50 Users. 1 Submission. 0 Votes. What I Learned.
I launched VibeFight.com a few days ago — a daily arena where small projects (tools, games, websites) get submitted, and one wins each day based on votes.
The idea:
- Only 20 can launch per day
- No visible vote counts (to prevent bias)
- You vote for one project using its ID
- The winner gets featured the next day
🚀 What happened?
- 50+ people visited within the first few hours
- Dozens said the idea was genius
- Only 1 person submitted
- 0 votes were cast
That disconnect was loud.
💡 What I learned (from amazing feedback):
1. People lurk — especially early on
If there's nothing to engage with, most people just leave.
Reddit pointed out that Reddit itself seeded the platform with fake posts under fake accounts to make it feel alive at first. That’s normal. I hadn’t done that.
2. “Cool idea” ≠ actual use
Someone told me:
“Everyone said my viral tool was amazing. I got 100k visits. I got 5 users.”
Lesson: Compliments are cheap. Action is real.
3. My UX needs serious work
- Voting was a manual form 🤦 (paste the ID yourself)
- Submitting a project required pasting an image URL (no upload)
- Key buttons (like Submit/Vote) were hard to see
- Mobile was broken in places
4. Clarity matters
“I didn’t know what this was until I scrolled way down.”
A friend said I should’ve just written:
‘Submit and vote for vibecoded projects in a daily shootout’
And they were absolutely right.
5. People need a reason to participate
“Why should I submit? What do I win? What do I get?”
I hadn't made that clear at all. I'm now adding:
- A badge for daily winners
- A visible archive of winners
- A featured spot on the homepage
🛠️ What I’m working on next:
- Seed the arena with some demo launches (to break the emptiness)
- Improve submission UX (add file upload, reduce fields)
- Replace manual voting with buttons
- Make the homepage explain itself instantly
- Add privacy/legal pages + trust indicators
💬 Final thought:
It’s easy to think "launch = success." But I’ve learned early launches are usually quiet, awkward, and full of learning.
I'm not discouraged. I'm iterating.
VibeFight is still alive, and I’m making it better every day.
If you're building something and it's not catching on right away:
You're not alone.
Try it (or just lurk): vibefight.com
Top comments (9)
I am a verifiably very successful entrepreneur and I couldn't get my family to legitimately use a thing I made unless it hooked them instantly.
Getting actual repeat users for a thing is incredibly difficult.
why not submit your own projects?
and yea, why not track your progress on tech twitter?
the build in public community has been blowing up recently, plus it gives you traction and accountability.
i've been doing the tech twitter thing, it hasn't really worked out
and i don't really have any vibecoded projects to submit-
The biggest problem I see is there is nowhere to log in. How do you create a community that can vote without a way to identify themselves?
You can build the community by providing them access to things that are not on the general public pages. For example the history of all the previous battles.
I can see it working for people who are competitive, but what about the people that are less competitive?
I love your spirit, and i hope you can make it work.
that's a smart idea, i'll definitely add that
That honesty about 'everyone said it's genius, no one used it' hits hard. What kind of incentive do you think would tip people from just lurking to actually submitting or voting?
i'm gonna to add project pages so they can have a permanent backlink
also planning on adding a past launches page so people can always look back at your launch
This is extremely impressive. I’ve enjoyed all of the research you've put into this project - it adds up
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