Linkeme

you show real product maturity by killing features that sounded cool but added clutter, proving you care more about user simplicity than flashy bloat. Highlighting how you filtered ideas through “clarity, friction, action” is gold — more makers should think that way. Only tweak: maybe tighten a couple examples so it reads faster, but overall it’s damn solid.

Sometimes it's HARD to kill features.

I killed the full gamification feature.

I killed the reminders.

I killed the AI chat integration

Will I eventually integrate them? Yes, they weren't features that were needed immediately as we work to find product market fit.

I'm someone who's naturally good at finding options — but I’ve learned to work hard to reduce the options I present to users.

As an idea person (and an engineer who can bring ideas to life), I used to think offering more choices meant offering more freedom. It felt like I was empowering the user.

But I realized that too many options can actually create anxiety and hesitation.

Now, I try to protect users from complexity — even if it means holding back some of my "clever" ideas.

I really resonate with your points about avoiding features that solve our anxiety rather than the users'. Great insights, Julien!

Sometime it's the most difficult part !

I would be frustrated if I saw AI published without my consent, I would rather think about how I could facilitate this approval process, maybe if they don't open emails, we could think of other channels or other communication strategies

It seems like you’re being overly cautious and hedging towards this ethical transparency, and I understand the motivation, but who’s using your service that wants the friction that creates? Why would they schedule a post that they didn’t want to happen?

I’d lean toward default publishing with clear opt-out most users want results, not friction. Just make sure the tone feels personal and brand-safe to maintain trust.

I think you should change and stop the publication only if the user refuse !

💡 Broke but Building — I’m Starting My First Startup with $0 in Nigeria

Hey everyone!
I’m Lilian, and I’ve decided to stop waiting for the "perfect time" and start building from scratch.

Right now, I don’t have funding or a laptop — just a phone, ideas, and the will to work hard. My background is in coaching, healing, and branding, and I want to create a startup that helps people turn pain into purpose.

Here’s what I’m considering:

Starting a blog + digital coaching platform

Offering startup branding services (names, logos, slogans)

Building a resource hub for African entrepreneurs

If you’ve built something without money, I’d love to hear your story. And if anyone wants to partner, share tools, or just encourage I’m all in.

Let’s build! 🚀
Lilian

Great insight, Julien. When a product works too well in the background, subtle value reminders like visual recaps or tone suggestions can keep users emotionally connected without being intrusive.

nice work

Amazing, very well said👏,and it's true after all, emotional attachment plays an important role to get recurring clients.

Love this approach..

This looks like a great tool! Love it.

Like @sean is saying, what is the impact this is having on your user? So it posts to socials automatically and saves time. That's great. Why did they want to do that in the first place? Lead gen? Awareness? Build their influencer profile?

In general people buy results not tools.

If you're posting regularly now...what does that give them? To me, I'd want this to build me an audience that I can eventually utilize. So help me do that. What's my engagement like? How does that compare to others in my industry? etc. Very cool product, just need to hone the problem you're solving and for who I think.

I think the solution to staying top-of-mind without being noisy or intrusive is a challenging task to achieve. On one hand, you want to engage when needed and only when required (in your case), but you want them to think about the value they are getting from your product, so they do engage when needed. The solution for this can be a lot of things, but I think the simplest solution is an email.

We have done x for you this past year. Y is happening now and look at the results. Z is about to expire, and we have A, B, & C lined up to fire based on past results. Are you ready to push ahead?

Another approach would be using their task management tools API to deliver them tasks as a seamless integration (yes, my company is a TMS).

I think both of these approaches are the easiest and most effective approach for any tool that is automating processes for the user.

Yes. I find that if I use AI, it has to sound like me, what I would say, and how I would say it, for people to feel comfortable with it. Always be transparent, just a wee disclaimer saying you have used some AI tools to help you is usually enough. Let them always have control by giving them ample opportunities for feedback. Feedback can give you a heads up in advance as well, reducing mistakes. Time and how people package AI in a professional and open manner will inspire confidence eventually. But it's a long road to that.

I think the current problem with AI is that without a bit of human touch all AI writting seems similar - so posts from different people/companies may end up sounding the same. Since the idea is to automatise as much as possible I think this can be prevented if AI is able to fully absorb the tone, style, branding and mission of a specific company - so basically training the AI properly with the specific company insights before the first post is released.

Yes, good question !

Hey – love what you're building!
If you're already getting users, you might find value in something I'm working on.

It’s called Droon – a way to turn your existing users into a real-time feedback engine to help guide smarter product launches.
Not launched yet — just validating right now. Already got 20+ on the waitlist.

