[jmduke]

This may be an unsatisfying answer: slowly.

I tweeted and wrote a fair deal about the process, and had good-but-not-great launches on HN and Product Hunt. There was definitely no 'big bang' where one day I did not have product-market fit and/or traction and then the next day I did; it was a slow drip of new users and new customers who helped refine the product & its position.

This is a strong _advantage_ of having something be a side project; your runway is drastically longer than other business models. (For example, from 2017—2018 MRR slowly grew from around $500 to around $1500. This slow growth felt painful, but also it was incredibly sustainable since I wasn't drawing a salary from it; churn was extremely low, and the only real problem was a small top-of-funnel since I wasn't going viral or spending money on ads.