My own GCI app told me to stop building and go talk to people like a savage. I'm an introvert. Help.
I'm a solo engineer. Built an GCI AI advisor app where you assemble councils of synthetic experts who deliberate your decisions.
378 users in week one. $0 revenue.
The tech: multiple OSS LLMs and LLMRouter running multi-agent deliberation, ElevenLabs voices, generated avatars and full wan2.5 hd videos. Each advisor analyzes independently, then a facilitator synthesizes consensus/dissent into a master plan.
I thought I built a life coaching app. Then a defense consultant showed up and used it for military intelligence analysis. Same platform, zero code changes. Created a council of a Navy SEAL commander, CIA analyst, and RAND game theorist. Got probabilistic predictions on adversary behavior.
So now I'm at a crossroads. Life coaching app? Domain-agnostic deliberation engine? Something in between?
I did what any engineer would do. I dogfooded it.
I wrote up my positioning problem and.... ran it through my own platform.
Assembled a council: a skeptical VC, a category designer, a distribution hacker, a founder who'd been through this before.
They destroyed me.
The VC advisor:
"You've got platform delusion wrapped in customer validation. Stop the positioning pivot until you have 10 paying customers in ANY single vertical."
The growth hacker:
"'Domain-agnostic deliberation engine' sounds great until you try to write the Google Ad. What would someone actually search for?"
The serial founder:
"You don't have a positioning problem - you have a sequencing problem."
The consensus: Stop intellectualizing. Go get paying customers. Talk to users.
Here's my problem: I'm an introverted engineer who built this thing partly because I'm allergic to talking to people. I've even tried to engineer my way out of sales - built web scrapers, automated outreach, anything to avoid actual conversations.
My own app called me out on it.
But, I can't wire up Stripe in good conscience until I have some signal of PM, it feels dirty AF. But finding PMF bootstrapped means... talking to people. The thing I'm worst at.
So I'm here.
If you've found PMF as an introvert who hates sales calls - how?
Did you eventually just force yourself to do the uncomfortable thing? Find a co-founder who's the opposite? Build something so good it sold itself?
Fellow introvert here. The reframe that worked for me: customer conversations aren't sales calls. They're debugging sessions.
You're already comfortable asking "why does this code break?" Same energy: "why did you try this feature?" or "what were you expecting it to do?"
The defense consultant showing up is actually gold. One weird power user who's doing something unexpected with your tool tells you more than 50 generic surveys. If you can stomach one conversation, make it that one. Ask what problem they were solving before they found you, what they tried that didn't work, what they'd pay for the version that does exactly what they need.
The "build it so good it sells itself" path exists but it's slower and you still end up talking to users eventually - you just do it via support tickets instead of discovery calls. Same conversations, different wrapper.
What helped me was setting a low bar. One real conversation per week. Not 10, not a sales sprint. Just one. It compounds and you learn a lot faster than sitting in your head theorising.
I'm trying to build something so good it sells itself.
Look at it this way - you dogfooded your tool and it didn't help so now you are resorting to asking humans.
Plus the advice it gave you is completely wrong. It truly doesn't matter whether your customers are paying cash or not. You can get validation just by their willingness to continue to use the product - even for free.
378 users but how many of them stuck with it? If you can get the usage up to a reasonable level than you would only need to find out what they are using your tool for - you already know for one user.
My guess is that you have to make this tool a lot more specific before it will actually do anything useful and that until it does something useful marketing it is not possible.
Appreciate the perspective. 40% weekly retention so far, but you're right - free usage isn't the same as paid. That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out.
Will report back.