Did I just spent 6 months building a product that no one wants
For the past few months, I've been building a product "Linden". Its a low latency deterministic layer for ai agents. Linden helps businesses verify AI-generated outputs before they lead to real-world actions. It evaluates AI outputs against expected schemas, trusted data, and business rules to determine whether an action should be allowed, flagged, regenerated, blocked, or sent for human review.
Linden helps businesses ensure their AI agents don't just produce convincing answers — they make decisions that align with actual business requirements, verified information, and configured limits.
I have tried cold email outreach that didn't work. Published a professional demo across multiple platforms, drove 0 signups. Now, i don't know if I just built something that serves no purpose. However, when i was building this, i did a research, looked at a lot of articles talking about the same thing. If this problem exists, then why no one willing to try it out?
22 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 44.5 ms ] threadI didn't know how to get users, didn't have any marketing budget either.
Then one day, I woke up and realized we had 17,000+ users.
I submitted a "Show HN" to Hacker News and got "flagged" by GLP boosters; they simply didn't believe that our app results in guaranteed weight loss or gain within 2–3 weeks, despite having a Telegram community with 2,000+ members and a product with reviews. They reasoned "If it was this easy, why 40% americans are obese?"
Do not worry about people who do not believe, focus on ones who do and help them get the best possible results. That's what i did.
There are naysayers, but do they matter? Look at what they are saying is there any substance in that or any actionable advice? Use it to your benefit; ignore the rest.
What changed? I started talking about the problem it solves.
The average person will always think they can outsmart a "dumb app" So instead of trying to convince pro bodybuilders, models, or actors, I focused on beginners.
Beginners started seeing results, and those results got the pros interested.
Experts are often skeptical of new approaches until they see people getting significantly better results with them.
You don't need everyone to believe in your product. If it genuinely solves a problem, even the haters can't stop it from growing.
:stare:
It looks like you wanted to make a consulting website or something and then picked the most confusing, least compelling way possible to convey that.
If you learned in the process, you can never say you lost the time
Your cold-email outreach didn't work because it was probably also AI written. When I was selling, I would write super short, warm, personalized emails by hand that sounded like a human wrote them, and wouldn't use AI to clean it up. My response rate hovered between 0.5 and 1.5%. My coworkers would copy and paste Claude-written emails into Gmail, and their response rate was 0.005%-0.05%.
My biggest question, and this is not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious for your reply: what was the problem that led you to build this product? Did you have the problem yourself? Did you talk to current and former coworkers about whether they were also having this problem?
The other people here are rightly pointing out that your description of your own product sounds AI-written and soulless. The way you overcome this is by passionately talking about the problem instead of the product :)
First, start posting on social media. Let people know what you’re building and why.
Choose your ICP and focus on solving the problems you’re supposed to solve with this product.
Now, check your landing page and its copy as well. Have you positioned it correctly? Because tomorrow, you could run paid ads, but no one will bat an eye if your landing page copy sucks.
For cold emails, write something short and concise. Explain the benefits customers get from choosing your product. Your ICP matters here because big tech companies or even established businesses might not use it, but a new founder or a new company might. So, try to focus on these.
Marketing is something you need to crack. My suggestion is to start writing LinkedIn content first, and do some basic SEO/AEO along with cold outreach.