What I learned building a launch channel matcher for indie devs

Ahmet Saridag — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:33:16 +0000

Six months ago, I was staring at a blank spreadsheet trying to figure out where to launch my side project. 😵‍💫

I asked on Twitter, got 12 different answers, and still had no clear idea which platforms actually made sense for my specific product.

That feeling stuck with me — because it felt like a solvable problem.

So I built something. ⚒️

A tool that takes what you're building and tells you exactly which communities and platforms are worth your time.

Not based on generic “best places to launch” lists — but based on what you’re actually making.

This article isn’t really a product announcement.

It’s more about what I learned while building the matching logic behind it. 🧠

How do you turn messy, qualitative “launch wisdom” into something structured enough to be useful in code?

That was the real challenge.

I’ll walk through:

• the data model I ended up with
• the decision logic behind the recommendations
• and a few things I completely got wrong the first time 😅

If you’ve ever tried to encode “expert judgment” into software, you’ll probably recognize some of these problems.

And if you haven’t — this might save you a few headaches later on.

DEV Community: Ahmet Saridag