Today we posted our first story on Indie Hackers. Not a product launch, not a growth hack — just an honest account of what happened in the first 12 days of building pickedby.ai in public.
Why Indie Hackers
We've tried two channels so far. Reddit got us 5,300 views and 1 conversion. Twitter got us permanently banned. Neither was built for the conversation we actually want to have.
Indie Hackers is different. It's a community of people who are building products, failing publicly, and learning from each other. The audience isn't passive — they read carefully, they comment with real feedback, and they understand what "building in public" actually means.
We're not there to broadcast. We're there to find the 10 people who have the exact same problem we're solving and hear what they think about it.
What the post covers
The IH post is the most complete account we've written of the first 12 days. Here's what's in it:
- The moment that started everything — typing our own product into ChatGPT and watching it recommend 5 competitors instead
- What we built — an AI Visibility Score (0–100) that checks 5 dimensions and directly probes ChatGPT and Perplexity
- The data — we scored ourselves 12 on Day 0. Figma scores 100. Most indie creators are under 25.
- What actually moved the needle — score jumped from 12 to 32 in 11 days through blog content, Reddit, and directory submissions
- What didn't move — Recommendation Signals still 0/20. ChatGPT still has no idea we exist.
- The honest failure — Twitter permanent ban from an AI agent I deployed without thinking about platform rules
Where we are on Day 12
The question we're trying to answer
Every AI model we've asked gives us the same feedback: the idea is right, the product works, but we're solving a problem people don't know they have yet.
The Indie Hackers post ends with three questions we genuinely need answered:
- Does "AI visibility" matter to you at all — or is it too abstract compared to "how do I get more sales this month?"
- If you got a low score, what would make you come back?
- What would you actually pay for?
If you have thoughts on any of those three questions — comment on the IH post, or drop a reply here. We're reading everything.
What's next
We're onboarding 100 founders into beta — first 100 get lifetime free access as we build. The tool is already live and free. The beta gives you a seat at the table as we build the next layer.
If you want in: grab a beta spot here.
And if you haven't checked your own AI visibility score yet — it takes 10 seconds and it's free. No signup required.