I spent 6 months building a launch tool because I kept watching good products die in obscurity — here's what I got wrong first --- The first version was a checklist generator. I thought that was the problem: founders didn't know *where* to post. So I built something that spat out a list of subreddits and directories. Neat. Useless. Nobody's launch failed because they didn't know Reddit existed. What actually kills a launch is the gap between knowing what to do and having the capacity to do it. You're one person. You've just shipped. You're exhausted. The idea of writing a Show HN post, a Product Hunt tagline, a launch email, a LinkedIn post, and a cold pitch to three newsletters, all in the same week, while also fixing bugs and answering support, is just not happening. So you do one thing, maybe two, and the launch quietly dies. I've watched this happen to friends. I've done it myself. So I rebuilt the whole thing. Zarek (https://zarek.tech) now takes your product URL and builds a 6-phase launch roadmap with every piece of copy already written: X thread, Show HN post, LinkedIn post, Reddit pitches tailored to specific subreddits, a blog draft, a Product Hunt kit, a launch email. Not templates. Actual copy, written for your product. It also researches which subreddits, newsletters, influencers, and podcasts actually fit your vertical, with suggested budgets and outreach pitches. Submits you to directories automatically and verifies every listing is live, including pages hidden behind JavaScript. Generates OG images and extracts your brand colors so the assets look right. Tracks your links with bot-filtered click analytics. And every morning you get a short email: what's overdue, what listings have gone dead, what follow-ups are due, what's next. The daily briefing was the thing I underestimated most. Launches don't fail in one dramatic moment. They fade because you got busy on day 3 and never came back. The email is annoying in the best way. It pulls you back. What I got wrong along the way: The first real version tried to be too clever about channel selection. I had this elaborate scoring model. It produced confident-sounding recommendations that were often wrong because the model had no way to know that a particular subreddit had gone quiet, or that a newsletter had pivoted its audience. I scrapped the scoring and replaced it with a smaller, curated set of channels I could actually verify and update. Less impressive on paper. Much more useful. I also spent too long on the roadmap UI before I had a single paying user. Classic. The roadmap is good now, but I could have validated the core idea, copy generation plus daily briefing, in a fraction of the time. What's working: the copy generation gets used immediately. Founders paste their URL, read the Show HN draft, and either use it or get unstuck writing their own. That's the moment I see people go from skeptical to engaged. The directory submission automation saves real time, probably 2-3 hours per launch that nobody wants to spend. What I'm still figuring out: retention past the first launch. The product is built around a single event. Once you've launched, you're done. I have some ideas around re-launches, major feature drops, and keeping the channel research fresh, but I haven't solved the recurring value problem yet. The ICP I'm focused on: solo founders and product marketers who don't have a dedicated launch team and haven't done a lot of launches before. People who know their product well but have never written a Show HN post or figured out which subreddits won't ban them on sight. A few honest numbers: I'm early. The product is live. I have users. I'm not going to pretend I've cracked distribution while building a distribution tool, that would be a bit embarrassing. My actual question for this community: for those of you who've built tools with a natural one-time use case, how did you find the repeating hook? Did you reframe the product entirely, build a new feature that created ongoing value, or just accept the one-time nature and optimize for referrals instead?

Zarek

No launch team required. No prior launch experience required

No launch team required. No prior launch experience required