Valentina Koniukhova

Three months. Two developers. One feature nobody used.

I knew it was bad when I checked the analytics and saw that the only person who used it more than once was me. And even I stopped after the second week.

Here's how I knew it was a waste of time. Not in hindsight. In the moment. I just ignored the signs.

The first sign: I couldn't explain it in one sentence.

When you build a startup, it is easy to fall in love with your own product. The landing page looks slick. The app feels polished. In your head, it seems obvious people should be showing up. Then reality hits. No traffic, no users, no momentum. You start wondering how something that feels so good can still feel invisible.

That was my wake up call with Brzzy Weather. I thought if I built a great weather app and optimized around weather app search, people would find me. Instead, I got humbled fast. I was basically a nothing burger buried deep in Google(does anyone even use Bing?), somewhere around page five, and most people searching never make it past the top few results. It made me realize that having a product is not the same thing as having a funnel.

Six months ago, I launched a product.

Beautiful landing page. Great onboarding. Real customers. Solid retention.

One problem: AI never mentioned it.

Not in ChatGPT. Not in Perplexity. Not in Gemini.