This is actually the hardest problem most startups face, the desperation spawned services like Product Hunt capitalizing on founders wanting success to be as simple as submitting a link to HN, Reddit, PH, etc.

The worst thing is practically everything you do in this space is going to fail, you can't solve it by adding features, nobody cares about your blog or self-promo posts, the only thing that really works is pouring money into advertising and that's a whole field of expertise too.

Partners can be tricky, particularly if you don't know them. My experience has often been that it's possible to find venture capitalists to push a business forward, but that's what you're saying you don't want. Besides, what they typically want is an already successful startup so that business potential is already apparent. Low risk investment.

Sorry to start out so negative, but from here, what are reasonable alternatives? There are sites where you can offer some kinds of software. You can even sell on amazon. Outside the box innovative solutions? Maybe someone will look at stats and have AI evaluate startups in a way that filters to some set of potentially successful products and be willing to enter such a risky market.

Ability for startups to get their product into Homebrew

Most techs are not salespeople. Most developers couldn’t sell ice in the Kalahari. A lot of our most talented code-slingers are so neurospicy that they have legitimate difficulties interacting with muggles on their own level.

So yeah, traffic is the one thing we nearly always do a spectacular faceplant on.

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