A bit on why I'm building Sonar
Last year we were trying to answer a simple question: where are customers actually coming from, and how do we expand top-of-funnel without a huge marketing team?
We’d look at the usual stuff—traffic sources, SEO, referrals, “how did you hear about us?”—and it mostly matched what you’d expect… until one note from a new customer stopped me. They casually mentioned they found us through ChatGPT.
That sent me down a rabbit hole. Because if people are discovering products through AI answers, then a lot of the old instrumentation doesn’t help you understand: what they searched/asked, why you showed up (or didn’t), who else gets recommended instead, and how to deliberately do more of what’s working.
As a solo founder, you can't spend your energy writing blog posts and hoping for visibility on the Internet. You shouldn't have to write the same things in a 100 different variations to get your first customer.
So I’ve been working on something in this space, starting with an analytics product to tell you how you're doing in AI search and what you can do to improve.
Congrats on the launch, looks solid. How are you currently thinking about acquiring early users and gathering feedback?
Hi Ayaji, thanks for the comment.
I'm still figuring out user acquisition. There are a lot of players in this space so differentiation will be key.
I'm starting by building online content marketing skills and also doing some cold outreach.
That makes sense, especially in a crowded space, differentiation + distribution really go hand in hand.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of founders focus on building content skills first, but sometimes it’s faster to reverse-engineer what conversations are already happening in your niche and position around that.
Have you identified where your exact target users hang out most (specific communities or threads)? That part alone can massively reduce the trial-and-error phase.
If helpful, I can share a simple way to map that out.