As users, we all want to try a product before committing. As builders, we want to show real value without over-engineering and investing time 'just for show'. Finding that balance is harder than it looks.
I just shipped my demo for Rewo (https://rewo.app), and intentionally went with a live, real demo:
Fully functional product (same codebase as prod)
Uses demo data instead of real integrations
Some interfacing + sync pieces are disabled
Auto-resets on a schedule so anyone can jump in fresh
Been building in voice ai business for more than a year, sold to a few of the fortune 500s and also to agencies n startups, selling voice ai isnt that hard if you actually knoow what matters to the person in the buying end, happy to have this thread open for techies n business folks who want to make money in this space.
As a solo developer I feel like I am constantly caught between building new stuff and fixing my past mistakes.
When you are trying to launch fast you write quick dirty code just to see if an idea works. But a few months later that same code turns into a headache. Changing a tiny button now breaks two completely unrelated things.
The issue is users always want new features but my codebase is crying for a complete rewrite. If I spend two weeks refactoring I ship zero updates to users. If I keep building new features the whole app will eventually break.
For those running solo projects long term how do you balance refactoring with building new features. Do you set aside specific days for tech debt or just fix things as you go?
We're getting ready to launch on Product Hunt for the first time. The marketing team is one person, just me ;p
Scrolling through launches from bigger brands is a bit intimidating. They have launch videos, whole marketing teams answering comments all day, and hunters with big followings. We have limited time, resources and a to-do list that doesn't get shorter.
I'm preparing for my first Product Hunt launch, and I've been trying to understand what actually makes the difference between a launch that gets some attention and one that reaches the top of the leaderboard.
There is a lot of advice online about launching on Product Hunt: building an audience beforehand, getting early supporters, posting at the right time, engaging with the community, getting comments, sharing on social media, etc.
But I'd rather hear from people who have actually done it.
Watched a product go from "hoping to get featured" this morning to #1 by this afternoon, and paid attention to what actually pulled people into the comments instead of just counting upvotes.
The single comment that got the most reaction wasn't a pitch. It was the founder admitting a real gap straight up, saying a part of the product wasn't built well yet. That pulled more replies than any feature announcement in the same thread.
My question may be stupid, but it's very important to me for developing my products. I would like to verify that my website can be viewed by specific users from specified countries such as United States, Canada, Mexico, etc. I tried some web proxy via Google search results. It works but I'm not sure it's really from specified countries, for eg., I checked with United States but YouTube video returns Chinese interface, that means website is accessed from China, not United States.
