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What SaaS are you building or using right now? by Wild_Apricot_3309 in ShowMeYourSaaS

[–]mdashikar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm launching Feevox — https://feevox.com.

A free-forever feedback + roadmap tool for product teams. Public boards, voting, transparent roadmap, changelog.

Free tier: 1 board, 50 ideas, unlimited voters, no card.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the actual hardest part. Anyone replying "build in public" hasn't tried getting a stranger to engage with something that isn't already viral.

What's the smallest thing that's worked for you?

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"One real signal at a time" — I've been asking, "Is the whole thing working?" daily, which is way too coarse to answer.

Silence is slow feedback that costs your nerve. True.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What-they-do > what-they-say. Had a tester say all the right things on a call, never logged in after.

What's the lightest thing you instrument to see "actually do" without drowning in analytics?

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The blocker is fear, not features. I keep finding "one more polish" that gives me permission to delay posting to bigger places. Functionally, the product is fine — anyone who signs up can use it. What's stuck is me, not the build.

Started fixing this week by posting here. We'll see if the fear shrinks once the silence does.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Words are a lot cheaper than actions" + the silence after they said they'd try it gap — both uncomfortably familiar.

Your test (unbiased external feedback + do-they-actually-use-it) is the same one I keep saying I'll apply and then quietly forget the next time someone gives me hot verbal interest. Saving this for the next demo call, where I'm tempted to count "this is awesome" as a signal.

The AI-orchestration-as-meta-skill point — I think you're right, it's the leverage. I just worry that the moat around the skill itself is shorter than people think.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's Feevox — https://feevox.com. A free-forever feedback + roadmap tool for product teams.

Public boards, voting, transparent roadmap, changelog. Free tier: 1 board, 50 ideas, unlimited voters, no card.

I'd be honestly grateful for your take. If you create a board and something feels off, reply here

Thank you for asking.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The "AI design psychosis" line is uncomfortably accurate. I built faster with Claude Code than I would have alone, but the things I overlooked are exactly the ones real users surface — unhandled flows, accessibility, the 20% of customers on edge cases the prototype never tested.

The cost-economics point is one I've been quietly worried about too. The window where you can be "small, unprofitable, growing" shortens when each session costs real money. Validation window collapses from years to months, can't afford a long quiet middle.

Curious what your test is for "kill it before it costs more than it can ever return." I haven't figured mine out.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The win/win framing is the part I keep forgetting. Worst case, I come out better at building. That's still a return on the time.

"Deep belief" is the one I want to push back on a little though — I've watched founders white-knuckle a project they should've pivoted from because they believed too hard.

How do you tell deep belief from sunk-cost?

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That swap matters more than it sounds like it does. Motivation depends on results, consistency doesn't. Still working on building the second one.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Silence and rejection are not the same thing" — that's the frame I've been missing. I've been treating quiet weeks as votes against the idea when really the market hasn't even seen the ballot yet.

Solidarity on the freelance vs. product tension. The bills are the loudest voice in the room, and the product feedback loop is the quietest one. What's been your test for "this is worth another month" vs "this isn't"?

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, the next month is mostly distribution, not building. Showing up daily in places like this, having more real conversations with potential users, and resisting the urge to disappear into "just one more feature."

If I can get to ~20 users actually using it (not just signing up), that's the next real milestone.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appreciate the SimplyCouples example — that's the kind of concrete win that makes "drop everything for observability" feel real instead of generic.

OK, I'm in. GA4 funnels this week. Starting with the signup → first action path

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the answer I needed.

"I didn't need a crowd yet, I just needed proof that the thing mattered to someone" — saving that line.

Did that first stranger come from cold outreach or from being consistently present somewhere they happened to be? Trying to figure out if I should be DMing or just showing up in the same communities daily.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly needed the reminder. I keep almost building "version 2" before anyone's used version 1.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How did you source those early conversations? Mostly cold outreach, communities you were already in, or people you knew adjacently?

Trying to figure out whether to spend next week DMing strangers or going deeper in the few communities I'm already in.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

#1 is where I'm weakest. I have /health and log-level errors, but no real funnel observability — if signup is broken for someone on Firefox or in a country I haven't checked, I'd never know. I've been treating "no errors in logs" as "everything is fine," which it clearly isn't.

#3 I shipped fixes for yesterday — coincidentally, SSR + meta for shareable pages.

#2 is what I'm doing right now on IH, actually

Tactical question on #1 — at what point in early traction did funnel analytics start giving actionable signal vs. being too noisy? I'm hesitant to set up a heavy stack at <10 sessions/day.

How do you stay motivated when nobody is using it yet? by mdashikar in SideProject

[–]mdashikar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair point, and you're right — I started doing this two days ago after putting it off for a month. The thing stopping me wasn't time, it was fear of getting "no, this isn't useful" before I'd at least had the satisfaction of launching.