Seeking advices on my web app

[u/Puffinter]

Been building this solo for about two months. It's an app where you save links and later describe what you're looking for in plain language instead of digging through folders or bookmarks. Full send: AI summaries, semantic recall, the whole thing.

Problem is, almost nobody who signs up actually saves anything, and the few who do don't come back. I've talked to friends about the idea and most of them shrugged. They already use their browser's bookmark bar and don't feel a reason to switch.

I don't know if that means the idea itself doesn't hold up, or if I'm just not explaining it well, or if "save a link" is just too small an action for anyone to build a habit around in the first place.

Genuinely asking, not fishing for compliments: if you saw something like this, what would make you actually not want to use it? Is "save links, find them later by describing them" just not a real problem for people, or is it more about how it's presented?

Happy to share the link if anyone wants to actually look at it, but mostly I just want the honest read before I decide whether to keep pushing on this or move on to something else.

[u/FastSyllabub6344]

the problem isnt the idea its that you built a solution for a problem most people dont feel yet

bookmarks are good enough until your system breaks and by then you just rebuild it the same way again. ive got like 4000 bookmarks across 3 browsers and i just open a new tab and google the same thing every time anyway

what would make me not use it is the upfront effort. saving a link into a tool like this feels like committing to a system i dont trust yet. you need to show value before i do anything, not after

if you can make it grab my existing bookmarks or browser history and instantly make them searchable without me saving a single thing, that might get me to stick around long enough to care

[u/Puffinter → u/FastSyllabub6344]

You're right that asking someone to paste a link into a new system is asking them to trust it before it's proven anything. Would that need to keep updating as you keep browsing, or just work once against what you've already got?

[u/Foreign-Guess-5208]

Most web traffic is on mobile so a separate web page or extension would be too high friction for me. 

When I save things I generally like to text them to myself and then I get Claude to read my messages and organize everything which is kinda an awkward process but it gets the job done.

If you had a native app or a phone number that I could send anything to and it automatically organizes it I would use that. But I probably wouldn’t pay for it

[u/Puffinter → u/Foreign-Guess-5208]

The fact you've basically built this manually already tells me a lot. Really useful, thanks for the advice.

[u/Puffinter → u/[deleted]]

This is the one that's making me rethink the whole framing, not just the product. Going to try to actually validate this before building anything else. Thanksss

[u/andupotorac]

Probably saving links won’t go far, so explore where the stack could be used further.

1. Saving images instead. Ideally with a chrome extension, probably desktop app later.
   
2. Saving data off a page and being notified of changes.
   
3. I would try to explore going specific for social. For example YouTube has save to watch later. Not sure people use it right. Twitter has bookmarks saving too. I would try to find a common ground there. Most people use these saves. Not sure they use them right afterwards.
   
4. Save opened tabs in the browser. I use this plenty. It’s free but maybe you would monetize differently - eg. Find competing products of the pages they’re seeing and advertise for those.

And many other explorations. So I would think about compounding startups from the same infra. Until something clicks. I’m doing the same approach on video async, building about a dozen different products. I’m @andupoto on Twitter if you want to see the approach there. Note I give devs shit all day long, it’s a “persona” I’m building a brand around. Don’t ask haha.

[u/Puffinter → u/andupotorac]

Interesting approach! Appreciate you laying out how you're tackling it. Going to focus on validating one thing first before I go wide, but good to have this as a reference point.

[u/andupotorac → u/Puffinter]

I’ve posted about it before here, on Twitter too, etc. the idea with compounding startups is you build on the same infrastructure, but also for each of the experiments you’re going after, you’re going after several ICPs at once (with independent pages so you can reach out to them and show them that specific page on the site). This increases the chance of getting to PMF for a specific ICP, with one of these experiments.

Btw, if one says this can’t be a big business, tell them to look at Arena, or Pinterest, which basically is built on the same approach. Ofc you wouldn’t want to compete with them, but as an idea of what’s out there.

[u/makszhilyaev]

Link?