Building a marketplace for focused apps and AI agents. Now I'm staring at the cold start problem
I'm building AppGild, a marketplace for focused apps and AI agents aimed at small businesses, solo pros, and lean teams. I'm not a full-time software engineer. I have a demanding day job, and I've been building this with AI tools, contractors, trial and error and a ton of what used to be my free time.
The idea behind it is simple. Big SaaS keeps getting broader and more expensive. A lot of small businesses don't need another giant platform. They need a focused tool that solves one specific workflow well. At the same time, independent builders are starting to build focused tools and agents faster and better than ever. I see a real match there for both builders and buyers, if they can find each other more effectively. That's the thesis I'm testing: can a marketplace become a real discovery layer between focused builders and the buyers who actually need them and am I the right person to bring them together?
After building the project to the point where I felt like I had a real product, I went live in May.
I'd tested the whole flow several times and everything worked. I had multiple code review sessions primarily using different AI tools and some contractor work just to verify I wasn't missing anything. I hired some builders to build an app and test the website with a real user and learned that despite all my efforts to try and perfect the site, it still had issues with the very first builder. Stripe was probably the most annoying issue that came up. It worked fine for US accounts, but took some work to actually work for non-US builders. Finally, when that was fixed, I learned that my app/agent upload wizard was user friendly for me, but unfortunately not yet user friendly for users, so we went through multiple iterations to make it more user friendly and also had to build in some checkpoints to make sure the apps and agents were uploaded correctly.
That was basically my first real world lesson; a marketplace is maybe 10% the marketplace page and 90% the boring operational plumbing nobody sees until it breaks: onboarding, listings, payments, refunds, seller settings, edge cases.
I'm at the phase now where I'm recruiting builders and when possible, trying to learn what problems buyers are looking to solve. From this community, I'm especially interested in what would make you trust an early marketplace enough to try it without feeling like you're just feeding someone else's platform. From my understanding, marketplaces tend to take a while to take off, and so I'm trying to make the early builder commitment low enough and valuable enough that it's worth testing before the marketplace has meaningful traffic. In my mind, uploading an app you already built to a new marketplace costs a little bit of time, so it seems like an easy sell, but I also know it's naive to think that builders will be willing to spend any time on something they don't trust. Any advice on how to solve this early builder trust issue and get to the point where builders are willing to test the marketplace while I work to drive buyers to the website?
AppGild's here if you want context: appgild.ai
I'll keep posting the journey so you all can see if this project actually has legs and maybe learn from my mistakes or victories along the way.
You mentioned building AppGild with both AI tools and contractors.
I'm curious how you decided what to handle with AI
vs
what to give to a contractor.
Was there a particular kind of work where one clearly worked better than the other?
We did most coding for AppGild using Claude Code, however wanted to have a contractor involved for security and and surfaces that touch money/stripe transactions. That was the main balance for the site itself, but we also used vibe coding to build some seed apps for the website so we can test our own system, but also to give buyers some options when they come to our site given that it's still early and we have very few projects built by builders other than those from our team. We Also used contractors to build test apps and test our site for functionality and performance and learned a ton through this process. Have you used contractors at all for your projects?
Honestly, I haven't used contractors on my own projects yet, so far I've mostly built things myself with AI tools.
Your breakdown is really helpful though. I was thinking about the boundary as 'what can AI do vs. what needs a human,' but the way you describe it sounds more like a risk boundary: security, payments, and areas where you want an experienced second set of eyes.
That makes a lot of sense, especially for a non-technical builder, like me. Thanks for explaining it.
No problem! My thought process is it's smart to operate as lean and as fast as possible whenever by using AI as much as possible. However, if it's a serious project, get a second set of eyes on the project for anything that touches money, sensitive data, security or legal documents.
Cold start for marketplaces is brutal because supply and demand need each other. One side usually has to be manual first — for me that meant hunting 1:1 conversations where founders already post the problem (Reddit/IH), not waiting for marketplace liquidity. Are you trying to get builders or users first?
You're right that cold start is the brutal part, and that one side has to go manual first. For me that side is builders. I'm doing the 1:1 outreach on the supply side instead of waiting for liquidity, kind of the mirror of you going after the people already posting the problem.
I went builder-first because I think that's where most of the unmet need is right now. I keep seeing people build quality apps and agents and then get stuck marketing them alone. Some find buyers that way, but too many good projects stall because reaching buyers is hard.
So the plan is to get enough builders uploading a reasonable number of projects, then start marketing to SMBs. If the site becomes a place small and medium businesses trust to find a good solution to a specific problem, that gives builders the exposure they need, and between their marketing and mine we pull in more buyers together.
I won't ignore early builders while I build that up. I'll do some buyer marketing for their projects too. I just don't plan to market broadly to buyers before there's at least a small catalog to show them.
Supply-first is right. For reaching builders who stall on marketing:
IH comments on "cold start", "freeze after shipping", "built but can't promote"
Reddit r/microsaas, r/SideProject — "shipped but no users"
1:1 to builders who posted Show IH with low traction
Don't market to SMBs until you have 10+ quality listings. Builders first.
If Reddit hunting is part of your outreach — happy to build a free digest aimed at builder-side conversations. DM not needed — just reply with marketplace name + target builder profile.
Supply-first, and the specific places stalled builders gather (the cold-start and shipped-but-no-users threads), line up with where I've been spending time, and you're right that the listings need to be solid before pushing buyers. I'm keeping the outreach in my own hands for now rather than hand off the target profile, but I appreciate you laying it out. Good thread to be in.
Makes sense — supply-first and doing your own outreach is the right call at this stage. Good luck with the catalog, and yeah those cold-start threads on IH are weirdly full of the exact builders you need.
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One thing I kept thinking while reading this is that builders don't usually join early marketplaces because they trust the marketplace.
They join because they trust what happens if the marketplace fails.
A lot of early platforms focus on proving future upside when the bigger concern is often downside risk.
Downside risk over upside promise. That's the part I keep underweighting, and I think you're right that it's the real question. A builder's worry isn't "will this take off," it's "if it doesn't, did I trap my product on someone else's platform." The way I'm trying to answer that: nothing about listing is exclusive. You keep your own product, your own customers, your own code, and if AppGild goes nowhere you walk away with everything you came in with, minus an afternoon. I'm betting low downside matters more than promised upside this early. The part I'm still working out is how to make that obvious before someone lists, not after they dig for it. What made an early platform feel safe to try for you?
I think the interesting part is that "safe to try" and "safe to depend on" aren't always evaluated the same way.
Hard to do that topic justice in a comment thread.
If you're interested, drop your email and I'll send over the fuller thought.
That distinction holds up: "safe to try" is about the first afternoon, "safe to depend on" is about month six, and an early marketplace has to earn the second one with a track record it doesn't have yet. So for now we lean on the try side: keep it reversible, no lock-in, low commitment, and let depend-on build as listings stay live and renew. I'll keep these in the thread rather than over email since I'm mostly heads-down building, but I appreciate you thinking it through. Good luck with your work.