Hi HN! This is my latest side hustle, OctoLoops: an app to help indie devs and SMEs find paying customers for their business.

I first started building OctoLoops around 2 months ago because so many of my own projects, big and small, had failed or petered out from lack of users and the valuable feedback that comes with them.

When I started seriously digging, I found that distribution is one heck of a rabbit hole. The more I read, the more I found how much I didn't know. But I wanted to learn - and I really wanted to _apply_ that learning too, to all my new projects, in a repeatable, autonomous-as-possible way.

What better way to implement this plan than building a distribution app?

The idea was supposedly simple: implement a handful of "agentic loops" that anyone could easily run, in a web UI - no downloads or installing Claude Code, no complexity, human stays in the loop. A simple agentic harness in the browser with some superpowers to let it do its job.

I launched it quite soon after, and immediately started dogfooding, running the Community Loop. It found threads across Reddit from all those builders who'd made something cool, but were now at a loss when it came to finding and acquiring users. It drafted replies for me and gave a "spam risk", because yes - many kinds of marketing and sales walk a fine line between signal and blatant spam - and I started working the loops. Often I'd edit or write the replies myself; sometimes I'd remove the OctoLoops mention from the message.

It worked. I now have ~50 users, including one from a post-revenue B2B startup interested in using the Outbound loop. But there have been significant challenges already that I want to be open about here, in the hope that it helps other public builders.

1. Activation. This is currently my #1 pain point. My Community loops work - I can get people to sign up, enter their email, and I know there's even some buying intent. But people often log in once, then don't use the app. I've reached out to users, and they've said it's partly just that they don't want to post their app in communities they don't yet feel a real part of. Resistance to being rude or spammy, imposter syndrome - anyone who's done any marketing can identify. I'm trying to solve some of the issues of activation by building a more streamlined, less cluttered UX, but I'm not sure how to motivate people to really use the app in earnest. Maybe it's missing evidence of outcomes? Video tutorials?

2. Product focus. While researching competitors, what I notice most have in common is they focus on _one thing_: automated outbound; automated advertising; keyword monitoring. Not many people seem to be trying to make a fully autonomous omnichannel GTM agent, because that's too much. I decided to hide most of the channels I'd built already behind UI so users focus on community outreach and outbound sales. It's too early to say if that's the right call, and I know I'm still following an omnichannel strategy for OctoLoops itself.

3. Prioritising. I'm sure everyone says this, but: content strategy; SEO; socials; dogfooding... trying to talk to users, to understand why I'm not yet solving their problems and delivering them the outcomes they want. Attempting to keep my potential corporate customer in the funnel. Implementing new features - but which ones? And keeping up with the _insane pace_ of agentic apps and AI at large: so much is happening right now, hype and BS is everywhere, sometimes it's hard to know what's real.

So that's where I'm at, 2 months down the line. It's already been a fun journey. Any questions I'm happy to answer. Criticism is welcome too - I recognize some will view this as contributing to the already high volume of spam and slop out there, but that's honestly a balance I'm trying to find, and I'd love to hear opinions on how people should do sales and marketing in 2026 without driving people crazy.