Would love your thoughts if you're curious: https://droon.vercel.app

Hey, i too am working on same idea and I'm just starting out.. I thought about the same issue, but i am thinking the content it'll generate would not be coming totally from randomness, suppose a content creator want to create content on a certain topic, and we will take his view of that certain topic maybe a tweet of him, and with having all the knowledge base of his previous tweets, thoughts, videos that he has created and by also including his tone,voice etc. So this is not comming random, neither its something that's is different than him, it's just that we are taking creators overview,his insights on the topic and genrate output based on trained knowledge base.. by this way it is not difficult to get trust of user and there nothing which is loosing it's originality, essentially it's just ai layer topped on users insights..hope this helps..

In my experience, any AI good is all about editing. By this I mean: I think everybody got over the "I want AI to do everything for me so I can turn my brain off and do literally anything else," mentality quite quickly. Instead what people want is, "I want AI to do 97% of the work so when I apply my 3% of polish, I feel good about making something quality, personal to me but with 1/20th of the effort."

What most AI tools are failing at these days is providing documentation on what their human users can do after using the tool to make the output into something unique and spectacular.

After all, we're all human. I'm of the (potentially caustic) opinion that a 100% perfect good is less desired than a 98% perfect good - people crave being presented with something that can be improved upon, because in that way there's the opportunity to make it their own.

Reliable output -> When the output is not generic and has context of what you are looking for. LLMs are not trained to provide a context driven output, this needs a lot of due diligence by the users

It depends on the person, some people know what they want when they want their voice automated by ai , and for others you can explain the concepts for them and how it will work.

Personally, I think it's about the context of the AI.

Take those Peter Griffin comp sci videos.

No one cares that it's Peter griffin, as long as the topic is articulated well and it's factual (ie. explanations of a heap or stack)

I usually try to create it manually and let AI refine. And then get rid of 90% of the emoticons it added :)

The trust challenge is universal for AI tools. Our smart conversational search platform addresses this by showing buyers exactly how matches are made:

🔍 Transparent Matching

• Real-time supplier metrics:

  • Avg. response time: <2 hrs

  • Verified transaction history

  • Peer buyer ratings

💡 Explainable AI
Every result includes:
"These suppliers were prioritized for:

1. Your requested lead time

2. Compliance with your specs

3. Historical reliability"_

This approach increased user trust by 58% in field tests.

For content generation, would showing the 'why' behind outputs (like "This style matches your top-performing posts") help build similar confidence?

Of course, nothing is easy with software, but what is easier than SaaS? I worked with on-premise systems, and those are hard to deal with. How do you patch them, how do you monitor them, how do you make sure your clients are using them correctly, so many unknowns

With SaaS I just have a stable API in the backend, a trusted cloud provider and UI (which is always the hardest part for some reason). I have everything in my infra I can directly interact with it.

This sounds like one of those hard-earned lessons that only come from doing.

Thank you for sharing it so openly.
You mentioned that you introduced the product with Loom videos instead of a landing page. I found that really interesting.

Also, when you said you lost 20 users because you didn’t explain the value before asking for payment, does that mean they were on a free trial and then got a paywall after a month?
I’d love to understand more about what “not explaining the value” looked like in your case.
This is a tool I’ve only thought about building, so seeing you actually ship it and make revenue is truly inspiring.

Good job ! Very inspiring.

Inspiring!!

Glad to see this! Congratulations! You are doing amazing.

Congratulations on reaching this milestone. I am also in the same silence phase as you. Hope I will achieve success.

Hey Julein,

Im Rafi, on a journey to be an accountant.

And im gonna be 100% honest with you,

I respect the story of you pushing through the brutal silence more than the product.

I’d love to work with you to manage your Ins and Outs of your money while you focus on creating something that will save people’s times.

congratulations Julien on this milestone of $1K MRR! It must feel very special, especially that you almost gave up on going forward. Your learnings are very inspiring to others who are in a similar situation and it's great to read that patience and perseverance pay off eventually. I guess in today's ever-changing world, we're so trained to expect immediate results, without appreciating the hard work and the daily grind it takes to achieve something long-lasting. I'm happy for you it paid off in the end and will give Linkeme a try!

still kinda in that space tbh. just launched KitlyHub recently — lotta work, big vision, but right now it’s mostly me whispering into the internet and hoping someone hears.

but you’re right. it’s those small moments — a reply, a DM, someone actually using your thing — that remind you it’s moving, even if slow.

appreciate this post. made the grind feel a bit less lonely.

You could remove the fake customers reviews. And fix the horizontal scrolling in the home page.

I recently received two messages on X.

