topic and arrived at some irrefutable conclusion; no further discussion necessary (or allowed). They have no idea just how close they came to uncovering something truly fantastic, had they only relied on their own judgment instead of the know-nothing proclamations of others.
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Which brings me to why I wrote COATT in the first place. Instead of simply doing my research and arriving at my own (private) conclusion, I realized that too many people were believing fake authority and ignoring Titor’s warnings about our future. Once I realized that Titor was legitimate (caveated, of course), how could I NOT share my findings? The stakes were simply too high.
IF what Titor said were true 24 years ago, that the world was heading for an upending change in the status quo, and that many people would die as a result of it, how could I remain silent and not inform others that his warnings were something to be listened to? Perhaps people with ears to hear might take heed and make the appropriate preparations. I know I did.
But, as my friend has informed me, it appears that the fake experts have reared their ugly and useless heads once again telling us that there is ‘nothing to the Titor story’ and that it is a “confirmed hoax.”
THIS was the reason that I was recently asked to provide my evidence once again. And THIS is the reason this essay is dragging on. These pretenders to authority are like roaches; as soon as the exterminator leaves, they come out of the woodwork intent on dismantling the Truth once again. God’s work never ends, it seems, even with a 99% success rate…
So, now that we’ve got all THAT out of the way, and as a sort of transition, I’d like to bring you up to speed on what I’ve been up to since I published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010.
To be perfectly frank, after COATT’s publication, I thought I was done with the Titor story; I had said my piece and was perfectly willing to move on with my life and prepare for the event that causes the change in the status quo. But the annoying fact was that the Titor story itself didn’t end with the cessation of Titor’s posts in 2001.
As new evidence appeared in the months and years following publication, like dog shit on my shoe that I can’t scrape off, I could never cleanly cleave myself from the Titor story. Not that I wanted to, mind you, it is a fascinating topic, regardless of your opinion.
But what surprised me the most was that new evidence continued to appear, year after year. And, as more evidence appeared, my curiosity was consistently kept piqued and on alert. Trust me, it is exhausting.
To give you a sense of what I discovered, I can tell you that your experts are wrong and that ‘time travel’ is neither novel nor unusual; we are very literally awash in ‘time travelers.’ My research suggests that ‘time machines’ have been present in our past going as far back as 850AD. But I digress.
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Suffice it to say that the Titor rabbit hole is but one example of a massively large group of programs from an unknown number of organizations from across time. The ‘time travel’ question runs much deeper (and much farther back in time) and crosses over into more (so-called) esoteric topics than anyone gives it credit for. As I said, it’s exhausting.
My whole point here is that, even after I published in 2009, my curiosity in the topic (and its implications of yet larger vistas) did not wane. And, because of this continued and unabating curiosity, I discovered yet more evidence, crafted more theories and came to more conclusions.
A philosopher once described the acquisition of new information as an ever-expanding circle surrounding the man; a horizon where known and unknown meet where new answers only beget new questions which push the circle farther and farther out. This has been my experience over the last 15 years re the Titor narrative and the larger ‘time travel’ question. How could it be otherwise?
Unfortunately for you, you are being convinced by fools that the Titor episode is a ‘Confirmed Hoax.’ You haven’t even made the leap to the possibility that ‘time travel’ is even possible. How can you explore the implications of ‘time travel’ when you can’t even consider its reality, a fundamental starting point? I have a very strong (ehem) conviction that our collective naïveté on the subject will be violently revoked in the very near ‘future.’
The Two Camps, The Two Mistakes During my research, I observed that within the Titor commentariat there are two basic camps: the Debunkers and the True Believers.
The Debunking camp will provide any contortion of logic to maintain the ‘Titor was a hoax’ narrative.
The True Believers, on the other hand, will believe any contortion of logic that maintains their belief in The Gospel of John.
What if I told you both camps were wrong?
Now, the debunking camp will tell you that Titor must be a hoax because his predictions didn’t come true. Oh, well…his predictions didn’t come true? I guess we’re done then? Obviously, his whole purpose for posting was to make predictions like some Magic Eight Ball, right? And if those don’t pan out, well, ‘CONFIRMED HOAX!’
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On the other side of that coin, the True Believers out there, who never saw a confirmation bias they didn’t love, will tell you that Titor’s predictions didn’t come true because he changed the future. This of course is a recipe for explaining away literally any detracting evidence thus making Titor true no matter any evidence to the contrary.
Let’s take the True Believers first:
The concept of Divergence, while a handy explanation, does not/cannot explain all differences in histories away. In fact, were what Titor said was true (remember, we are True Believers for the moment and are taking Titor’s words as gospel) he absolutely must take measures to minimize divergence as much as possible and NOT allow it to span wildly. Otherwise, the entire power of the ‘time machine’ is rendered moot. I accept that Divergence is likely a real measurement necessary for the efficient execution of ‘time travel’ missions, but it should, by no means, be the magic skeleton key to explain away every question.
In fact, while divergence is very likely a real ‘thing’ or artifact or measurement of difference between world lines, the Truth is that divergence must absolutely be kept to a minimum to make any practical use of the gravity engine sitting in the back seat of your old blue Geo Metro.
So, no. Divergence cannot be the handy tool we need to contort ourselves into believing, as much as we might like to.
Now for the debunkers:
The debunkers have a variety of options available to them to argue that Titor was a ‘confirmed hoax.’ Regardless, these arguments typically boil down to two primary classes:
He has special training or knowledge, and/or
He’s just a lucky guesser.
Unfortunately for the debunkers (and those who listen to them), these explanations make a very serious error: that predictions are a relevant metric to judge Titor’s truth at all. They are not.
Serious question: Why should a ‘time traveler’ be subject to the same metrics that a psychic is to determine if his claims of ‘time travel’ are true?
The point here is that you can’t compare a horse to a whale and complain that the horse can’t swim. They are two completely different animals, and the same goes for ‘time travelers’ and psychics or tarot readers or any other domain whose reputation is dependent on the true-ness of the information they provide. Comparing Titor’s predictions to actual, experienced history is also an imperfect and inappropriate metric if one is to objectively assess Titor from a blank slate starting point. This points to a much deeper insight into the true purpose of the Titor posts, but that’s for a different day.
So, because of both these problems, any real researcher worth their salt would have to find some other way to determine the truth/falsity of the Titor narrative.
Remember, when first approaching the Titor question as an objective investigator, Titor is both equally a hoax and legitimate. Imagine Schrodinger’s cat meets Columbo…
I’ll give you this observation for free, just to get your juices flowing:
Did you notice that absolutely none of John’s predictions (event + date) came true, but all his statements concerning conditions about our future did?
Don’t you find this interesting? Or hadn’t you noticed, too blinded by the bright and shiny, attention-grabbing predictions of nuclear war?
But I am getting ahead of myself; we still haven’t provided the evidence that it’s simply more likely that Titor was an actual time traveler than some ‘hoaxer genius.’ And so we finally get to the whole point of this essay in the first place, a reminder and summary of the evidence first provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler all the way back in those halcyon days of 2010:

