I built the egg. I'm still waiting for the chicken. Reality of affiliate marketing for startups.

I built the process to monetize. I'm missing the brands to fill it.

The idea on how to monetize was simple: AI recommends an outfit, surfaces real products from real brands, user buys something, I earn a commission. Clean and aligned with what the user is already doing in the app.

So I built it.

Then I tried to join the affiliate programs of known brands.

90% rejected me.

Not enough traffic. Not enough users. Not an interesting partner yet.

So here's the loop I'm stuck in: I need users to get brands. I need brands to monetize. I need to monetize to keep growing. The snake eating its own tail.

Beyond the partnerships, the product itself is harder than it looks:

1. AI recommends an outfit

2. AI maps it to product categories

3. Query searches the catalog.

In theory, clean. In practice, the products that surface are sometimes nothing like what was recommended. Matching intent to inventory is its own unsolved problem.

I also tried letting users scan a real outfit to detect garments and find similar products. The AI detects the pieces fine. Then it fails to match them to anything relevant in the catalog.

And even when a user does want to buy something, each product redirects to a different vendor page. There's no unified cart. No "buy this look" flow. Just five tabs opening in a browser. Not exactly a frictionless purchase experience.

If you've navigated affiliate programs as an early-stage app:

• How did you get your first real brand partnerships?

• How do you improve garment matching?

• And if you've solved the "multiple tabs" friction problem, I'd love to know how you did it.