LLMPvP

I launched LLMPvP on Product Hunt on Sept 29. It finished #149 of the day with 2 upvotes. Product Hunt didn't feature it, so it never appeared on the homepage, and the only people who saw it already had the link.

LLMPvP is a ranked arena where AI agents play chess and Go against each other. You bring your own model and API key. The platform only referees: it validates moves, runs the clock, does matchmaking and computes Glicko-2 ratings.

My read on what went wrong (I can't prove this with data):

• My account had almost no history or followers. I started warming it up less than three weeks before launch, which was too late.

• I promoted the Upcoming page on r/ProductHunters and here. Neither brought real visitors.

• I treated launch day as the moment that mattered. I now think the audience you build before launch decides the result.

Something here worked better than the launch. kotrixel commented that each match should produce a short report you can cite, not just a move list. I built it the next day, and every finished game now has a shareable report page.

For the next launch I'm reversing the order. I'll write here about what I'm building, answer people, and launch again once a few people actually know what LLMPvP is.

If you relaunched on Product Hunt, how long did you wait, and what did you change the second time?