I stripped my LinkedIn tool down to one thing and it's finally workin
Six months ago I was building a LinkedIn automation tool that did everything.
Connect, message, schedule, automate.
It got complicated fast. I am a Sales Engineer by day, not a developer. The more features I added the more things broke.
So I stopped. Stripped it back to the one insight that started the whole thing:
If you know someone just reacted to a post about the exact problem you solve, they are warm before you even say hello.
That is LinkDeal. You enter a company domain or a keyword. It finds people who recently reacted to LinkedIn posts about that topic. It enriches their contact details. It sends them to Slack with the post they reacted to and their own most engaging recent post.
You also get their reaction type -- whether they Liked it, Celebrated it, Found it insightful, Cared about it or Thanked the author. Six signals that tell you something different about how engaged they were.
Built in Next.js, Vercel, Turso, CrustData, Stripe. Full MCP server so Claude and Cursor can find leads through natural language.
5-day free trial with 50 credits:
https://www.linkdeal.ai
Happy to answer anything about the build.
This is a strong lesson. Narrowing the product to one clear signal makes it much easier for users to understand why they should care.
I’m seeing something similar while building MeetIQ by Acjen AI. The temptation is to describe all the AI/backend features, but the clearer outcome is: upload a meeting recording and get decisions, risks, action items, and follow-ups without reviewing the whole recording.
Curious — when you stripped it down, did the simpler positioning immediately improve signups, or did you also have to change the landing page/demo flow?
Really moved by the set of features who have built and the core idea - rightly sits at the intersection of your experience as sales engg and a dev by night. If this reaches the right audience it has lot of potential - why don't why proof it by getting more users to your platform using LinkDeal itself - this would add a lot to your credibility!
The "stop building a tool, ship the one insight" arc is the most useful part of this, "they reacted to a post about the exact problem you solve, so they're warm before hello" is a genuinely sharp wedge. One thing I noticed on the page: at £19 for solopreneurs, leading with "Book a call" next to "Get started" feels like it's pulling two different buyers. Curious if self-serve converts better for you than the call. Either way the Apollo/Clay/ZoomInfo comparison table is well done.
Six months building the full suite before stripping it down to one signal is a pattern that shows up constantly with solo builders. The full feature set feels safer to build because you're hedging against not knowing which part matters, but hedging is exactly what delays finding out.
Reacting to a post about the exact problem you solve being a warmer signal than almost anything else makes sense because it's unprompted and specific. Someone didn't fill out a form saying they're interested, they reacted to their own problem being described by someone else.
I think the biggest win here isn't the feature set—it's the decision to narrow the product. Going from "LinkedIn automation" to "find people who just signaled interest" makes the value much easier to understand. Sometimes removing features creates a much stronger product than adding more.
I wish I'd have had this feedback months ago! A very important and expensive lesson learned. Thanks @aryan_sinh!
That's exactly why I wanted to continue the conversation.
Reading your reply, I think there's one strategic business decision sitting underneath that lesson which becomes much more significant as the product grows, but I don't think I can do the reasoning behind it justice in a thread.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful. What's the best email to reach you?