The launch is over. Now comes the hard part.

When I launched Chinwag, there was the usual flurry of activity. Friends, family and colleagues clicked through, explored the platform and wished me well. For a brief moment, it felt like things were moving.

Then it got quiet.

Not because anything was wrong with the product. Simply because curiosity only lasts for so long.

It's a strange transition. You spend months obsessing over features, polishing pages and fixing bugs, only to realise that building the product and building a user base are two completely different challenges.

As a solo founder, without a co-founder, marketing team or significant budget, the question becomes:

Where do you even begin?

The more I think about it, the more I realise this isn't really a marketing problem. It's a distribution problem.

I'm not looking for one viral post or a lucky break. I'm trying to find a repeatable way of introducing Chinwag to people who would genuinely benefit from it.

That feels like a completely different challenge.

It's also given me a new appreciation for why so many successful marketplace founders talk about personally recruiting their first users. Before growth becomes scalable, it often has to become personal.

Right now, I'm trying to work out what that repeatable acquisition engine looks like.

If you've built a marketplace, or any product where finding the first hundred users proved harder than building the product itself, I'd genuinely love to hear what worked for you.