Shall I give up now? Though nobody is utilising our SaaS, everyone claims to adore it

Backstory:

I launched my first SaaS, Snippet Hive, last month with a friend (both of us are technical). Since then, everyone I’ve shown it to has said they love it, but they’ve either barely used it or not used it at all.

The Idea:
To clarify, the main idea was to save time on complex code snippets that typically require lengthy interactions with AI models (e.g., for a hero section, authentication, etc.).

We thought about creating a public library where users could share their snippets. This way, anyone could look up snippets, use them directly through IDE integration, or modify them with AI chats before adding them to their projects.

The library was always meant to be a free tool, with additional advanced features planned for revenue generation.

What We’ve Built So Far:

-Chrome Extension: Allows users to find and add code from the public library to AI chats or save their own code.
-VS Code Extension Similar functionality to the Chrome extension for finding and saving code.
Website: For profile building, rating snippets, and maintaining quality.

Our goal was to attract at least 50 early users to address their problems and build features around their needs. However, we’re struggling to achieve this.

I’m unsure if the issue lies with the idea, the product itself, or if we’re not doing enough outreach. Maybe the people we’ve contacted so far aren’t early adopters.

I’d appreciate any advice on what to do next. I feel it’s too early to give up, and I believe there’s potential; it might just be that our marketing efforts aren’t effective yet.

Honestly, I’d prefer direct feedback on whether the product isn’t good rather than receiving praise that doesn’t translate into actual use.

This is my first time posting here, so if the “Idea” section seems too lengthy or promotional, please let me know if I should edit anything.

For me, there’s no reason to use a different service when I can get the code snippets I need from GitHub. Though it’s a great idea, you might probably make it more enticing.

For instance, choosing several snippets and allowing AI to compile them into an API service or functional landing page. Since you frequently find templates that are just around 60% of what you actually need, I would absolutely use that.

I appreciate your feedback.

In actuality, you can already do that. You can ask your AI chatbot to generate a complete landing page after adding several snippets, for example.
Although we intend to provide this as a fully integrated service as well, our current goal is to expand the publicly accessible, free snippets library.
Thus far, it appears like we are either heading in the wrong path or my explanations are not clear enough.

The same problem affects me. Though everyone thinks it’s great, nobody actually tries it. I have my doubts about the follow-up and onboarding process.

1 Like

Could you share the product in the DMs or here? I’d be pleased to provide input based on what I’ve found out so far.

Interesting idea, but it seems like all AI tools already have a history feature.

I suggest starting by validating the market. As a developer who uses AI snippets, I wouldn’t personally use your product, though I do like the concept and the landing page.

Consider the vitamin vs. painkiller approach. Right now, your idea seems like a “vitamin” something nice to have but not essential. You’ll need to make it more of a “painkiller,” addressing a pressing problem.

I recommend promoting it everywhere you can, such as on Product Hunt, Twitter, Reddit, etc., and engaging with developers who show any interest. Ask them what would make them want to use your product.

You might also consider adding new features and marketing them individually. If a particular feature generates interest, focus on it and make it the core selling point of your SaaS essentially, pivot based on feedback.
For feature suggestions, consider adding a tool that gathers code snippets from Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, allowing users to choose and save the best one. Another idea is to save all prompts and notify users if they’ve used similar prompts before, helping them avoid redundant queries and save tokens.

Many thanks; this is excellent feedback!

Will do this, and using all the knowledge we’ve gained from this experience, we’ll move on to the next idea if we can’t reach our goal of 50 users by the end of the month.

It’s possible that you’re overestimating how frequently users need to save snippets.Almost never have I needed to preserve snippets in my hundreds of websites that I’ve worked on. Every organisation always has something special to offer.

The snippet is easily locateable inside the code base, should I require it.
Rarely have I preserved little bits of HTML and JS for the user interface. Items that are mostly embedded.