Building in public: the honest reality of validating a daily invention learning game from scratch

Hey IH 👋 Riley here.
I want to share something most founders don’t talk about — the brutally unglamorous reality of trying to get your first 500 waitlist signups from scratch.
The idea:
INVENTD is a daily invention learning game. Every day a new challenge drops — you work through 5 phases to learn how a real product gets designed, built, and taken to market. Think Duolingo meets How It’s Made — but you’re the inventor.
Example challenge — “Design a self-cleaning water bottle”:
🔍 Identify why current water bottles stay dirty
🧪 Learn how UV light kills bacteria
⚙️ Design the mechanism and power source
💥 Stress test it for real world use
🚀 Calculate your margin and write your investor pitch
Every phase teaches you something real. Food science. Materials engineering. Manufacturing. Sustainable design.
The honest reality of week 1:
Here’s what nobody tells you about launching from scratch:
❌ Reddit kept removing my posts — spam filter hates new accounts
❌ Facebook groups I joined had 1,800 members and almost no engagement
❌ Indie Hackers won’t let me post yet — still earning that privilege
❌ ProductHunt upcoming page live but private until May 14
And yet — I’m still here. Still posting. Still building.
Because here’s what I’ve learned in week 1:
✅ The idea is solid — every person I’ve described it to gets excited
✅ The waitlist page is live and working
✅ ProductHunt is locked and loaded for May 14
✅ The first version of the app is already prototyped
✅ Most founders give up at exactly this moment — I haven’t
My go/no-go target:
500 waitlist signups in 3 weeks. If I hit it — I build it. If I don’t — I learned something invaluable for free.
Current status:
📊 Waitlist: Live and open at tally.so/r/kd7kvr
📅 ProductHunt launch: May 14
🎯 Days until go/no-go decision: 21
Two honest questions for IH:
1. How did YOU get your first 100 signups from scratch?
2. What am I missing that you wish someone had told you?
Waitlist: https://tally.so/r/kd7kvr
ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/inventd?launch=inventd
— Riley Frost, building INVENTD 🍭
Day 7 — still standing.