A few weeks ago, I launched my SaaS, Huesly.

I pushed it everywhere.
Twitter. DMs. Emails. Communities.
I built a clean landing page and polished the product.

It got over 800 views.

Six users signed up.

Zero conversions.

If you are curious, it still lives here at huesly.app

What Actually Went Wrong

At first, I thought it was friction.

Maybe the signup flow was bad.
Maybe OAuth was confusing.

So I added email logins.

Nothing changed.

That is when I realized the problem was deeper.

I Solved a Problem I Personally Had

I built Huesly because I lived the problem.

Design systems were painful for me.
Keeping things consistent felt annoying.
I assumed every founder felt the same way.

That assumption was wrong.

Some people literally asked me what a design system even was.

Even the users who tried the product never came back.

Not because it was bad.
Because the problem was too niche.

It was a real pain point, but it happened maybe once a month.

That is not something most people pay for.

You Cannot Force a Bad Idea to Work

I tried everything.

Posting everywhere.
Emailing users.
Improving onboarding.
Refining copy.

None of it mattered.

When the problem is not strong enough, effort does not save you.

This one truth hurt.

The Lesson I Took Away

Validation is not optional.

You need:

A problem users feel often
A solution that is clearly better than alternatives
Proof people care before you go deep

Skill does not replace validation.
Clean design does not replace validation.
Hard work does not replace validation.

Why This Failure Still Matters

Even though Huesly failed, something important happened.

I shipped.

I did not overthink forever.
I did not hide behind preparation.

And that failure directly led to Shipr.

Shipr exists because I needed a way to validate ideas faster, cheaper, and more honestly.

This time, I am not guessing.

Final Thought

This post is uncomfortable to write.

But it is real.

If you are building something right now, ask yourself one question early.

Do people feel this problem every day, or only when it is convenient?

That answer decides everything.