Original Summary

I've been building Anvil, a private AI assistant that runs offline on your iPhone, and I wanted to share how I got my first users, because it wasn't how I expected. I started where everyone says to start. I posted on a couple of big subreddits and got a nice bump in visitors and almost nobody who actually installed the beta. It felt good for a day and then nothing stuck. What worked was boring by comparison. I started hanging out on smaller forums, zukiru.com, haforum295.com. I didn't show up with a link. I read for a while, answered other people's questions, and only then mentioned that I was building something and said so openly. The crowd there was smaller, but they cared about running models on their own devices so the people who clicked through were the ones who actually wanted the thing. The best part was the conversations. People poked at the idea and told me what they'd want from it. A post on a small forum also sticks around for days instead of getting buried in an hour, so the replies kept coming. So far that's brought in about 200 TestFlight signups over 2 weeks. Not huge numbers, but they're real people who gave me real feedback, which beats a spike of traffic that vanishes. If you're early and stuck, I'd say find the small corner of the internet where your people already hang out, be useful there first, and be upfront that you built the thing. Curious which small communities have worked for you.   submitted by   /u/Opening-Ad6242 [link]   [comments]

  • 情报分类：硬件与数码
  • 分类依据：内容涉及硬件、数码产品或通信卡
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SaaS
  • 发布时间：2026/10/13 17:56:03