I built a global chat. Now I have to solve the empty room problem.
My name is Paweł and I'm building HEYID, a chat app for meeting people from around the world.
The funny thing is that building the app was probably the easier part.
Now I'm facing a problem that you can't really solve with more code.
The empty room.
If you open a normal website and there are no users, it's not a huge problem.
If you open a chat app and there is nobody to talk to, the product feels broken.
And HEYID has an even bigger version of this problem because it's global.
Imagine opening the app from Poland and wanting to talk to someone from Japan.
If there are no Japanese users online, the translation doesn't matter.
Voice translation doesn't matter.
AI suggestions don't matter.
The whole product depends on another human being being there.
That's the part of building a social product I didn't fully understand when I started.
I spent months thinking about features.
Chat.
Translation.
Voice messages.
Language detection.
AI suggestions.
Profiles.
Search.
Premium.
And then I realized:
The most important feature is people.
😂
Now I'm spending much more time thinking about distribution than I expected.
Where do people who want to meet people from other countries actually hang out?
What makes someone stop scrolling and think:
"Yeah, I'd actually try this."
How do you get the first 10 people into the same place at roughly the same time?
How do you create conversations instead of just downloads?
And how do you do it without turning every social network into a giant advertisement for your app?
I'm still figuring this out.
I've been experimenting with Indie Hackers, social networks, SEO and different communities.
Some things worked better than I expected.
Some things got absolutely nothing.
And some of my "great ideas" produced basically zero response. 😅
But I think this is one of the most interesting parts of building a social product.
You're not only building software.
You're trying to create a small ecosystem where the software becomes useful because other people are there.
That's a completely different problem from writing code.
I'm curious how other founders dealt with their own "empty room" problem.
How did you get your first real users to actually interact with each other?
HEYID is live if anyone wants to see what I'm building:
I'm Paweł, building this from Poland, and I'll be around in the comments.
For a global chat, I'd start with one narrow recurring window rather than global coverage. Pick one corridor and schedule a 30-minute live room around an existing community ritual, then measure conversations per active minute rather than signups. If that works, expand corridor by corridor.
The "make the room smaller before you make it bigger" advice above is the answer — I'd just add one thing: schedule the room. Pick a weekly one-hour slot, announce it everywhere, and be there yourself every single time. An empty room that fills up predictably beats a 24/7 room that's empty 23 hours a day. People don't join empty spaces; they join events.
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
shit bot
Interesting. How are you measuring whether it is working?
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Appreciate the honesty here, most people only share the wins.
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Nice work shipping it. What has been the biggest challenge since launch?
Great breakdown. What feedback have you had from early users?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Make the room smaller before you make it bigger. A global chat with 30 users is empty 23 hours a day, but the same 30 people booked into one hour feel like a crowd.
Concretely: pick one language pair and one time slot (for example Polish and Japanese learners, twice a week at a fixed hour) and announce it as an event, not an app. Language-exchange groups already run scheduled sessions like that, so that's where the first ten are. Once a slot fills reliably, add a second one. Open "anytime" chat only when the scheduled slots are overflowing.
The download count doesn't matter much until two people are reliably there at the same time.
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?
Interesting. How are you measuring whether it is working?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
Nice work shipping it. What has been the biggest challenge since launch?
Have your experiments revealed a specific user or geographic group that creates conversations reliably, or are you still seeing downloads without enough simultaneous activity?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
one thing that helped us with the same problem: make it worth opening even when nobody is there. something a person can do solo, so the first visitor doesnt bounce. and then pick one fixed hour a day when you personally show up to talk. 10 people at the same time beats 100 spread over a week
This is great work — what's the biggest thing you'd do differently if you started over?