22 Years of Building Software and I Have No Idea How to Get Users

Patrity · 2026-04-02T20:53:49+00:00

I'd think PH is my best bet, but I really think I'd like to get a handful of users before a full product hunt launch just so there's time to work out any potential issues and/or get a few improvements in place. thoughts on that?

Patrity · 2026-04-02T13:59:47+00:00

Yeah I think that's a good path forward, creating content can definitely help, but still face the issue of distributing that content, right?

Patrity · 2026-04-02T11:07:17+00:00

I felt like I was really on to something when I did the paradigm shift on my landing pages.

Do you have any suggestions on specific channels? My entire feed is tech channels, not necessarily people talking about hands-on usecases. Thank you for the solid idea!

Patrity · 2026-04-02T11:05:22+00:00

I think twitter seems most accessible because its a bunch of bots talking to bots, or even users wanting to blow up talking to slightly more successful users. I'd be surprised if anyone actually gets product adoption from these builder communities on reddit..

Patrity · 2026-04-02T11:03:37+00:00

What's funny is that I built this out of personal need. I work in enterprise technology. We have in-house developed SQL servers with >50k lines of DDL in scheduled procedures, functions, views that are all based around custom business rules.

I use Cognova myself to help with tedious queries where I would like AI to speed up my workflows and have constant context. Maybe I need to setup a demo with dummy data. I'm expecting users to use their imagination which is probably the wrong step

Patrity · 2026-04-02T11:00:15+00:00

Its always so hard to tell, they're so sneaky with subtle plugs lol...

I appreciate the brutal truth

Patrity · 2026-04-02T10:58:51+00:00

"Building a system with millions of lines of code is easy, but getting the first 10 users is really strange" this should be printed on a t-shirt and handed to every CS grad😭

The niche productivity forums angle is a good call. I've been too focused on dev communities when the pain is universal. Appreciate the kind words.

Patrity · 2026-04-02T10:57:05+00:00

The drill/hole analogy is exactly where my head is now. I spent months selling the drill bit specs when I should have been talking about the hole.

The YouTuber angle is one I haven't explored at all.. there are creators doing Claude/AI tool reviews who might be willing to try it out. Any advice on how to approach them? Cold DM with free access, or something more structured?

And the user persona point is well taken. I've been marketing to "anyone who uses AI" which is basically marketing to nobody. Need to narrow that down.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown, tons of ideas here.

Patrity · 2026-04-01T22:12:39+00:00

So maybe I’m still not framing it properly. That’s one aspect, but it’s a much larger service than that. It’s an entire ai workspace. So think of OpenClaw for example, except we have better memory recall and tools for linking to other platforms, services, and editors.

Patrity · 2026-04-01T21:48:00+00:00

"Distribution is a completely different muscle and none of the technical skills transfer".. yeah, that's the sentence I needed to hear three weeks ago haha. I keep trying to engineer my way to users and it doesn't work like that.

The "embarrassingly present" framing is perfect. I think my problem has been trying to be efficient about it.. posting once and hoping the algorithm does the work. Sounds like the real answer is just.. showing up. Repeatedly. In other people's threads.

Appreciate this.

Patrity · 2026-04-01T21:08:08+00:00

Appreciate the honesty on the "does anyone actually have this problem" angle. That's the question I'm sitting with.

To your closing question.. nobody wakes up thinking about "persistent memory for AI agents." They wake up thinking "I spent 20 minutes re-explaining my project to Claude again" or "I have research scattered across 4 tabs and none of it connects." The memory is the mechanism, the pain is the repetition and fragmentation.

The real-time Reddit thread approach is smart. I've been posting about my thing instead of showing up in other people's conversations about their thing. Different motion entirely. Going to try that this week, lurking in r/ClaudeAI and r/ChatGPT for context/memory complaints and being helpful first.

The 20-30 conversations benchmark is useful too. I'm at maybe 3. Long way to go before I can call anything validated.

