Can "AI-powered" apps actually be worse than their "original" predecessors?
That's certainly the case we saw with the interior/3d design space when we first built Roomform. It didn't take us long to find what we thought were our competitors: hundreds of "AI-powered interior design" apps. Every single one of these was an image wrapper with small changes to the UI. Essentially, people would take photos of their spaces, and these apps would alter a placeholder prompt into a nano banana API (I'm guessing), and that was it.
The problem? There were so many people using these apps and they seemed so helpless in the comments. People were complaining that they were "losing credits" since the image wrapper would probably hallucinate and take their credits anyway.
Bottom line - this "fluff" was another motivating factor into giving poeple a tool that uses AI to improve on design apps. Roomform lets people still design "old school" in a 3d editor, but also lets them generate objects in seconds, search the marketplace for any web listing, and get optimal rearrangements with an agent that actually has metadata of the user's design.
Congrats on the launch! What channels are you testing to bring in your first customers?
Thanks! We're exploring real-estate, furniture retailers, designers, and schools (housing) at the moment. We're open to pivoting, but still trying to find the right market fit on this one. We've had other industries try it out as well (e.g. restaurants, bars).
If you have any ideas, would love to hear!
Love that you're testing multiple verticals instead of locking in too early.
If I were you, I’d try narrowing temporarily to one segment where decision-makers are both active online and openly discussing operational challenges, which usually accelerates validation.
For example, real estate operators and furniture retailers are surprisingly active on Reddit, sharing workflow and vendor frustrations. It can be a goldmine for identifying which segment feels the severest pain.
Have you tried validating messaging in communities where these operators hang out, or has outreach mostly been direct so far?
Gotcha, would you mind sharing which Reddit communities?
It's been mostly outreach and within our network. Would love to get more into the space for "organic" validation. if you have any ideas, would love to know!
Yeah, organic validation on Reddit can be powerful, but only if it’s approached the right way.
For real estate/housing, I’d look into:
r/realestateinvesting
r/PropertyManagement
r/realestate
For furniture/retail:
r/retail
r/smallbusiness
r/ecommerce
That said, the subreddit list is actually the easy part.
What usually makes or breaks it is positioning. If you post too directly about the product, it gets ignored (or worse, removed). The better approach is to reverse it — start conversations around the pain point and let the insight surface naturally.
For example, instead of introducing the tool, you might ask:
“Curious how other property managers are currently handling [problem]. What’s working and what’s not?”
When that thread gains traction, it becomes much easier to validate messaging and even attract early users without it feeling forced.
If you’d like, tell me exactly what problem you’re solving and who the decision-maker is, and I can sketch how I’d approach testing it on Reddit specifically.