You spent three weekends with Claude or ChatGPT. You built something that actually works. The dopamine hit was real.

Then you shipped it. Posted on Twitter. Maybe got a few upvotes on Product Hunt.

Now it's Tuesday and you're staring at zero active users.

Welcome to the hard part.

Building Was Never The Bottleneck

AI tools made something incredible possible: non-technical people can now build functional products. You went from idea to working prototype in days, not months.

But here's what nobody told you: the hard part was never the building.

It was always distribution.

Every successful product has solved two problems: the technical problem (does it work?) and the distribution problem (will anyone use it?).

AI solved the first one for you. It didn't solve the second.

The Distribution Reality Check

Most first-time builders think distribution looks like this:

  1. Build cool thing
  2. Post on social media
  3. Users appear

Here's what it actually looks like:

  1. Find where your users already hang out
  2. Understand what they're struggling with right now
  3. Build something that solves that specific struggle
  4. Show up where they are, repeatedly
  5. Help them succeed with your thing

Notice the order? You find users before you build. Not after.

You're Competing With Everything

Your AI-built tool isn't competing with other AI-built tools. It's competing with:

  • Doing nothing (the default choice)
  • The janky spreadsheet they've used for years
  • The enterprise software their boss made them buy
  • Every other tab they have open right now

You're not fighting for feature parity. You're fighting for attention, then behavior change, then habit formation.

That's a different game.

What Actually Works

Stop trying to get everyone. Start with someone.

One person. One specific use case. One painful problem they have right now.

Find that person. Watch them use your thing. See where they get stuck. Fix that. Do it again.

This doesn't scale. That's the point. You're not ready to scale yet.

You're trying to figure out if anyone actually wants this. And the only way to know is to push it into someone's hands and watch what happens.

The Unfair Advantage You Didn't Know You Had

You built something with AI. You know what that means?

You can iterate faster than anyone who can't.

When someone tells you "this is close but I actually need X," you can build X. This week. Maybe today.

That's your edge. Not perfection. Speed.

Most products fail because they build the wrong thing. You can build the wrong thing, learn it's wrong, and build the right thing before most teams finish their sprint planning.

Use that.

Distribution Channels That Work For Small Projects

Here's what's actually working for solo builders right now:

Communities with problems: Find Discord servers, Slack groups, or Reddit communities where people actively complain about the problem you solved. Show up. Be helpful. When it's relevant, share your thing.

Content that ranks: Write about the problem. Use the words your users use when they Google their problem. Let search engines send you people who are actively looking for solutions.

One-on-one conversations: Sounds slow. It is. It also means every user you get is a conversation about exactly what works and what doesn't. That feedback is worth more than 1,000 passive signups.

Build in public: Share your learnings, your struggles, your small wins. People follow journeys, not products. Give them a journey.

The Question You Should Be Asking

"How do I get more users?" is the wrong question.

The right question: "How do I make the first 10 people successful?"

Once you can answer that, you'll know what to say to the next 100. But you won't know what to say to the next 100 until you've made the first 10 actually get value.

You're Earlier Than You Think

If you're reading this thinking "I should have figured out distribution before building," you're wrong.

You needed to build first. You needed to prove to yourself you could do it. You needed something real to put in front of people.

Now you have that.

The second chapter is harder than the first. But it's the one that actually matters.

Go find one person who has the problem you solved. Make them successful. Then do it again.

That's distribution.