I spent too long building. Now the product works and basically nobody knows it exists.

I’ve been building SendChallenges for quite a while.

The idea is simple: people challenge each other to actually do things instead of just talking about them online. A challenge can include a reward, the recipient decides whether to accept it, and completion has to be proven on video.

It can be between friends, sent to a creator, or published for anyone online.

The problem is that I probably spent too long building.
Another feature. Another improvement. Another edge case. At some point you have to admit that the product being 5% better isn’t going to magically bring users in.

The platform works now. Distribution is the hard part.
So I’ve basically stopped building for the moment and I’m trying to get real people through the whole loop instead.

The creator angle is what I find most interesting:
follower sends challenge → creator accepts → creator does it → that becomes content → more people send challenges

If that loop works, I think there’s something here.

If it doesn’t, I’d rather find that out now than spend another six months polishing things nobody asked for.

So my question is mainly for people who’ve launched consumer, social or marketplace products before:

Would you focus almost entirely on getting a few creators to make that loop work?Or would you first make sure there are enough normal users and public challenges so the platform already feels alive?

Curious how others approached that first cold-start stage.