One person had clearly read my pinned post, understood what I'm building, and invited me to join their lab it felt relevant and personal. I replied, but haven’t heard back yet.

The second one just said, “You seem like someone who needs my product,” with no context. It felt like a cold sales pitch, so I didn’t respond.

This was my first time receiving outreach like this, and it really made me realize:
A little bit of context and empathy goes a long way.

Even a simple call message that reflects the other person’s situation can create a totally different experience.

Love this honest breakdown, Julien! It's refreshing to see a grassroots, authentic approach to growth that relies on genuine connections and the product's value.

How did you decide on the initial €15/month price point? Have you found that sweet spot where users see enough value but it's still accessible for your target market of founders and small teams?

Thanks for sharing your journey so transparently; it's inspiring for those of us in the early stages!

Great work!!

Would you share an example of your loom video?

Insightful and practical learnings

Great story! Really appreciate what you shared as me with my self doing a lot of argues what is the best way, and I always had hunch that what you did works better than the regular "standard way", I knows there is no one solution fit them all - but great to see it succeed to you!
Tons of luck!

I also realised that the only ways to succeed when just starting are cold outreach and marketplaces.

Amazing feat 🔥

I run IndieHustle.co where I've featured many indie founders like yourself on how they've started and grew successful digital businesses.

Would love to share your story and feature your business, if you're interested!

Congrats on the milestone once again!

Congrats on $1K MRR— absolutely love the hustle 🔥

A tighter hero headline might push that even further

I’d love to revise your current headline or subhead with no nonsense—DM me if you’d like a free sample. Honestly love whatever you're doing!

you are true genius, loved it

Love this ... real hustle, real results..

In the early stages of reaching out to potential customers now- I love the idea of using your own tool, which is something I might have to steal from you!

Congrats on the early success

That's a great start but what you did needs courage. Just getting ghosted or denied in first few dms is discouraging but you showed how business is not about few people.

This is gold. I'm also building a small SaaS (for indie products), and so much of this resonates — especially showing value early and skipping the hype.

The Loom demos tip is 🔥 — never thought of replacing a landing page like that.

Bookmarked — and rooting for Linkeme’s growth!

How do you see the next step ?

Loved your product idea !

I help bootstrapped founders like you get real, verified leads from USA/Europe using simple outbound systems (no ads, no complexity).

Would love to send you a sample list for free — just reply here or DM me 🙌

Your 'one yes at a time' approach is gold. Early traction isn't about virality - it's stacking small wins until they compound.

Question: What was your breakthrough moment from silence to active users?

P.S. 'Traction comes in whispers' is the perfect description of indie hacking.

Love how you reframed the whole product without changing the core...

This was a captivating read. Thank you

Thanks for this!!!

thanks for sharing this. i had once built an "all-platform-posting" for a magazine client. it was horrible and was never used, because only "when its able to handle all" it will be useful, they said.

loved to read your story.
Masih

Wow Julien, really inspiring to read about your journey with Linkeme — especially your honesty around what didn’t work and how you pivoted.

I’m currently building a SaaS called ZugFlow, aimed specifically at hair salons, barbershops, and beauty professionals. In the beginning, I positioned it as a basic “appointment scheduling tool,” thinking that solving calendar chaos would be enough.

But like you said — competing on features alone quickly becomes a race to the bottom. Once I shifted my mindset from “tool” to “solution,” everything changed. Now we present ZugFlow as a complete business assistant: not only does it handle bookings, staff shifts, inventory, and customer management, but it also sends WhatsApp/SMS reminders and will soon automate client loyalty and invoicing too.

Your point about changing the language, not the product, really resonated. That small mental switch — from talking about features to talking about outcomes — is so powerful.

Curious: when you repositioned Linkeme, did you change just the messaging, or also your pricing tiers and onboarding flow? I'd love to hear more about how you approached that shift step by step.

Thanks again for sharing this. Posts like this are gold for founders building without a huge audience or brand behind them.

Problem
AI search engines (Google SGE, Perplexity, ChatGPT Browse, Claude, etc.) scrape billions of pages but often cite random URLs. Sites without clear “citation signals” lose visibility and traffic.

Solution
LLMs.txt Generator creates a tiny, standards-friendly text file you drop into /.well-known/. In under 5 minutes you:

1. Define which pages are citation-ready.

2. Exclude low-value or private URLs.

3. Unlock analytics on impressions coming from AI search results.

That sounds amazing, very good repositioning. I have to questions, if you don't mind sharing.
1. How are the social media APIs? Don't they cost a lot / block you ?
2. What does your MRR or MAU look like ?

Positioning is very important

Cool stuff, positioning is everything in a competitive environment. Great job!

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