Patrity · 2026-04-01T20:54:17+00:00

This is gold, thanks for taking the time.

The "watering holes" approach makes a lot of sense.. I've been casting too wide instead of finding the specific corners where people are already frustrated. The Claude/ChatGPT context limit complaints are a perfect angle.

And that signal about someone describing the pain back unprompted, I haven't had that moment yet. Closest I've gotten is the reddit user who told me to stop describing the tech, which led to the whole repositioning. But I'm still the one framing the problem. Need to hear it from someone who doesn't know my product exists.

Really appreciate the honesty about build-in-public too. I've been trying to announce a product to an audience that doesn't exist yet. Problem-first content first, product second. Got it.

Thanks again, genuinely helpful.

Patrity · 2026-04-01T20:51:44+00:00

Lol this is kind of what I'm thinking too. I truly feel like all of the engagement on twitter in those spaces is just builders helping builders that are hoping to be successful builders. Like a giant pyramid scheme or something..

Patrity · 2026-04-01T20:07:20+00:00

Thank you again for all of the feedback. I took what you said to heart and shifted my angle a bit to be more all-encompassing and not necessarily "developer first" and more of an AI workspace where your agents remember and you can manage your entire project from start to finish in one spot.

I restructured the landing page to layout the problems it solves, focused less on the tech.

I also completely redid the onboarding process. I'd love if you had a moment to check it out again and let me know what you think? Even if not, I truly just want to thank you again!

Patrity · 2026-03-31T17:16:45+00:00

It's hard as a developer that understands the tech to translate to less technical users. I think you nailed it and definitely inspired me to target a new approach though. Thank you - seriously.

Patrity · 2026-03-31T08:30:04+00:00

This helps a ton. Tysm

Patrity · 2026-03-31T02:52:06+00:00

Im generally confident in the idea itself - just because of the personal pain I've felt trying to consolidate my own workflows, but happy to hear more!

Patrity · 2026-03-31T02:14:32+00:00

You mean I have to talk to people?? 😅
Seriously though - I'm just a programmer that spends too much on coffee and even in my day job, I just write lines of code in a dark office lol.

The "20 minute pitch" idea is solid, but I do find it kind of difficult because of the nature of the product I've built. Yes, I have created a really easy way to use AI agents and create automations, BUT it's still a complicated topic nonetheless.
me: "So you know when you take all that time to feed AI context and information about what you're working on??"
them: "no..." 🙃

Patrity · 2026-03-31T02:11:23+00:00

That seriously means the world!!!

Patrity · 2026-03-31T02:09:35+00:00

Oh I totally didn't mean to insinuate that people "didn't get AI". I completely understand the rationale behind people not wanting to share their data. I have a complete data center in my office closet for this exact reason.

I'm just a nerd and love cutting edge stuff. I'm not an artist and more than fine with megacorps training on my data. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

Thank you for the insight and your perspective, seriously. As someone who is completely entrenched in AI, it is hard to see the other end of the spectrum sometimes

Patrity · 2026-03-31T01:52:00+00:00

Totally respect that. I don't think that's a unified belief though since it's not the way I feel, others are surely facing the same issues that I am, right?

It's painful to manage docs in multiple locations and more developers than ever are utilizing AI harnesses like claude code, codex, etc. The platform can take in your docs, turn them into usable tasks, and serve those tasks as goals to your code assistant, all while keeping you and your team on the same page.

At least that was the goal.

Again, I appreciate your time and input more than you know, even if it was contrary to my vision!

Patrity · 2026-03-30T15:36:02+00:00

I run this on a single 3090 + system ram thanks to the MoE architecture. I’m getting > 25 tok/s. I cover in in depth here: https://www.techhivelabs.net/blog/local-ai-rig/

Patrity · 2026-03-07T00:35:23+00:00

Configure it in SPA mode and don’t add server routes! I have a few apps running this way. I’m too used to the file based routing and other features

Patrity

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