3 weeks in, 2 free trials from strangers — what actually surprised me
Launched verism.app about 3 weeks ago. Two products — a career simulator that puts you through a full day in 9 different careers (will add more) with real decisions and a behavioral debrief, and a situation simulator that's voice based where you practice salary negotiations and performance reviews against an AI that responds like a real manager would.
sharing what surprised me because some of it I genuinely didn't see coming.
Carousels on TikTok dramatically outperform videos. My screen recording videos failed in the first second, people swiped immediately. Carousels with a strong opening line held attention for 10 to 20 seconds. didn't expect the format to matter that much.
Tried three different promotion types — get views, get likes, and get website clicks. Getting views was basically useless, people watched for 1.5 seconds and moved on. Get website clicks drove real traffic but converted at 0.1%. Get likes drove the most saves and engagement but people are saving and not clicking through to the site. around $100 spent total, 2 free trials from strangers, 0 paying users.
The saves are actually what confuses me most. Some posts have really strong save rates which suggests people find it interesting enough to come back to later, but the conversion to actually trying the product hasn't happened. Not sure if that's a trust problem, a friction problem, or just cold traffic that's never going to convert.
What I'm still figuring out is how much of the bad conversion rate is a cold traffic problem versus something actually wrong with the product or homepage. I think it's mostly the traffic but I don't have enough real strangers through yet to know for sure.
Also genuinely unsure whether the two products belong together or whether having both is confusing to a cold visitor. They share a thesis — experience high stakes moments before the real ones — but the audiences are a bit different.
open to any thoughts. especially curious if anyone has made premium B2C work without being the face of it and what actually moved the needle.
verism.app if you want to look
This feels like a positioning problem more than a traffic problem.
The strongest idea here is not “career simulator” or “AI roleplay.” It is helping people practice high-stakes professional moments before they face them in real life. Salary negotiations, performance reviews, career decisions, manager conversations — those are moments where confidence and preparation matter.
I’d also pressure-test the name before you push more traffic. Verism is clean, but it feels a little abstract and does not immediately tell a cold visitor what kind of serious outcome they are stepping into. For a paid product asking people to trust an AI with career anxiety and professional decisions, that first impression matters.
Beryxa .com would fit this better as a serious career simulation and decision-training platform. It feels more like a product company than an experiment, and gives you room if the product expands beyond the first two simulators.
The product is already about trust, confidence, and preparation. The name should help carry that before the homepage has to explain everything.