My take on StartupSubmit

The "manual by humans" angle is the whole product and they should lead with it much harder. Everyone's tried automated submission tools. Most directories reject bots or silently drop the listings. StartupSubmit's pitch is that real people fill in real forms, which means the submissions actually stick and the backlinks actually count. The DR guarantee with money-back protection is what turns a nice-to-have into an obvious yes.

Every SaaS founder knows they need directory backlinks. Almost none of them want to spend 40 hours across 200 different forms with slightly different questions about their startup. The pain is universal and deeply relatable on X. "You know you need to do 200 directory submissions. You know you'll never do it. Here's someone who will, for $99, in 3-7 days" — that's the whole pitch and it doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

Marc Lou mentioning this by name is a trust signal worth using on every post. That single quote has more conversion power than a page full of feature bullets. Screenshot it, post it, reference it. The referral program (50% commission) is also underused — get other indie hacker builders recommending it to their audiences and let the community do the distribution.