What I'm building after ClawOffice didn't take off
Hey everyone ๐
ClawOffice was a bit of a gimmick - a 3D virtual office for AI agents. It was fun to build and got some attention on launch, but let's be real: it didn't take off. People thought it was cool for a minute, then moved on. No real retention, no real problem being solved.
Here's what I actually learned from it:
Novelty โ value. A cool concept gets you a launch day. It doesn't get you users who come back on day 30.
I was building for the demo, not the workflow. ClawOffice looked great in a screenshot. It didn't solve anything measurable for anyone.
"What gets tracked gets improved" is real. The founders I talked to afterward all had the same pain - they were shipping features and running experiments with no clue what was actually driving revenue.
That last one is what I'm building next. It's called Flowsery - an analytics tool focused on revenue tracking, not vanity metrics. Built it because I needed it myself after ClawOffice, and every indie maker I asked said the same thing: "I don't know which of my features actually makes money."
Still early, would love feedback from anyone here who's been in the same spot.
Question for you all: what's a project you shipped that you thought would land but didn't - and what did it teach you?
Replies
I am not fully convinced novelty is always bad. Sometimes it's just ahead of the workflow people have not formed yet.
Feels like a lot of products fail not because they are wrong, but because they optimize for first impression instead of repeat behavior.
How do you validating demand this time? @tarasshyn
ClawOffice
@jahanzaib_araย Demand for new websites is growing rapidly, driven by the rise of AI tools that make launching online products easier than ever. However, many non-technical users still lack access to analytics tools that are both simple to use and dependable. Existing solutions are often either overly complex or insufficiently accurate. This market gap is the foundation of my idea. As someone who operates multiple websites, I am developing this product with firsthand market insight and designing its features to meet the needs of businesses like my own.
What signal will tell you early that this is solving a workflow, not just looking useful on the surface?
Focusing on revenue forces clarity. Vanity metrics can hide problems, but money usually does not.
the point about building for the demo instead of the workflow hits hard. I have caught myself polishing visuals while ignoring whether anyone would actually use it daily.
@henry_lindseyย the shift toward revenue focused analytics sounds much more grounded. I often struggle to connect features with actual outcomes, so this direction feels more practical.
@henry_lindseyย @shawn_idreesย I am curious how you plan to track revenue attribution across features. I feel like that is where things usually get complicated very quickly
โBuilt for the demo, not the workflowโ is painfully accurate.
Most early products die exactly there, not from bad ideas, but from no repeat usage.
@judit10ย Really respect the honesty here. I have also built things that looked impressive at first but did not hold attention, and it took me time to accept that cool ideas are not the same as useful ones
@judit10ย @deangelo_hinkleย Something similar happened to me where initial feedback felt positive, but usage dropped quickly after the first interaction. That is when I realized I was solving curiosty , not a real problem.
Really respect this write-up, Taras. The "building for the demo, not the workflow" lesson is one more founders need to hear.
To answer your question: our first version of ad-vertly was over-engineered. We built a beautiful dashboard with 15 integrations before we had a single paying user. Launches felt great โ "look at all these integrations!" โ but nobody stuck around because we hadn't nailed the core loop.
The pivot moment was when we stopped building features and spent two weeks just doing the marketing work manually for 5 solo founders. That's when we learned what actually needed to be automated versus what people were fine doing themselves.
Flowsery sounds like it came from the same place of genuine pain. Revenue tracking being the thing people actually need vs. the thing that looks impressive โ that's a strong foundation. Good luck with it.
Novelty gets you a launch day; I learned that the hard way, too. Built a feature that got great demo feedback, shipped it, and nobody used it. Polite feedback and real feedback are very different things.