HN Explorer

The AI tool discovery problem

7 points by meenabhagvat ↗ HN
I've spent the last few months researching and categorizing hundreds of AI tools.

One thing that surprised me is that building AI products seems to be getting easier, while getting discovered is getting harder.

Every week, new tools launch for writing, coding, design, research, video, and automation. Yet most users end up using the same handful of products because discovering alternatives is difficult.

I've noticed that users often search for solutions to problems rather than specific products. They want to "transcribe meetings" or "generate presentations" rather than find a particular tool.

For founders building AI products:

How are you solving the discovery problem?

What's driving the most meaningful users for you today—SEO, communities, social media, partnerships, directories, or something else?

10 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] thread
mazinz
Yea is getting harder. I guess that’s why a lot of people here and places like product hunt, organic traffic is the only way it scales.

But also way too much AI slop out there. Can still early users in person.

hholen
I'm curious what you mean by "AI product"? Do you mean a product that using AI, or a product used by AI? For the former, it's the same problem as it's been forever: distribution. That can be through SEO, AEO, outbound sales, advertising, etc, etc. I do think that AEO is something you should be optimising for. At the company I work for, we've seen inbound go from virtually nothing to top three in the last 6 months.
eddy-sekorti
Yes, it is true, but AI product is a broader term, these days, every product new or old, is using AI. For my startup sekorti it is still SEO the main driver but recently i have started to see decent traffic from AI platforms like Gemini and ChatGPT, but in my experience, moving forward your traffic will primarily be based on your GEO optimization.
1taimoorkhan0
Most useful thing we've done: find where people are already complaining about the problem. Show up there. Not to pitch. Just to be useful. Discovery followed.
faangguyindia
Meta ads, basically I created 4 tools.

Advertised them on meta with low budget and created landing page which shows you how it's different than existing major player, I got converts in no time

I don't believe much in SEO and never really got much out of it.

sourav4002
We built Rixly to solve exactly this — it catches people asking for your tool in real-time conversations. Discovery is about listening.
boundless88
There are some product recommendation websites, Twitter, or Reddit forums. Plus, it takes time for people to find out about it - you need to keep showing up on various platforms.
stevenxing
Clearly it's a great pain for me - i built many things and no money to do marketing or anything. Even my posts on Reddit got banned or removed...X account got suspended...so, what's the way out? Where's the hope? It's been too difficult.
magicquestions
What discovery problem are you talking about? Are you trying to discover AI tools that fit your specific needs, or are you trying to get your AI tools discovered by potential customers?