[arnaudsm]

It's crazy how markets saturate quickly online. You really need a large marketing budget and/or network effect to triumph nowadays, product quality is not differentiating enough. I am scared for the future, this will inevitably lead in harder-to-break monopolies.

I worked for an entire year on a next-gen comparison engine (picked.cc if you want to check it out), and even with exciting user feedback and crazy conversion rates, it probably will never scale because of those reasons.

[myth_drannon]

You need initial capital or connections. Right now in Canada the well connected are flushed with free money from the government. Just say you are doing AI or add AI to the company name (nope, elasticsearch document scoring recommendation is not AI!) and you get millions from the government to push your way into the market.

[tixocloud]

I’d love to see some of that money. I’m Canadian and you’re right, the stuff that gets put out as AI is quite sad. They tried to pitch me as well to get my feedback on their platform.

[virgilp]

> even with exciting user feedback and crazy conversion rates, it probably will never scale

How so? With crazy conversion rates, all you need is capital. Capital is readily available nowadays, if you need that marketing budget you can get it. Unless you do something inherently stupid like selling 1$ for 50 cents...

[arnaudsm]

I was a student in debt at the time. Fortunately this project caught the eye of a fellow HNer and helped me get my first job in the bay area.

[treebornfrog]

Neat idea, I created something similar years ago but didn't know how to market it.

What's your strategy to get users?

[arnaudsm]

I tried every single trick in the book : SEA is too expensive. Word-to-mouth needs more critical mass. Website is not sexy enough to get press and backlinks. Blackhat SEO is out of question.

My only hope is to rebrand the website as a carbon comparison engine, which will make it easier to sell it to the mainstream media. Surfing trends is often the best solution.