I built an AI comic generator for kids, launched 1 month ago, and got 0 signups. Here's everything I learned.

Site looks good. As for me I have started the company a few weeks ago. First thing I told myself if to get a co founder and offer equity. Do you guys think that would work?

Respect for posting the zero honestly — most hide it. Just launched mine (WhatsApp/voice agents for SMBs) and I'm in the same spot. My read so far: the bottleneck isn't the product, it's not putting it in front of someone actively hurting from the problem. Was your big lesson distribution or positioning?

This post really resonated with me—I've been in a similar spot where I launched something I believed in, only to face crickets. It's tough, but you're doing the right thing by analyzing what went wrong and iterating.

From my experience, parents are absolutely driven by trust, so I agree with the shift you're making. Removing the signup wall for one free comic is a smart move—let them experience the value first. To manage costs, you could limit free generation to one per browser or session, or even offer a low-res preview before asking for an email to download the full version.

Also, your point about the landing page being too much of a playground is spot on. I had to learn this the hard way too—it's all about guiding users to take the next step. Think about a single, clear call-to-action that aligns with your goal (e.g., "Generate your free comic now").

Curious—have you experimented with partnerships, like reaching out to parenting blogs or kid-friendly content creators? That might help build trust faster than ads.

0 signups after a month is genuinely hard to sit with, and the fact that you're writing this up honestly instead of quietly moving on says a lot.

The insight about "parents vs kids" as audience is the kind of thing that seems obvious in retrospect but almost nobody catches before launch. Building for one person who has to convince another person to pay is a completely different product challenge.

I'm validating a Chrome extension right now and my biggest fear is exactly this — launching and finding out I've been solving for the wrong person all along. What would you do differently to validate the audience fit before building the full product?

best thing u did is stop wasting money on ads nowadays paid ads dont work on new projects and i recommend doing what i did on my website instead of using email and password why not use a random id generated by crypto/rand its veeeeery cheap and veeeery easy its just ~10 lines of code

The fake reviews point hit hard most founders do this thinking it builds trust but parents especially see through it instantly. The decision to strip it all back and be honest took guts. On the signup wall question remove it. One free comic, no account. The AI cost risk is real but the conversion you're missing without it is worse. You can always add rate limiting per IP later.

honestly, surviving a zero-signup month and dropping the vanity metrics to rewrite the copy and translations is incredible grit. you should be proud of this turnaround velocity.

definitely don't remove the wall entirely without a safety net—anonymous endpoints get abused constantly. if you want to let people test the generation loop without a full account, you can implement a daily global token bucket limit or restrict it to 1 free trial per IP via simple browser session caching. another lean play is just having an interactive 'try a popular question' button that surfaces high-quality, pre-cached comic results instantly without hitting your live generation backend.

sharing your journey on ih with this level of raw transparency is going to build a real community moat. the product utility is obviously there, you just transitioned from the infrastructure phase to the actual distribution grind. keep shipping man.

This is useful because you identified the real issue fast: parents are not buying the comic output first, they are deciding whether they trust the product enough to let their child use it.

I would remove the signup wall for the first comic, but put a clear cost-control boundary around it. One free generation per browser/device, visible queue, maybe lower-res preview first, then signup to save, export, or generate more. For this audience, “experience the magic first” matters more than capturing the email early.

The bigger thing I would pressure-test is the brand frame. ComicKid is clear, but it may box the product into “kids comic generator,” while your stronger direction is broader: educational storytelling, parent trust, multilingual learning, safe AI content, and repeatable child-friendly explanation.

That matters because parents are already skeptical. The name and domain have to make the product feel safer and more durable, not just fun.

Auryxa .com would fit that broader direction better because it feels more premium and trust-oriented, while still leaving room for kids’ education, storytelling, multilingual learning, and AI-powered creative content under one stronger brand shell.