Spent months building LazyEats AI. Spent 1 day realizing I have no idea how to get users.
I'm a solo developer. I built an AI meal suggestion app called LazyEats AI from scratch. More than 20 days of coding, debugging, rebuilding, more debugging, and somehow getting it live on Google Play.
10 installs. Mostly my friends. One of them probably just did it to be nice.
The build was honestly the fun part. I know a little programming so I leaned heavily on AI to fill the gaps. It worked surprisingly well. I felt like a genius shipping features I had no business building alone.
Then I submitted to the Play Store, got approved, and just sat there. Waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happened.
Turns out building the thing is only half the battle and nobody really prepares you for the other half. I've been trying short form videos, Quora, forums, the whole thing. Some of it got flagged as spam. Some of it got zero traction. All of it is teaching me that marketing without a budget is its own kind of coding. You just keep debugging until something works.
Still figuring it out. But I'm not stopping.
If you're curious what I built, LazyEats AI is on Google Play here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lazyeatsai.app
Would genuinely love brutal feedback from this community. What would make you download something like this? What would make you delete it after 5 minutes?
For those who've been here before, what actually moved the needle for your first 100 users?
This is probably one of the most common founder experiences.
Building feels productive because it's within our control. Distribution is much harder because it requires talking to real users.
I'm going through a similar process with my own MVP right now. Launching taught me that getting attention is often harder than building the product itself.
Good luck with the next step.
For the first 100 users I’d make the ask much narrower than ‘try my app’: pick one meal-planning pain and go straight at that. E.g. ‘I’m tired and have chicken/rice/eggs, what can I cook in 10 minutes?’ is a much easier hook than a general AI meal app pitch.
I’m doing the same kind of hand-to-hand work with Kinetic Override, my Android utility app, and the useful signal has come from exact-problem threads rather than broad launch posts. Your best early feedback probably comes from people already complaining about dinner decision fatigue, not from people browsing app launches.
Also: the Play Store screenshots should answer the delete-after-5-min question before install — what input do I give, what useful result do I get, and how fast?
That narrow ask angle makes so much sense. I've been pitching the whole app when I should be solving one moment at a time. The Play Store screenshots point is noted too, going to rework those to show exactly what happens when you type in your ingredients. Thanks for this
The spam flagging is the trap most of us hit. Quora and forums punish anything that reads like a drop. What worked better for me on a similar solo Android app was finding threads where people already complain about the exact problem you solve, and answering the real question first. Mention the app only when it's the genuine answer, and only after you've actually helped.
For a meal app I'd go where the frustration lives: people posting about decision fatigue, hating meal planning, eating the same thing every night. Reddit cooking and budget subs, replies to those exact posts. One good reply on a thread someone is reading right now beats ten cold posts.
And 10 installs after launch is normal, not failure. First 100 is hand to hand. You're not behind.
The spam trap is exactly what happened on Quora lol. Got 11 answers deleted in one day. The idea of finding threads where the frustration already exists and just being genuinely helpful first is a completely different approach and honestly makes more sense. And thanks for the reassurance on the 10 installs, needed to hear that.
the fast signal is not how much you built, it is how quickly people can use it without explanation. if users need a tour, the loop is probably too long.
That's a fair point. Going to look at the onboarding flow again with fresh eyes and see where people are probably dropping off.
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For first 100 users, I would stop treating this like an app launch and treat it like a repeated dinner-rescue service.
My 7 day test would be:
The thing that would make me delete it after 5 minutes: generic recipes I could get from ChatGPT. The thing that would make me keep it: it remembers my constraints, gives a realistic grocery list, and saves me from thinking at 6pm.
The app idea is useful, but I think “AI meal suggestion app” is too broad for getting the first 100 users.
Most people do not wake up wanting another meal app. They hit a specific dinner problem:
“I have random ingredients and no idea what to cook.”
“I’m tired and don’t want to think.”
“I need cheap meals this week.”
“I keep ordering takeout because planning dinner is annoying.”
For LazyEats, I’d probably pick one of those pains and make the whole first-user push around that, instead of promoting the app generally.
The easiest wedge might be: “Tell me what’s in your fridge and I’ll give you dinner ideas.”
That is much more comment-friendly on Reddit, Quora, Facebook groups, and short-form content than “download my AI meal app.”
If useful, I can put the tighter version in writing. The useful part would be the first 100-user plan: who to target first, what hook to use, where to post without getting flagged as spam, and what 7-day test I’d run.