SurfaceMap

I launched a cybersecurity product last week.

I expected the hardest part to be building it.

It wasn't.

The hard part is getting the first 100 people to see it.

I spent a lot of time building SurfaceMap, a desktop tool that helps security researchers visualize attack surfaces through subdomain discovery, screenshots, technology fingerprinting and mapping.

Launch week arrived.

I posted in communities.
I contacted creators.
I sent emails.
I offered demos.

Result?

Almost nobody saw it.

That was a humbling lesson.

As technical founders, we often assume distribution comes after the product.

In reality, distribution IS the product.

So instead of pretending I have marketing figured out, I'm trying something simple:

I'm looking for cybersecurity creators, bug bounty hunters, newsletter writers, YouTubers and community builders who already have an audience.

I've set up a 30% revenue share affiliate program with custom coupon codes.

No upfront payment.
No sponsorship budget.
Just shared upside.

If you create content for security researchers and think SurfaceMap could be useful to your audience, I'd love to talk.

And for other founders:

What channel actually generated your first paying customers?

Not traffic.

Not signups.

Actual paying users.

I received this cold email after posting SurfaceMap on Indie Hackers:

"The risk is worse: security researchers may understand the tool, like the idea, and still not try it because the page does not remove enough trust risk."

At first I thought my landing page problem was explaining what SurfaceMap does.

The email made me realize the real problem was different.

In security, people don't adopt tools because they're impressed.
They adopt them because they trust them.

My homepage talked about features:

• Subdomain discovery

• Screenshots

• Tech stack detection

• Risk scoring

But it wasn't answering the questions security researchers actually have:

• Does this run locally?

• What data leaves my machine?

• Is it safe to use?

• Why should I replace my existing workflow?

So I rewrote a section of the landing page around trust and workflow instead of features.

Before:
"SurfaceMap finds subdomains, screenshots websites and generates reports."

After:
"Stop chaining tools. Start mapping surfaces."

Then I showed the contrast between the traditional recon workflow:

subfinder → httpx → nuclei → custom scripts → spreadsheets

and the SurfaceMap workflow:

surfacemap scan example.com → dashboard → insights

Most importantly, I added a clear privacy statement:

"Your scan results, screenshots, reports and metadata never leave your machine."

The feedback of one post completely changed how I think about positioning SurfaceMap.

Sometimes users don't need more features.
They need fewer reasons to hesitate.

Curious: what's the best piece of feedback you received?

When I started building SurfaceMap, I thought the hard part would be attack surface discovery itself.

I was wrong.

Finding subdomains, collecting screenshots, fingerprinting technologies and building a visual representation of a target's attack surface was challenging, but it turned out to be only part of the journey.

What nobody tells you when building a software product is how much work exists outside the product itself.

After getting the core functionality working, I still had to solve dozens of problems that users never see.

I had to make the application compile and run consistently across different operating systems.

I had to create installers for each platform and make sure updates wouldn't break existing installations.

I built a release pipeline around GitHub Releases so I could distribute new versions reliably.

I deployed a serverless Cloudflare-based guardian layer to support licensing and update validation.

I created a landing page from scratch.

I wrote the documentation.

I organized the onboarding flow.

I set up distribution through Gumroad.

I prepared screenshots, demos and release assets.

Then came something I was even less prepared for: marketing.

As engineers, we often imagine that launching means publishing a link and watching people arrive.

Reality looks very different.

I spent hours reaching out to cybersecurity creators, bug bounty hunters and technical influencers, trying to get honest feedback and visibility.

I submitted SurfaceMap to communities where security researchers gather.

I rewrote descriptions over and over.

I changed screenshots.

I adjusted messaging.

I refined onboarding.

I fixed bugs reported by early users.

And somehow the work never seemed to end.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that building the software is only one piece of building a product.

A product is code, distribution, documentation, support, releases, positioning, feedback loops and trust.

SurfaceMap started as a tool I wanted for my own workflow.

Today it's the result of hundreds of small decisions that happened long after the first working version existed.

I'm still improving it every day, and I'd love to hear feedback from fellow builders, security researchers and bug bounty hunters.

What part of launching a product surprised you the most?

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