1. Wireless Internet: Titor correctly predicted the advent of wireless internet when we were still using dial-up modems and America Online. Cable internet connections had only just been introduced.

“My closest friend raises horses and another works for a company that maintains “wireless” Internet nodes.”
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000

1. YouTube becoming like ‘live theatre’: Titor correctly predicted the social evolution of YouTube and the decentralization of entertainment away from Hollywood evolving from short videos of grannies and cute kittens on Youtube to a sort of “live theatre” where actual shows would be presented by literally anyone, online, in a world that hadn’t even seen streaming services or video sharing services such as Rumble, etc.

“Yes, there is an entertainment industry. Again, it is very decentralized. The technology to express yourself with video is so readily available that many people do it all by themselves or in small groups. Much of the distribution is over the web. I would compare it theater here.”
-J. Titor

1. IBM 5100 special capabilities: The statement that kicked everything off. Titor correctly identified the secret capabilities of the very first desktop computer manufactured by IBM in the 1970’s. These capabilities were utterly unknown and unacknowledged until Titor’s appearance in 2000. Interestingly, using this information, I was able to determine the most likely candidate of Titor’s grandfather which, upon this identification, also explained why Titor had to go all the way back to 1975 to pick up a copy of the 5100 and not 1985, 1995, or ‘elsewhen.’

“I was “sent” to get an IBM computer system called the 5100. It was one the first portable computers made and it has the ability to read the older IBM programming languages in addition to APL and Basic.”
– J. Titor, Nov 15, 2000

1. VOIP: Titor correctly predicted the development of phone calls being run across the internet, again, in a time where downloading a picture over dial-up took minutes.

“Many people use the Internet for communication and entertainment. I would say that affects our speech. We type very fast.”
– J. Titor, Feb 15, 2001

1. Soldier’s Winter Poem: Titor correctly predicted the poem, by name, “A Soldier’s Winter” and its topic. There is more to this particular prediction and statement about “A Soldier’s Winter“ than meets the eye, however.

“A Soldier’s Winter.”
-J. Titor, Feb 21, 2001

1. Second gulf war: Titor correctly predicted a second incursion into Iraq by allied forces. There is also more to this statement by Titor as well. But that’s a little advanced for right now.

“Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001

1. WMD and ‘hype’: Titor correctly predicted that the WMD story was hype and not to be believed (also, there is more to this statement than is visible on the surface). This statement’s purpose is closely related to statements #6 and #9.

“Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001

1. Optical Measurement for atomic clock: A biggie. Titor correctly predicted the development of a new sort of atomic clock and the reasons why it was an improvement over the then-current ‘radio’ method of atomic measurement (more precise).

Specifically, atomic clocks determine the length of a second by measuring the frequency of a particular atom. Cesium, Rhodium, etc. Measuring this frequency is done using something called the “radio method” which makes use of a gas and hitting that gas and atom with a microwave (the ‘radio’ part of the measurement). However, Titor claimed that a new ‘time machine’ had been developed that makes use of an optical means of measuring the atom’s frequency, an improvement. The Optical Frequency Comb was developed after Titor’s departure which enabled the measurement of an atom’s frequency optically, and which also allowed for greater precision in that measurement. Titor’s statement is a 3-fer:
He predicts an optical measurement system for atomic clocks.
He predicts the new system measures oscillation and not some other aspect.
He predicts this new system increases measurement precision and not some other aspect.
“The C206 uses 6 cesium clocks but they use an optical system to check the oscillation frequency. This makes the worldline divergence confidence much higher.”
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000

1. Ginger: The most enigmatic piece of evidence and what originally spurred me to look closer at this ‘confirmed hoax’ in 2010. In the very opening of Titor’s posts in 2000, someone asked three questions to allow Titor to ‘prove’ he was legitimate. Those questions were:

“1. What was the final death count in the recent India earthquake?

1. What is the "Ginger" (IT) invention?
   
2. Who wins the Stanley Cup (Hockey) this year?”
   

• M. Kolesnik, Jan 29, 2001

As you see, questions 1 and 3 are of the magic eight ball variety and are wholly inappropriate to assess Titor’s truthfulness. But we’ll extend some grace to Mr. Kolesnik as it was so early on in their discourse. And Titor demurred on answering these two questions anyway. He refused to answer the first question because he claimed he simply didn’t know. And he refused to answer the third question because he felt it to be unfair for someone to earn money using his information (pointing to a larger context of rules by which they operate).
But, the middle question, ‘…what is Ginger…’ did not violate either of those two questions so he acquiesced and answered it. He answered by saying,
“It looks like a sort of motorized scooter. What do you think IT is?”
– J. Titor, Jan 29, 2001
This answer immediately got my attention because, in 2000 when the question was asked, the answer was truly unknown, thus Mr. Kolesnik’s question. However, in 2009 when I was first looking into the Titor narrative, I knew what Ginger was because I remembered it. Hindsight truly was 20/20.
As a bit of background, during 1999 (the exact timing escapes me), a ‘viral’ marketing campaign was underway by an inventor named Dean Kamen. While never revealing what this new product was, the billboards merely asked,
“What is IT?”
or
“What is Ginger?”
That was all they said. It is obvious now, and was obvious even then, that Kamen was attempting to create a buzz for his new invention. Fair enough. It also explains why it was asked of Titor in 2000. Kamen’s ad campaign was working! People were truly wondering.
Now understand, the hype (and I use that term specifically) surrounding the Ginger ad campaign was fairly strong. Kamen predicted that his invention would reinvent how people moved about cities; it would cause their utter redesign and how they were laid out and organized. Big claims, to be sure. So strong in fact that Kamen was able to land a spot on Good Morning America where he finally revealed what his invention was.
In December of 2001, and live on the air, Kamen, with Katie Couric, revealed Ginger to the world. Ginger was none other than the Segway.
And what did Titor say it was?
“A type of motorized scooter”
And Stella says there’s nothing more to learn…
Get the Book
Titor’s absolute spot-on declaration of what Kamen’s invention was nearly a year before it was unveiled hit me right between the eyes. Eight years later, I already knew that Ginger was the Segway because I remembered the event.
Here was a maniac on the internet claiming to be a ‘time traveler’ and he correctly ‘guessed’ what Ginger was a mere 2 ½ hours after it was asked and 11 months before it was officially unveiled?
It was Titor’s statement here that caused me to look deeper (much deeper, in fact) into the Titor narrative and, after exhaustive research and extensive supporting evidence, I concluded that Titor was in fact, legitimate.
Now here’s the truly interesting part of this piece of the Titor saga: you can’t find this statement about Ginger online anywhere anymore. It has been scrubbed from online sources everywhere.
Now, when I first discovered the Titor story, I saw that there appeared to be a couple different versions of the posts and I just, by chance, found a version of the posts with the Ginger reference in it. I saw that some versions had the Ginger reference, and some did not. At the time, I did not know how to understand this. But I do now.
Revisiting Old Theories As I mentioned before, hindsight is 20/20, and that is especially true when discussing ‘time travel’ and ‘time travelers.’ So, it seems oddly appropriate to provide a few examples of updated information that only revealed themselves with the fullness of time after publication.
‘leader’ In Conviction of a Time Traveler, I found the following quote especially interesting:
“The President or “leader” in 2005 I believe tried desperately to be the next Lincoln and hold the country together but many of their policies drove a larger wedge into the Bill of Rights. The President in 2009 was interested only in keeping his/her power base.”

