> You are putting too much effort in your product, your focus should be on finding the right market fit for your idea
How is this not excellent advice? There are lots of stories of founders building first (sometimes for years, even), then finding out that there is no market for it (as it seems you have done). The people evaluating your product might have even just read your post and concluded that there's no market, a tarpit idea [0], from their own experiences.
I am assuming this [1] is your product, from looking at your profile and searching the name on IH. The comments are exactly as I've stated, and they apparently have visited your website too, so maybe your logs are not accurate, or they have an adblocker on.
> Hey, I checked out your website—looks great! Just wanted to share some honest feedback. I think you should hold off on going too deep into development right now. Instead, treat this as your MVP and focus first on getting real customers.
> This is a common trap many founders (myself included) fall into—building out the full product before validating if there's a real market fit. Get users, collect feedback, and then iterate. That’s the fastest and most efficient path forward.
If all you are doing is making apps, you have a hobby, but it is not guaranteed that you will have a business from it, so understand what it is you are optimizing for as the two require different actions to succeed.
I do understand that in order to create something popular you need to create something good but you also need to properly communicate what you do. And proper communication is as hard as creating something good. So, I do know you need to "find an audience", and that is why I've posted it in a few places.
Having said all that, reading these comments made me feel somewhat demoralized because the advice wasn't really actionable. As a noob in this space I went in expecting to get some advice along the lines of: "your idea is bad", "the website design needs to improve", "your app keeps crashing", "there is no way to make money from this", etc... But all I've got was this generic "find users" advice.
"Find users" isn't intrinsically bad advice, but the way it was delivered felt really bad. How do I find users? Should I post about it in some platform? Maybe I should write a blog post about it? Running ads is a viable approach? Given what I have, what communities should I try to engage?
> so understand what it is you are optimizing for as the two require different actions to succeed
But I don't want to create a business right now. I just want to create something that people find interesting. I already know how to build things for myself, now I want a different challenge. But right now I feel stuck because I've built something, nobody seems to care and I don't really know how to improve my situation.
When you built your app, whom did you build it for? Presumably you built it for a specific customer segment in mind, so did you try searching for them on Google or elsewhere?
Or did you build it for no one? That is why you're struggling to get users, because if you actually had built it for a specific persona, then you'd know exactly where to find them. You're not actually doing anything different to the author of the OP, just building something and hoping people will come [0], which is one of the worst lies founders tell themselves.
> But I don't want to create a business right now
That's fine, you don't have to make money from your products, but my point fundamentally doesn't change, either you're building for yourself, in which case it's a hobby, or you're building for someone else, in which case you need to know who these people are before you build. Sounds like you fell into the exact same trap the person on IH warned you about, so if you don't want to feel demoralized in the future, you need to change your mindset, from building to understanding users' issues.
The thing I'm working on right now with a partner is an idea we got with yet someone else who was working with us. He was working in the sort of role that nobody would think of. I would have never known the area even existed. We're working on finishing the MVP this week and we have multiple people per target industries that are asking to check it out.
The trouble with influencers, is that they have ready-made consumer audiences.
Everyone else should be looking at things that create inarguable value. If I'm charging $XX per hour and this thing saves me multiple hours per X time period, then it sells itself. Even if the thing isn't saving me money (costs as much as the time saved) - it still may be worth it because maybe faster delivery and less drudgery is worth the outlay. And it would probably cost more to hire someone to do that anyway.
So, I agree with the dude who told you to find users first. But maybe the advice should have been "find pain points that you can solve." Say you figure out a service that could save lawyers loads of time. Then rather than say "try out my app" you could say something like "let me join on as a free contributor for a while so that I can work with you to improve X process." Once you have proven it works and you get the buy-in, then sales should come easier. But I don't see how you can discover / develop these things without being embedded in X field.
I think you have a big disconnect with the Indie Hacker community. It sounds like you posted there hoping to get them as an audience and potential users of your project. But they assumed you are posting as a fellow founder trying to get feedback on your business. So they gave you advice about your business (which you didn't want) and didn't much care to check out the actual project (which they assumed is secondary).
You should probably try to clarify this, address them more directly and make it clear that you're trying to gain them as users of your project - if you want to pursue this path at all, of course.
Also, remember that no one owes you to try out your project. It's perfectly fine for many people to just not care about the problem you're trying to solve, even if to you it seems like a very important idea. Personally, I'm not vibe coding or using Ai much at all, so I would have no interest in trying out your product, even though it is free. This is not me being rude in any way: I'm just not your target audience. Perhaps the people on Indie Hackers are also not, though likely for other reasons. Or perhaps your pitch just wasn't attractive or clear enough.
How is this not excellent advice? There are lots of stories of founders building first (sometimes for years, even), then finding out that there is no market for it (as it seems you have done). The people evaluating your product might have even just read your post and concluded that there's no market, a tarpit idea [0], from their own experiences.
I am assuming this [1] is your product, from looking at your profile and searching the name on IH. The comments are exactly as I've stated, and they apparently have visited your website too, so maybe your logs are not accurate, or they have an adblocker on.
> Hey, I checked out your website—looks great! Just wanted to share some honest feedback. I think you should hold off on going too deep into development right now. Instead, treat this as your MVP and focus first on getting real customers.
> This is a common trap many founders (myself included) fall into—building out the full product before validating if there's a real market fit. Get users, collect feedback, and then iterate. That’s the fastest and most efficient path forward.
If all you are doing is making apps, you have a hobby, but it is not guaranteed that you will have a business from it, so understand what it is you are optimizing for as the two require different actions to succeed.
[0] https://mikekarnj.com/posts/tarpit-ideas
[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-build-this-iCFJ3kI9WLa...