GetButlr

Yesterday I launched GetButlr.

This project started from a problem I kept seeing as a content creator myself.

There are plenty of analytics tools that review a published video and tell us how it is performing. That data is extremely useful. It can help creators understand what worked, what didn't, and what they should do next.

But many of the decisions that determine the success of a video are made much earlier, during planning, production and editing, before we ever click Publish.

At the same time, the creator economy is becoming increasingly important as a source of income. More people are losing traditional jobs to cheaper automation alternatives, while others are willingly leaving conventional careers to pursue something they are passionate about. For many, social media is no longer simply entertainment. It has become a place to build a livelihood.

Unfortunately, the more people who enter this space, the more competitive it becomes.

Established creators have grown significantly. Many have amassed large followings, stronger revenues and increasingly sophisticated production teams. They can afford editors, designers, researchers, channel managers and other specialists.

For someone starting with little more than an idea, a camera and limited resources, that creates a significant barrier to entry.

Yet beginners and smaller creators face many of the same decisions as the large production teams they are competing against.

What should I create next?

How should I structure the recording? What video, audio and B-roll do I need? How should I approach the edit and final polishing before publishing? Is the title strong enough? Does the thumbnail earn the click? Is the opening hook working? How should I compile the metadata to improve discoverability and SEO? When is my audience actually online?

Creators with larger teams can recruit specific talent and experience for each part of that process.

The solo creator has to somehow do all of it.

This is why I started GetButlr. I wanted to give the small guy a fighting chance.

GetButlr is an AI creator intelligence platform for YouTube and TikTok that brings more of these decisions into one workflow for the solo creator. The objective is not to replace creativity, but to give an individual creator access to some of the intelligence and capabilities that would otherwise require a much larger team.

I’m building it as a solo founder, self-funded, while also being one of the creators I originally built it for.

Yesterday was launch day.

I put GetButlr on Product Hunt expecting at least some discovery.

Result: #495. Zero points.

That was useful.

It showed me very quickly that building a product and building distribution are completely different problems. Product Hunt didn't magically bring an audience simply because I had built something.

There is perhaps some irony in that.

I built GetButlr because small creators have to compete for attention against established creators with larger audiences, bigger teams and greater resources. Then I launched GetButlr as a small, self-funded founder and discovered just how similar that challenge can be when launching a product.

This morning brought another interesting part of the experience. I started receiving emails offering to sell me hundreds of Product Hunt upvotes.

I won't be buying them.

Three hundred artificial votes won't tell me whether GetButlr has a business. What I need now are real creators using the product and telling me where it works, where it fails, and whether it solves a problem strongly enough that they come back.

So that's my next experiment.

Can I get the first 10 people who don't know me to actually use GetButlr?

Then 25.

Then 100.

And eventually, can I get someone I've never spoken to, who has no reason to support me personally, to discover GetButlr and decide that the product is valuable enough to pay for?

That's the metric I'm going to follow now.

I'd particularly value feedback from other Indie Hackers:

When you look at GetButlr, is the problem we're solving immediately obvious?

And what would stop you, or a creator you know, from trying it?

I'm going to keep sharing the numbers and what I learn as I build.