• J. Titor, Feb 19, 2001

And it wasn’t necessarily the full content of Titor’s statement here, it was those damn quotes around the word ‘leader.’ Why would he put quotes around a word so simple in its definition? In COATT, I surmised that Titor was referring to Obama at the time for a variety of reasons. Namely the very high coincidence factor between facts surrounding Obama and Lincoln. My own belief also was that Titor would not consider Obama as the rightful leader of the United States due to the known problems with his birth certificate, thus making him ineligible for the Presidency. Thus, Titor wrote ‘leader’ with those quotes around it indicating his misgivings.
Of course, here we are 24 years after Titor’s statement and 12 years after I wrote COATT, and I have now come to a different conclusion about the quotation marks around the word ‘leader’. I now surmise that Titor was referring to Biden and not Obama when he wrote that. Because I personally didn’t have a ‘time machine’ at the time, I never could have expected the dementia patient currently ‘in’ the White House and supposedly ‘leading’ the country. For anyone watching, it is patently obvious that Mr. Biden isn’t ‘leading’ anything. So, in the context of this and our current national situation, those quotation marks sure make a hell of a lot more sense now, don’t you think? This reassessment obviously puts a giant bullseye on the 2024-2025 time period for what Titor commented upon in 2000.
So, yes. I have reassessed this particular conclusion since publishing Conviction of a Time Traveler due to the slow passage of time and its equally slow revelation of Truth.
Gates Another interesting comment by Titor had to do with Bill Gates. Recall that in 2000/2001, Bill Gates was ‘merely’ the CEO of Microsoft. He was among the richest men in the world and many news stories of the time commented upon this fact. Almost kind of like Elon Musk’s notoriety in both scope and scale. So, as such, a forum participant named ‘Joe’ asked Titor for any information regarding Bill Gates’ future. Titor’s response?
“This I do know but I won’t discuss.”
-J. Titor, Feb 23, 2001
An interesting, if not completely unhelpful, answer. Wouldn’t you say?
Considering we now know how Gates has morphed from Tech Titan selling mediocre products to Farmland baron, GMO mosquito breeder and mRNA advocate and (alleged) mass murderer in India and elsewhere in the third world, Titor’s statement that he does know about Gates’ future rings true.
In fact, what was also a bit interesting was when someone later pressed him on any information regarding Gates’ future. To which he responded,
Just curious, why is he of such interest?
-J Titor, Mar 5, 2001
Considering what we know now about Gates and his predilections (his ‘wife’ deserted him upon revelation of his visits to Epstein Island), I’m willing to bet that John was naturally curious as to why Gates, of all people, was of such interest to the forum participants that they would ask twice about him. Coincidence? Or did Titor suspect a mole from a different program in the forum? Who knows. His curiosity about their curiosity in Gates is interesting, nothing more.
Conclusion And there you have (some of) it. A summary of some of the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler written nearly 15 years ago. The evidence contained in that small book has never been debunked or disproven. It has been plagiarized by some and ignored by others. If you were unaware of COATT and are a regular participant in the online discussions about ‘time travel,’ you should ask yourself why the ‘leadership’ on those forums never mention COATT. Curious, don’t you think?
The reason I wrote COATT in the first place was because, after I had done my own research to satiate my own personal curiosity, I realized that some people online were downplaying his posts’ importance in the hopes that they could dissuade people from believing in Titor and the possibility of ‘time travel.’
I saw this dishonesty and decided to fight back against it by merely providing the information I discovered. From my point of view, Titor was warning us about a very severe time in our future that would upend the status quo and was to be a highly dangerous one.
Taken at face value (always a good starting point), Titor’s warnings merited being taken seriously. Had the naysayer’s deceit been left unanswered, how many of you would have failed to prepare for what is just around the corner? You have prepared, haven’t you?
And yes, as is readily obvious to many, those hard times are right around the corner. Looking at Titor’s statements 24 years later and simply looking around at the state of America and the world, do his statements seem so outlandish now?
John’s ‘final’ words to the forum in March of 2001 ring eerily prescient now:
Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road.
-J. Titor, Mar 23, 2001
It is my sincerest hope that my small book project (and the essays that followed) spurred you to think twice about the world we live in and take the necessary actions you feel you should to keep you and your family safe for the world’s awakening and rebirth.
As Ever,
Temporal Recon Share
As Ever