I built a working product and people still don't understand what it does.

The positioning problem you have isn't rare. I hit the same wall with Genie 007. I was explaining the technology (voice AI, automated follow-up) when people needed to hear the outcome first. The fix I found was leading with the problem the person gets blamed for when it doesn't happen. For a settlement tool, that's probably: someone owes someone something, nobody remembers, relationships get weird.

Hey Meiram, this is a super relatable problem. The thing that stood out to me is how the electrician/landscaper/stylist example instantly makes sense while "circular settlement" makes my brain work harder than it should. I think you're right to move away from "debt tracking" — that word carries negative weight, like someone messed up. The professionals example feels more like a fairness tool, which is a much better vibe.

One thing that helped me with positioning before is to describe the problem so vividly that people nod before you even mention the solution. Like "you know that feeling when you've done a few favors for someone and neither of you remembers who owes who, so you just let it slide and feel kinda bad about it?" That's a hook people instantly connect with. Your solution then becomes obvious.

For who'd use it: I'd look at freelancer collectives, co-working spaces, or small contractor networks where people sub to each other regularly. Those circles already trust each other but have no lightweight system to keep things fair. The key is they already want this — you just need to make them realize it exists.

Honest first read: it sounds like "a way for people who trade favors/services to keep score and settle up fairly without money or awkwardness." The "circular settlement" framing is what loses people, that's the mechanism, not the benefit. Your electrician/landscaper/stylist example is 10x clearer than the product description; lead with that, not the tech. Who'd use it: tight-knit professional circles who already barter informally and hate the "who owes who" tension. The repositioning instinct is right, sell the closed loop and the fairness, not the settlement engine.

When I read this, I don’t think “debt tracking” is the strongest framing.

It sounds more like a trust layer for informal value exchanges between small businesses or independent professionals — especially when people already know each other, but the agreement is too messy to keep only in memory or chat.

The users I’d imagine first are not random consumers, but small local service providers who often trade favors, referrals, work, or delayed obligations: freelancers, tradespeople, consultants, maybe small agencies.

The hard part might be explaining the pain in one sentence. Something like: “When small businesses help each other without immediate payment, Debsync helps everyone remember, confirm, and close the loop fairly.”

That feels clearer to me than “debt tracking.”

Honest read: the description does two distinct things at once and you might be repositioning the wrong half.

First half is "record bilateral obligations." That's bookkeeping. Every service professional already has a mental model for this and most don't reach for a tool because the alternative (a quick text + memory) is good enough for the volume they hit.

Second half is "find circular settlement opportunities across multiple participants." That's multilateral clearing. That's a genuinely hard problem with a real wedge but the audience is different from individual service pros, it's communities of professionals who already trade with each other repeatedly enough to have actual loops form. Think: a co-working space's resident freelancers, a trade association's members, a small town's service network.

If I read your post cold, my first guess at what Debsync does is "a way for friends to track who-owes-who at the group level." Which is a Splitwise-shaped read, and that's the framing competing with what you're actually building.

The barter-network examples are clearer than "debt tracking" but they still pitch the individual transaction (electrician helps landscaper). What's underspecified is the network density required for circular settlement to fire. Three-person loops are rare, larger loops are even rarer, but with the right population (a community that already trades 50+ times a month internally) the math gets interesting.

My honest answer to "who would use it": the buyer is the community organizer, not the individual professional. The professional is the user but they'll never search for this themselves. The organizer of the network (trade association rep, co-working community manager, local business chamber) is the one who has the problem of "members trade with each other informally, settlement is messy, can we clean this up." That's the wedge.

My first impression honestly wasn't debt tracking.

It felt more like a way to formalize informal exchanges between people who already trust each other.

Reading your examples helped a lot more than reading the feature list.

The interesting part to me wasn't the circular settlement logic. It was the fact that everyone involved can agree on a shared record of what happened.

That was the point where I started understanding the problem.

I think the confusion is happening before the feature explanation.

Right now Debsync feels like a system searching for a problem instead of a painful moment searching for a solution.

The hard part may not be “what does it do?” The harder part is what specific situation makes someone urgently care enough to record, confirm, and settle obligations in the first place.

I’d be careful with broad repositioning too quickly, because the wrong first buyer can make a useful workflow feel unnecessary.