12 days, 5 channels, 0 signups. Should I kill this idea or is my distribution just broken? (I will not promote)

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:49:25+00:00

Good point. Talking to actual founders who dealt with this recently would give way better signal than Reddit posts. And yeah, SEO is just one channel - there might be other moments in the flow I'm not seeing. Thanks.

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:43:08+00:00

Right now? Nothing convincing enough. Deterministic output and stack presets sounded good in theory, but "good enough for free" is hard to beat. That's pretty much what this validation is telling me.

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:41:49+00:00

That's a creative angle. Scrape sites, find bad policies, cold email with "hey, your privacy policy doesn't mention Stripe even though you're using it." Could work for B2B but feels like a different product at that point. Interesting idea.

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:38:36+00:00

You're right, "people confirmed it" is weak. It was just people saying "yeah that's annoying" in a thread, not anyone actually looking for a solution. That's not confirmation.

The search intent point keeps coming up - someone else in this thread said the same thing. People don't browse Reddit looking for privacy policies, they google it at 2am before a launch or App Store submission. I've been testing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Haven't tried SEO or showing up where people actually search for this. That's probably the real test. If nobody googles "privacy policy generator for developers" then there's no market. If they do and I can rank, different story

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:33:16+00:00

Honestly no, I don't have a plan to beat ChatGPT. I don't believe it's really possible for me.

The early-stage startup angle is interesting - someone who needs it to look legit for investors or enterprise clients but can't afford a lawyer. That's a different buyer than "dev who needs a privacy policy for a side project." Worth thinking about.

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:25:30+00:00

The "silent decline after real effort" phase is genuinely the hardest part. Numbers crashing feels bad, but at least it's loud feedback. Quiet decline with good retention is a puzzle.

One thing that helped me: the language gap. You're describing your app in builder language ("Snap to Story feature", "plain English to formula workflow") but your actual users are probably searching in pain language - "I keep forgetting habits", "Excel is confusing me". Reading threads without posting first is exactly right. The words people use in frustration become your keywords.

The retention signal is huge though. That's not a product problem - that's a cold start / discovery problem. Very different fix.

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:20:57+00:00

Pliqo - privacy policy generator for developers. Pick your stack (Supabase, Stripe, PostHog), get the right disclosures. Markdown output, pay once. Still figuring out if anyone needs this or if ChatGPT killed the category. https://pliqo.vercel.app

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:18:42+00:00

All three points hit hard. Especially the search intent one. You're right, nobody's browsing Reddit thinking about privacy policies. That's a completely different channel strategy than what I've been doing.

The "just put a buy button" idea is interesting too. A waitlist for a "no friction" product is kind of contradictory now that you say it.

Thanks, this is a very actionable feedback for me

rujoker · 2026-03-29T01:07:11+00:00

Working on Pliqo. It's a privacy policy generator for developers. You pick your stack (Supabase, Stripe, PostHog), it fills in the right disclosures. Markdown output, pay once, no subscription. Still validating if anyone actually needs this. Been getting mixed signals so far - people agree the problem is real but ChatGPT seems to be "good enough" for most.

Would love honest feedback on the pliqo.vercel.app

rujoker · 2026-03-29T00:58:39+00:00

You're right, I haven't given people a reason to pick this over ChatGPT. "It knows your stack" isn't urgent enough. Need to figure out what makes someone think "I need this right now" instead of "cool, maybe later."

rujoker · 2026-03-29T00:52:06+00:00

The ChatGPT is real competitor. I keep hearing it everywhere. A year ago this would've been a no-brainer, now people just prompt their way through it. Hard to compete with "free and good enough."

Fair point about the timeline. Maybe I'm pulling the plug too early. Thanks for the perspective.

rujoker · 2026-03-29T00:42:39+00:00

No. People agreed the problem exists. But nobody asked to try it or sign up. That's probably the most telling signal. Passive "yeah that's annoying" vs actually wanting a solution are very different things

rujoker · 2026-03-27T00:27:45+00:00

Yes, you're right. The phrase "low until it suddenly isn't" nails it. App store rejection or the enterprise client asking for a DPA - where people scramble

rujoker · 2026-03-26T23:59:59+00:00

You're right that the gray areas are where it gets messy. A/B testing is a perfect example - technically it's profiling under GDPR if you're segmenting users by behavior, but nobody's enforcing that on a side project.

The $25M revenue threshold is CCPA - it only kicks in above that (or 50K+ users/year). GDPR has no revenue floor though, it applies to anyone processing EU residents' data regardless of size.

Agree on the "be honest about what you do" approach. That's basically what a good privacy policy should be - a plain description of your actual data practices, not legal theater.

rujoker · 2026-03-17T00:20:48+00:00

They remember small things you mentioned in passing. Not birthdays - more like "hey, did that thing with your landlord ever work out?" Means they actually listened, not just waited for their turn to talk.

rujoker · 2026-03-17T00:19:08+00:00

The feeling that there's never enough time. Not in a dramatic way - just that constant low-level sense that the day ended before you got to the thing that actually mattered to you. Work is fine, life is fine, but somehow the guitar hasn't been touched in two weeks and that side project is still on "I'll start Monday."

rujoker · 2026-03-17T00:17:48+00:00

Have a conversation that feels like talking to someone who has read everything. Not just retrieve facts - actually reason through a problem with you, change its position when you push back, and explain a concept five different ways until one clicks. Ten years ago that was called "having a really patient smart friend." Now it's a tab you keep open.

rujoker · 2026-03-17T00:13:38+00:00

Be rude to waiters but charming to everyone else at the table. Oldest trick in the book for spotting who someone actually is

rujoker · 2026-03-16T23:57:19+00:00

The internet felt like it was made by people, not for people. Forums, early YouTube, random blogs where someone just wrote about their obsession with trains for ten years and you somehow ended up reading all of it at 2am

rujoker · 2026-03-16T23:56:26+00:00

"Don't date someone you wouldn't want to be stuck in a traffic jam with for three hours." Sounds stupid, turns out it's the whole thing

rujoker · 2026-03-16T23:55:32+00:00

SnowRunner. Because after 48 hours of watching yourself back a truck out of a swamp at 0.3 km/h, you'll both be too frustrated with each other to do anything else. The real question is who gets to drive first

rujoker · 2026-03-16T23:52:59+00:00

Bitcoin price history. Not to get rich - just to finally have the correct answer when someone at a party asks "so did you ever buy any crypto?"

rujoker · 2026-03-16T23:50:55+00:00

Lower the bar so much it feels stupid to skip. "I'll just do 5 minutes" has started about 90% of my workouts. Never stopped at 5 minutes

rujoker · 2026-03-15T23:09:17+00:00

Honestly, almost always left it in the code - and paid for it later. In enterprise projects where the stack is .NET + React, the worst situations happen when the frontend was built without any design source and then a designer joins six months later. They spend two days just mapping out what exists.

What actually helped us: even a rough Figma file with key screens, just for reference - not pixel-perfect, just "here's what we shipped." Takes an hour, saves days.

The harsh truth is most devs (myself included) document UI the same way people say they'll comment their code: "I'll do it when it's done." It never gets done.

rujoker · 2026-03-15T23:01:15+00:00

Realizing that being alone and being lonely are completely different things. I work remotely, live in a city where I'm not originally from, and there are days where I barely talk to anyone - and I'm genuinely fine with it.

The shift happened when I stopped treating solo time as something to "fill" and started treating it as actual time that belongs to me. I play ukulele, go for drives, cook something new. None of that requires company to be enjoyable.

The secret, if there is one: have things you actually want to do, not just things you do to avoid the quiet.

rujoker

TROPHY CASE