Not 7,000.
Not 700.
Just 7.
And somehow, that hurts more than failing to build the project itself.
Everyone talks about building.
"Ship fast."...
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Imo, that's your ego talking. You think Microsoft was a hit from day 1? Cut yourself some slack, you're doing great and 7 beats 2... I wrote what I thought (and on a technical standpoint, still is) one of the most important MCPs in AI. MCP-Lite, which was a paradigm shift vs traditional browsing with LLMs, allowing a laptop to run 40+ concurrent agents, while being up to 90+% cheaper in tokens depending on the site and operating on average 3x faster than traditional LLM browsing... 2 stars. That's it, 2. You can make an amazing product, put your heart and soul into marketing it, but if people dont want to try it, they dont try it, that's why Dog-Food is how I started developing. Stop making products for people, make a product for yourself and use it, as long as you're happy with it and your life is better for it, it was a success and you dont need anyone else to use it to feel satisfied.
I see you did get user nr 8, so that's already something and that something since you wrote this post till now, is half of what MCP-Lite did in months...
Thank you for sharing that perspective—I genuinely appreciate it.
Reading about your experience with MCP-Lite definitely puts things into perspective. I guess it's easy to get caught up in numbers and forget why I started building in the first place.
I do use Rizzzler myself, and I'll keep improving it because I enjoy building it. Hopefully, if I keep making it better, the users will come over time. Thanks for the encouragement and congratulations on building something you're proud of, regardless of the stars.
And that's the magic of software dev, we make things, because of the joy of making, like a carpenter with wood, as long as you're enjoying the process, have at it and dont care about the numbers. We all think that if it doesnt blow up on day 1, it's a failure, but look at Among Us, it took years before it got popular and when it did, it blew past all the expectations anyone could have had. Some things take time and even if it's time never comes, if you had fun, it's worth it.
That's a great way to look at it, and honestly it's something I needed to hear.
I started building because I genuinely enjoy creating things, but somewhere along the way I began measuring every project by its numbers. This discussion has reminded me why I started in the first place.
I'll keep improving Rizzzler, keep learning from users, and enjoy the journey. If it grows, that's amazing. If it takes time, I'll keep building anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to share your perspective it really helped.
In the end, you shouldnt rate your apps by anyone's approval but your own. Everyone else is just an opinion, yours is what matters. Design and build for you, not anyone else, that way you apply dog-food. If you can eat your own dog-food and like it, then you did a good job. That's all anyone can ask of you and if it doesnt fit their niche, who cares, it fits yours, so you always have 1 happy customer (yourself). Keep that mindset and everything you build will keep inspiring you to build more, because the fun is in the making, the utility is in your own life getting better from it.
You're absolutely right, and I really like the way you explained it.
Thinking about it, I already do this without realizing it. Most of the projects I build come from problems I personally face or features I wish existing platforms had. I end up building them for myself first, with the changes and improvements I'd actually want to use.
You've honestly given me a new perspective. We all want our projects to grow, but how they start isn't something we can fully control. Giving up is the only real way to guarantee they won't.
And I love what you said about always having one happy customer. If I'm genuinely using and enjoying what I've built, then I already have that first customer myself. Everything beyond that is a bonus.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts. This conversation has genuinely changed the way I'll think about my future projects.
This part hit hard:
“building something good doesn't mean people will come.”
I think a lot of developers learn this only after shipping their first real product. You can spend weeks making the product better, then realize getting the right people to actually see it is a completely different problem 😅
Building is one skill. Distribution is another.
Exactly 😭 That’s probably one of the biggest things I’ve realized from building Rizzzler.
I kept thinking, “If I make it good enough, people will eventually find it.” Turns out… nope 😂
Building the product and getting people to actually discover, trust, and use it are two completely different skills. Definitely something I underestimated when I started.
Looks really professional (judging by the home page)!
Did you try to work out if there's a "market" for it? Maybe try to research that before you build it, although it might be easier said than done ...
Thanks! 😊
That's a fair point. I built it because I believed there was a need, but getting users has shown me that building is only half the journey. I'm now spending more time talking to users and collecting feedback before adding more features.
That's great - talking to (prospective) users is good!
7 is not much, but it's much better than nothing! Those 7 users might be your jumping-point to getting 70 users, and then 700 users, etc ...
7 users does not necessarily mean failure - if you're convinced that the product is good, then just stick with it, patience is what you'll need ...
Thank you—that genuinely means a lot. 😊
You're right. It's easy to focus on the small number and forget that those are real people who decided to try something I built. I'll keep improving the product based on their feedback and stay patient. Hopefully, one day I'll look back at these first 7 users as the beginning of something much bigger.
Exactly! Maybe those 7 users are the "seeds" of something great ...
The silence after launch is honestly one of the hardest parts. Building gives you constant feedback from your own work, but distribution gives you almost none at first. Seven users isn't much, but I'd probably focus on what those seven actually did before adding more features — there may be more signal there than the raw signup count suggests.
Yeah, the silence is honestly what got me the most 😭
And I really like your point about looking at what those 7 users actually did instead of just looking at the number. I was so focused on “only 7 people signed up” that I probably overlooked the fact that those users are still valuable feedback.
