I know folks are blaming AI but looking back on my 17 years in tech, AI is just the latest hyped-up fever-dream. And whenever there's hype the marketers will do whatever they can to move the metrics, regardless of industry. They hide unsub links, force auth to unsub, auto sub you to new newsletters, send you "we're sorry to see you go" emails, and more.
It really depends on your definition of wealth. Most engineers I know clear 100K+ pretty easily after a few years of experience. If you're in a hot market or sector, you can easily earn $180k+ after 5-8 years. If you produce consistent value for a business, $225k is definitely achievable.
Understand that by making $100k+ you're basically in the top 10-15% of earners in the U.S. [1]. Make $180k/yr and you're in the top 4%.
And realize that plenty of people who make >$150k spend like crazy trying to keep up with the Jones. Plenty of people who make $80k/yr spend wisely end up having more "wealth" in the end.
Lots of people leap before they have a parachute because the plebeian view is that entrepreneurs take risks. The reality is that good entrepreneurs manage their risk neurotically. It doesn't help your situation now, but always start these endeavors as night + weekend projects. Manage your risk. Test the market. Get 5 paying customers, then start thinking about quitting your full time job.
So, some feedback...
From what I gather, OpenLoop a tool for me to organize information and/or projects, generic enough to be used across many verticals and company orgs. It sounds similar to Trello or Basecamp. And that's OK. I'm not sure if my view is accurate, but that's what I feel like you're trying to sell.
"Show, don't tell". Go look at trello.com. Go look at basecamp.com/tour. As a potential customer, I want to see screenshots of the software before I signup. I want to see what's different. I'm asking myself "is this worth my time?" Show me a gif of OpenLoop in action. Or make a short screencast (with actual video of the software, not a high-level animation) and stick it right in the hero. Put up a demo at demo.openlooopz.com. Automatically wipe/reimage the account every night to keep out spam and vulgarity. Let people play with it.
Explore verticals. Are there verticals currently using OpenLoop really well? Project Managers? Nurses? Accountants? Is it really great at bug tracking? Highlight those on your website - "Project Managers use OpenLoop to Deliver Great Products", "Squash bugs quickly with OpenLoop". Build some dedicated landing pages for those verticals and buy some FB ads. Measure pageviews/signups and see who is most interested.
Testimonials or Case Studies. Talk to people currently using OpenLoop and ask them for a quote to put on your page.
Blogs. Setup a tumblr in 15 seconds and start blogging about how people are using OpenLoop. Publish guides on popular workflows. Publish ways you're different than your competitors.
Refine your copy. People generally don't read large blocks of text. I could tell you were struggling to describe your product because the first item in your FAQ is "What is a loop". Ditch the copy and show me the software.
Ditch the "Slack Meets Github" tagline. Perhaps you only used that here. But it didn't help me understand the product.
Naysayers come and go. Don't give up, but make sure you're providing if that's your role. If you're out of fuel (money), time to do a contract gig to earn some more runway. You might even have to go back to full time work and do OpenLoop on the weekends. There is no shame in that. If you can, take a 2 week break from anything OpenLoop related (perhaps a contract) and spend time with your family. You'll come back refreshed and find yourself with tons of new ideas for ways to market/advertise, new verticals to research, better copy, etc.
I built docklister.com in 4 months during my spare time. I started approximately 24 months ago and have a single customer that covers the hosting costs (~80/mo). I just got back from a 30 day honeymoon; anxious to get back into the flow!
Marketplaces are hard to bootstrap. For the last 6 months I've been trying to grow pageviews and leads by doing low-touch marketing experiments: post listings to Boating and Yachting FB groups, asking for feedback in /r/sailing (lots of great feedback and pageviews), replying to craigslist ads for boats suggesting they list on docklister.
I have a several great blog ideas and I have a newsletter with approximately 45 people that I plan to start actively emailing content to.
You might try instagram as well. Here's an instagram account I follow (I have a corgi) that is doing really great marketing. They usually a few posts per week, occasional shots of various products, link to website. I thought it was brilliant.
hey thanks everyone for the feedback. GeoNames includes postal code data for many countries. I'll see if I can add more countries in the next week or so!
Thanks for calling this out. As you said, random routing is about as naive as it gets. They need to make upgrades to the routing mesh - expose some internal stats about dyno performance and route accordingly. Even if the stats were rudimentary, anything would be an improvement over random.
Social, Apps, Cloud, Crypto, and now AI.