Building from India: The Challenge of Getting Early Users—and Why I Built Astro Discover

Aman — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:25:42 +0000

Hey DEV Community!

I'm an indie developer from India. Like many builders, I had a simple goal: build a useful product from scratch and share it with the world.

Using Google Gemini Build in AI Studio, I built and deployed a full-stack platform called Astro Discover. It's a simple, clutter-free platform designed to help developers and early-stage startups discover and showcase projects.

The application was working, the design looked good, and the backend APIs were running. But then came the hardest part: getting the first 100 visitors.

The Challenge of Getting Early Users

As a new developer, I've found that building a product is only half the journey. Getting it in front of the right audience can be just as challenging.

Here are some of the obstacles I encountered:

Directories and Launch Platforms

Some directories have long submission queues, making it difficult to know when a project will be reviewed or published. Paid priority options can also make promotion challenging for builders working with a limited budget.

Some developer communities have account-age, karma, and posting requirements. As a new member, it can be difficult to share a project and reach the right audience while learning each community's rules.

Developer Communities and Other Channels

On platforms such as Hacker News and Indie Hackers, getting attention for a new project can be difficult without an existing audience. I've learned that simply posting a link doesn't guarantee that people will discover or try your product.

I spent weeks exploring different ways to promote my work, but getting consistent traffic remained a challenge.

Why I Built Astro Discover

This experience inspired me to create Astro Discover. I wanted to build a platform where indie developers, students, and early-stage founders could showcase their projects and help others discover them.

Here are three features I'm building around that idea:

A Clear Review Process

Projects can remain visible with a Pending status while they're under review, so visitors can see submissions without having to wait for the entire review process to finish. My goal is to review submissions within 48 hours.

Stage-Based Project Discovery

You don't have to wait until your product is fully launched to showcase it. You can share a project at different stages, including Idea, Building, Beta, and Live.

This gives builders a place to share early ideas, find potential testers, and introduce their finished products.

Smart Autofill

Instead of manually filling in every field, you can paste your project's URL. Astro Discover can extract available information, such as founder details, social links, open-source license information, and pricing details, helping simplify the submission process.

The Tech Stack Behind Astro Discover

I built the platform using Google Gemini Build, working with the following technologies:

Frontend: React, TypeScript, Vite, and Tailwind CSS
Backend: Node.js and Express
Database: Cloud Firestore for community activity and project discussions
AI integration: Google GenAI SDK for metadata extraction and automated checks

Building Astro Discover has been a learning experience. It has taught me that launching a product is not just about writing code or creating a good design. Understanding users, reaching the right community, and listening to feedback are important parts of building something useful.

I'd Love Your Honest Feedback

Astro Discover is free to use and explore:

Website: https://astrodiscover.ai.studio

I'd love to hear from fellow developers and indie makers:

What's your biggest challenge when trying to get your first users?
What features would make a project discovery platform more useful to you?
Have you found any effective ways to promote a new project without a large budget?

If you're building something, you're welcome to explore Astro Discover and submit your project.

I'm still improving the platform, and honest feedback would help me decide what to build next.

Thanks for reading my story! I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

I Built a Full-Stack Product Discovery Engine Using Google Gemini Build (Here is What I Learned)

Aman — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 14:20:02 +0000

Hey Dev community,

Like many of you, I wanted to build something real. I noticed how crowded and pay-to-play standard product directories had become, especially for indie hackers who are still in the "active building" or "beta testing" phase.

So I built Astro Discover (https://astrodiscover.ai.studio) — a fast, clean discovery launchpad for developers and indie startups.

The Build Story: Building with Google Gemini Build

I built this entire full-stack platform using Google Gemini Build in AI Studio:

Express backend + React/TypeScript frontend.
An automated metadata pipeline that parses real founders, licenses, pricing models, and tech stacks directly from any product URL.
An interactive in-app responsive device preview so visitors can test tools without jumping tabs.
Multi-stage pipelines (Idea → Building → Beta → Live) so makers can get feedback long before their official launch.

The build process with Gemini was insanely fast. Features that usually take 2-3 weeks were done in days.

The Problem: 0 Traffic After Launching on PH & Directories

Once it was live, I did the standard "launch playbook":

Listed on Product Hunt.
Submitted to several free directories and launch aggregators.
Waited for traffic.

Result? Crickets. Almost zero organic visitors.

What went wrong (and what I'm changing):

Aggregators don’t give distribution anymore: Submitting to 20 directories won't bring real users if the community isn’t engaged inside your niche.
The cold-start problem: A discovery platform needs both creators submitting tools and developers discovering them. Launching on general sites brought neither.
Solving technical hurdles: Even AI crawlers and bots struggled initially because of client-side rendering hurdles, which prevented proper search engine indexing (just fixed this with crawlable pre-rendering).

My Question to Dev community:

If you’ve built a two-sided platform (curators/creators + discovery audience), what was the ONE thing that broke the cold start for you? Was it manual 1-on-1 outreach to niche founders, building in public on X, or creating SEO landing pages for specific tool categories?