I think my next step should be understanding why those 7 signed up and what they actually found useful before blindly adding more features. That could tell me a lot more than the signup count itself.
Exactly. I think those first few users can tell you much more than the signup number itself. If you can understand what made them sign up, what they actually used, and where they dropped off, you’ll probably have a much clearer next step than adding more features. Good luck with it!
Reading about your experience gives me hope. I thought this happened only to me, building things and hardly getting users to use them. But I also appreciate the comment about the “ego talking” that puts it in perspective for me too. Currently at zero on this idea magenticwallet.com, if anyone wants to give me a +1. Thanks for sharing
I definitely know that feeling 😭. Building something and then hearing almost nothing from users can mess with your head more than the technical problems sometimes.
And yeah, the “ego talking” part was something I had to realize too. Sometimes you have to separate “I built this” from “people actually need this.”
Hope you get that first user soon! 🙌 Keep going.
"Building good doesn't mean people will come" hit hard, I've got 100+ tools live and went through the exact same "refresh analytics, nothing" cycle after launch traffic faded. Nobody warns you about the silence part.
Open-sourcing it for trust is a good instinct, but that solves a different problem than the one you're describing, trust matters once someone's already considering it, it doesn't get anyone to find it. This sounds like distribution, not product-trust.
One thing worth checking before adding features: did the people who landed on it bounce immediately, or explore and leave? Those need completely different fixes.
You could have more users depending on your marketing strategy regardless of how good looking the project or how it functions after all people still subscribe to apps for just cropping an image or removing a background in app stores 🤧
Absolutely, that's something I'm realizing more and more. 😅
I spent a lot of time thinking about building the product, UI, features, deployment, etc, but getting people to actually discover and try it is a completely different challenge.
This whole experience has made me realize that building is only half the job—the other half is getting it in front of the right people. I'm still figuring out the marketing side, but I'm definitely going to experiment more with it. Thanks for the perspective!
"Not the bugs. Not deployment. Not debugging at 2AM. The silence after you launch." — this is exactly the part nobody warns you about. I'm 6-7 days into distribution for my own thing, still at zero signups, and the emotional gap between "I built something real" and "nobody's used it yet" is rougher than any technical problem I hit while building.
Checked out Rizzzler — [rizzzler.work.gd/]. Respect for open-sourcing it and putting the real numbers out there instead of vanity metrics. That takes more guts than most "building in public" posts.
Yeah, the gap between “I built something real” and “now I have to convince people to actually use it” is honestly brutal 😭
And I really appreciate you saying that. The whole point of the post was to be honest about that part of building that doesn't get talked about much.
Also, good luck with your own project! 6–7 days is still early — hope you get that first signup soon. 🙌
This resonates more than you'd think — I'm not even at the "built it" stage yet, still trying to validate an idea before I build anything, and even that early stage has the same silence problem. Post a question, get 3 replies, feel like you're shouting into a void.
One thing I've been doing that might apply in reverse for you: since you already have a live product, have you tried finding the exact communities where your 7 users came from and asking them directly what almost stopped them from signing up? The people who already crossed the line are usually more useful for feedback than cold audiences, since they can tell you what tipped them over vs. what almost didn't.
7 real signups with zero marketing budget isn't nothing, for what it's worth — that's 7 people who found it and decided to trust an unknown open-source project enough to make an account.
Yeah, that's actually a really good point. I’ve definitely been too focused on the signup number itself instead of understanding what made those users decide to give it a try in the first place.
I think talking to the people who actually crossed that line could give me much better feedback than guessing what everyone else wants.
And yeah, the “shouting into a void” feeling is painfully real
The silence after launch is the real product problem, and it is a discovery problem, not a quality problem. Broadcasting to thousands and hoping for clicks converts terribly because most of the audience was never a fit. The seven users matter more than the seven thousand visitors. I keep coming back to the same lesson building Opportunity Skill. Finding people is a matching problem, and semantic search for the few who genuinely need what you built beats keyword broadcasts to everyone. Distribution for solo builders is a search engine for humans, not a megaphone.
I really like the “search engine for humans, not a megaphone” framing. That’s a much better way to think about distribution.
I definitely underestimated the matching part when I started. Getting something in front of thousands of people doesn't mean much if the right people aren't seeing it.
Still figuring this out myself, but I think understanding who actually needs what you built is probably a much better starting point than simply trying to increase impressions. 🙌
Perhaps an https would help?
Thanks for the suggestion! 😊
The site is already served over HTTPS (
https://www.rizzzler.work.gd/). If you noticed any security warnings or something that made it seem otherwise, I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know so I can investigate.Keep it up, brother!
When visiting your website, I’d suggest considering integration with third‑party logins like Google or GitHub—pure email registration is still a bit of a hassle.
Thanks a lot! 🙌
That's a fair point. I wanted to keep the initial version simple, but I agree that Google/GitHub login would make onboarding much easier. I'll definitely look into implementing it.
try to reach out to the particular audience you have built the product for, tech is one thing you also need finance and business if you want to enter real world market....
Absolutely, I agree. Tech is only one part of building a real-world product. I’m also focusing on understanding the specific audience I’m building for, validating their actual needs, and learning more about the business and financial side so the product can become commercially viable. Thanks for the perspective!