I've spent weeks trying to find free participants for user interviews

Been banging my head against the wall here and could really use your collective wisdom.

I'm running research for a B2B SaaS product and need to interview ~15 product managers (our target audience). The problem? I have zero budget for panels like UserTesting ($50-200/participant is just not possible right now).

Here's what I've tried so far:

LinkedIn outreach — spent hours crafting personalized messages. Response rate: maybe 5%. Most people just ignore.

My personal network — exhausted after 3 interviews. Plus it's biased (all people I already know).

Twitter/LinkedIn posts — got a few likes, zero sign-ups.

Slack communities — some communities ban "recruitment posts", others just get ignored.

Emailing existing users — we don't have a big user base yet. Classic chicken-and-egg.

I'm spending more time hunting for participants than actually doing research. Something feels broken.

For those of you who've been there:

How do YOU find qualified participants without paying $50-200 per person?

What's your actual response rate from free channels?

Have you ever skipped research entirely because recruitment was too hard?

If you've got 3 minutes, I made a short survey about this problem. Would love to hear your experience — and I'll share the results with everyone who participates.

https://validatey.vercel.app/s/z34noiu

Thanks in advance. This community has saved me more times than I can count.