I launched 4 days ago. Zero traction. Here's what I'm doing instead of giving up.
I built something I genuinely think solves a real problem. Launched last week. 4 upvotes on Product Hunt — all people I know. Reddit removed my posts. Zero Twitter followers. No email list.
I'm not writing this for sympathy. I'm writing it because I think most launch stories skip this part entirely.
Nobody talks about the week after launch. The part where the product exists, it works, and the world just doesn't care yet. There's no playbook for it. You just have to decide whether you're still in or not.
I'm still in.
So instead of refreshing analytics, I'm doing three things:
One — finding people on Reddit and Twitter who are manually solving the exact problem my product solves and actually helping them. Not pitching. Just helping.
Two — cold DMs asking for honest feedback. No sales pitch. Just "would you spend 10 minutes breaking this and telling me what's wrong."
Three — posting honestly instead of waiting until I have better numbers to show.
The product is Orqis. It turns any OpenAPI spec into a working AI agent in 60 seconds. No code. You paste a URL, you get an AI that talks to your API in plain English.
If you've been through this week — the one right after launch where nothing happens — I want to know what you did.
"Love the honesty about the 'post-launch silence.' Turning an OpenAPI spec into an agent in 60 seconds is a killer feature for anyone building with AI right now.
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We went through this exact phase with our previous product. A landing page auditor for developers. It worked technically but the market didn't care enough to pay. Zero traction after 3 weeks.
What changed everything was stopping the build and going deep into research. 530+ competitor reviews, 50+ community threads, thousands of comments mapped by pain category. The patterns told us exactly what to build next and who to build it for.
Zero traction isn't a signal to push harder. It's a signal to listen harder. The question isn't "how do I get more people to see this" — it's "am I solving a problem someone will pay to fix today." If the answer is unclear, the fastest move is 48 hours of pure research before touching the product again.
yeah, honestly, I think I’ve been leaning too much on “push harder” instead of stepping back.
The idea of going deep into actual user signals (reviews, threads, comments) makes a lot of sense. Right now I have more assumptions than evidence.
I’ll probably take a step back and do exactly that before iterating further — feels like I need to get much clearer on who this is for and what problem is painful enough to matter.
That's the move. The moment you shift from assumptions to actual data, everything gets clearer. Good luck with the research, the patterns usually show up faster than you'd expect.
This is real — most people never talk about this phase.
Respect for staying in and actually doing the hard part instead of chasing vanity metrics.
One thing I’ve seen at this stage is that sometimes it’s not just distribution — the way the product is positioned (including the name) can affect how people immediately “get it” or not.
Curious — how did you land on “Orqis”? Was that something you tested or more of a quick decision?
Yeah that’s a good point — and honestly something I’ve been thinking about more lately.
“Orqis” wasn’t random, it came from that mix of orchestration + intelligence / querying — basically the idea of coordinating how agents interact with APIs.
I liked that it captured the underlying concept, but yeah… it’s not something people immediately “get” when they see it. So I’m starting to realize the name might be doing less work than it should upfront.
Yeah — that’s a good realization.
Names that require explanation usually slow things down early, especially when you’re already fighting for attention.
Sometimes even a slightly clearer / more intuitive name can change how quickly people “get” it.
I actually keep a few short, agent/AI-style names around for cases like this — happy to share one that could fit what you’re building if you’re open to it.
I know this early post-launch period can be so brutal. I actually know a few solo founders who successfully navigated zero early traction, and I'm sure they'd be happy to answer your questions about what they did.