Launch day: 1,588 quiz takers, 10 signups, 0 paid. Here's the 48-hour pivot.
Launched Convexly on Show HN last week. First 24 hours:
- 1,588 quiz takers
- 10 signups
- 5 activated users
- 0 paid
I'd been building a generic "decision intelligence platform" for six months. Launch night I sat with the data. Quiz completion was 5%. Homepage-to-signup was under 0.5%. People engaged with the quiz. They didn't want an account.
The wedge was hidden in plain sight. Prediction market traders already have calibration data (their trade history) and an existing question: is my P&L skill or luck? Convexly just needed to read their Polymarket wallet and score it.
48 hours after launch, here's what I shipped:
- Public wallet analyzer at convexly.app/tools/polymarket-wallet-analyzer. No signup. Paste a wallet, get a Brier score breakdown in 30 seconds.
- Kalshi CSV import with auto-resolution via public settlement data. US-regulated, no API keys stored.
- Fixed a critical bug in the Polymarket integration: it was importing trades but never resolving them, so the Brier score never updated.
- Dashboard redesign around Brier as the hero metric, plus a "resolved since last visit" widget.
- Repriced: Free users can now import one venue and run manual syncs (24h cooldown). Pro adds multi-venue + weekly auto-resolve cron. Previously integrations were Pro-only, which was the gate that killed conversion.
Also caught a methodology error in our own research.
We published a calibration audit of the top 100 Polymarket profit wallets. The original analysis scored Brier per orderbook fill instead of per deduplicated position (VWAP). This inflated the correlation from +0.42 to +0.61 and the profit ratio from 2.02x to 4.66x. We caught it, corrected the blog post, regenerated the charts, and updated the CSV.
The directional finding holds: among the top 100, worse calibration is associated with moderately higher profits (Spearman r = +0.42, p = 1.2e-5). But the magnitude is more modest than first reported.
Current state:
- 20 total users
- 0 paying (2 on promo trials expiring May 7-9)
- 10,000-wallet analysis running now (full Polymarket leaderboard)
- Applied to Polymarket and Kalshi Builders Program for API access to expand the scope of available wallets for analysis
What I'd ask this group:
- If you've done a pivot, what was the single highest-leverage change you made?
- Does "Free = try with your wallet, Pro = auto-sync forever" sound right, or would you charge differently?
- Has anyone caught a methodology error after launch and had to correct publicly? How did your audience respond?
Not fishing for upvotes. Just putting the numbers out so other indie everyonr can see what a post-launch pivot looks like while it's happening and see if it works.
If you want the research side, we also audited the top 100 Polymarket profit leaders for calibration quality. Spearman r = +0.42 between worse calibration and higher profit. Full methodology and dataset at https://convexly.app/blog/polymarket-whale-audit.
Really solid breakdown. The part that stands out most is how quickly you moved from “interesting engagement” to a much clearer wedge. My guess is the biggest win here is letting users get a useful result before asking for signup, because that usually makes the upgrade path feel earned instead of forced.
I 100% agree. The feedback that was consitent from all the first users was that the gated information was a definite turnoff. Being able to give them value before even signing up is already bringing more views and users. So hopefully the pivot turns this trickle into a stream, so to speak.
“This is one of the cleanest pivot breakdowns I’ve seen — especially catching your own methodology error publicly. That builds real trust.
Highest-leverage change here feels like removing the signup wall and letting the value prove itself first.
You should test this in a live competition. $19 entry, winner gets a Tokyo trip (flights + hotel).
Round 01 just opened (100 cap) — best odds right now.”
That's an awesome idea! Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Convexly! Glad the pivot breakdown resonated.
Quick overview of Tokyo Lore: It’s a paid ideas competition where people submit Tokyo-connected business or creative ideas. For $19 you get a custom AI-generated artifact of your idea + a full SPEAR business analysis, plus entry into the round where the winner gets a real trip to Tokyo (flights + hotel booked by us).
Prize pool has started building — odds are excellent right now while it’s still very early.
Would you be interested in submitting an idea? Happy to send you the direct $19 link and walk you through the whole process (very quick).
What do you think?
That’s a really interesting result — especially with 1,500+ responses but no paid users.
Usually when this happens, it’s not the traffic, but how the value is presented after the first interaction.
Something in the flow might be creating friction or confusion before users reach the payment step.
Happy to share a quick audit if helpful.
Thank you for the feedback! I’ll take that into consideration