EXdeck

Quick follow-up to my last post about EXdeck (an AI workspace for decks, docs, sheets, and resumes)... I got some genuinely useful pushback and want to close the loop honestly.

The sharpest comment I got wasn't about distribution channels. It was simpler: "AI workspace" explains what you built, not why someone should click. Has one feature created disproportionately more interest than the rest?

I didn't have a real answer. I'd been building for months without tracking which tool people actually landed on or bounced from — so I guessed out loud, said maybe it's the resume/PDF tools since they have a shorter "aha" moment.

That guess was wrong, and a few of you called it out. Presentations are the actual core of this thing — it's what I set out to fix in the first place, it's where most of the engineering effort has gone, and it's the tool people keep coming back to. I let the "workspace" framing talk me out of leading with my strongest, most obvious wedge.

So here's the correction: decks are the focus. Everything else (docs, sheets, resumes, the file converter) exists because building one AI engine for "turn an idea into a real, editable file" naturally extended there — not because I'm unsure what the core product is.

The actual wedge, stated plainly: every AI presentation tool I used before building this either locks the export behind a paywall, gives you a flat image instead of a real file, or breaks your layout the moment you open it in PowerPoint. EXdeck gives you a genuine .pptx you own from the free plan, no watermark, no "pay per download." That's the one thing that keeps showing up as other tools' weak point in every comparison I've written, which is usually a decent signal it's worth leading with.

What I'm doing differently now:

• Rewriting the homepage to lead with "AI presentation maker, real PowerPoint export" instead of "AI workspace" — the workspace framing can live one layer down, for people who stick around

• Setting up actual funnel tracking (embarrassing that I didn't have this from day one) so the next time someone asks "what's your hook," I have data instead of a hunch

• Going back through my SEO pages to see which one ("best AI presentation maker" vs. the others) is actually pulling traffic, since that tells me what problem people are searching with, not what I assume they care about

Still very much stuck on distribution beyond this, so the original question stands: what actually got your first 100 users in the door, before SEO had time to work?

Thanks to everyone who pushed back on the last post instead of just being nice about it. That's the useful kind of feedback.

Hey IH,

I'm Muhammad, a CS undergrad, and for the last few months I've been building EXdeck on my own (https://exdeck.xyz).

It started as an AI presentation maker, but I kept hitting the same wall with every AI tool I tried. They do one thing, and they lock you in. You get a pretty deck you can't really edit, or an export that isn't a real file. So I kept building until it became one workspace for the work students and small teams actually need:

- Presentations (real .pptx and PDF export, AI charts, AI diagrams)

- Documents (Word-style reports, proposals, essays, with tables and charts)

- Spreadsheets (plain-English editing, live formulas, real .xlsx export)

- Resumes (ATS-friendly templates, AI bullet refinement, clean PDF)

- Plus a diagram studio, a private in-browser file converter, and a PDF presenter

Two principles held the whole thing together. First, you always get a real, editable file you own, no lock-in. Second, it had to be cheap enough that a student wouldn't think twice, so Pro is $1.99 a month and most tools work on a free plan.

Stack is Next.js, TypeScript, Groq for the models, and Firebase. Almost everything runs client side for speed and privacy, and the server only does what the browser can't. The code is public on GitHub if anyone wants to look.

Here is where I'm honest. The product is in a good place. The distribution is not. I'm an engineer, so I kept building features instead of learning how to get the thing in front of people.

Traffic is low, and I know good SEO alone won't fix that for a new domain.

So I'd love your input on two things:

1. For an all-in-one tool like this, is broad positioning ("AI workspace") a mistake? Should I lead with one wedge (say, the resume builder or the PDF tools) and expand from there?

2. What actually moved the needle for you early on, before SEO kicked in?

Happy to return feedback on your project too. Thanks for reading.