Ask HN: How do you find early users willing to bet on a rough product?

I built an Instagram-focused AI tool for a client that is trained on a brand’s product catalog and internal documentation. The interesting part is not generic generation, but that it actually understands the product and brand context well enough to produce content that is much less slop-prone than normal prompt-based workflows.

I’m now trying to abstract and productize it beyond the initial client.

My idea is to onboard 5 to 10 ecommerce teams through a small “founder edition” style program, work closely with them, and use that to shape the product. The product is useful already, but still rough around the edges, so this is not a polished self-serve SaaS yet.

I’m curious about two things:

Where do you find the kind of early users who are comfortable betting on a product at this stage?

Has anyone here tried a founder edition or lifetime-style early access offer, and did it work well or create bad incentives later?

I’d especially like to hear from people who have sold early B2B tools before the product was fully cleaned up. What actually worked for finding the right design partners or pilot customers?