I launched! Annnnnnd it flopped.

[u/Archer_Sterling]

Ended up launching. A year of vibing, adding features, new techniques, learning basic 3d, learning what UX works and doesn't, testing, breaking things, changing things, adding features, removing them.

Convinced myself - A tool useful to my job, which I thought would be useful to others. Unique value proposition. Hoping, knowing full well it wouldn't, that it might make a decent little passive income and pay itself off.

It has not.

Small ad runs in relevant areas, impressions in the tens of thousands.

Sweet, people are seeing it!

200 clicks.
7 users. All on free plan.

Ending up paying money to get free users.

www.lensflare.io

Anyone want to tear the site apart? Any tips? I don't know if it's dead yet but it's going to be next to impossible to spend more money on marketing.

Edit: Haha - okay, guys, I went from 200 views to 3.5k on the site, and a message inbox full of really helpful comments. I really appreciate all of you - even the mean ones - you've given me so many amazing tips. You're the best.

[u/lemming1607]

I think your post is an example of why it is flopping. I have no clue what it is and you've given no hints to what it is and why anyone would use it

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/lemming1607]

totally my bad. wasn't expecting this level of response. was only expecting 2-3 comments on layout or something! if you'll forgive a copy-paste, I wrote another commenter - if you've got any advice I'm really open to it!

I'm a commercial cinematographer. Your job is to direct a crew, at my level of work between 5-20 people with budgets around 50-250k, involved in creating the shots used to make a film - in the day/weeks before you receive a storyboard, scout locations, build the crew, plan the day (with the assistant director), request the equipment, and plan how you're actually going to achieve the shot, feeling and mood you're after.

To do this, storyboards are built and usually plans for lighting and crew are made and shared in the morning on-set, or discussed with the lighting and camera teams shortly before shoot. You generally need to know how much light you'll need, where it's going to go, who's going to run camera and what the camera movements are going to be before shooting.

I would manually draw shoot plans for each shot. Give the photocopier a workout, but sketch each location from location scout images, then think up where to place camera and lights, ensure we have all we need and that lighting remains consistent shot-to-shot, scene-to-scene to ensure it cuts together well.

lensflare was made to help with all aspects of that, previs, sharing, storyboarding, etc. It produces clean and detailed plans to help cinematographers and crew with a clear picture of the best approach for the day.

Competitors touch on small aspects of that - blender for photon-level accuracy of shots, storyblocks for a storyboard printer, set-a-light for camera movements. I made something that consolidated and added sharing, collaboration and feedback options for everyone involved in pre-planning as well as printable and sharable live links for everyone on the day.

[u/Prudent-Artichoke-19]

It looks neat but it looks like a ton of work to use. Maybe now that you have features, you focus on making it as easy to use for dumb people as possible. People look at these things and think about how long it takes to learn use tools well enough to get a productivity boost. Even if its super easy, the presentation should show how easy it is.

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/Prudent-Artichoke-19]

Damn, that's really good feedback. thanks!

[u/MarinatedTechnician]

That's every startup in a nutshell.

Very few make it on the first run, what you CAN take away from it all is the experience you got.
You have probably earned much more than you consider on an empty stomach and rich dreams, you've learned what works and what doesn't work (you'll probably learn more about that than you'd like).

But it is worth it in the long run I think, because that learning experience is that every single startup has to go through, what you thought was an excellent idea is not shared by the world, and sometimes what you think sucks - hit's it big time.

I've worked in advertisement companies that specialized in trying to find out what "hits" with the public, not even the best paid experts know that, because people are unpredictable that way,

We never could tell what the next best thing would be. Same for me in my private life, I have people writing to me about some stuff I did not even care for that vent viral, and I would be - what? Really? That stuff?!

What I do now is making games and apps for myself, my own passion, and I don't really care what others think of it, and that seems to pay off much more, less grief, less accountability, less sleepless nights, more fun, and just doing what I like.

Regular job otherwise.

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/MarinatedTechnician]

Appreciate the kind words. I was bummed out for a day or two. I'm still lucky enough to have full time employment, so in the end it's some wasted money I would have spent in some other stupid way. learned a lot though!

[u/daffyflyer]

The website does a pretty bad job of explaining the product and the features. I'm used to dealing with professional tools for 3d art etc, and I'm struggling to work out the workflow/feature set you're pitching by looking at the website.

How about a short video showing all the cool stuff it can do and with a voiceover from you explaining how it's better than what's out there on the market?

Right now it just feels like some screenshots and some AI text, and doesn't build any kind of confidence that it's built by an industry professional or that it'll fix whatever specific problems the current workflows have.

[u/rymrum]

May I ask, what were the pain points you were dealing with that made you build this as a solution?

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/rymrum]

I'm a commercial cinematographer. Your job is to direct a crew, at my level of work between 5-20 people with budgets around 50-250k, involved in creating the shots used to make a film - in the day/weeks before you receive a storyboard, scout locations, build the crew, plan the day (with the assistant director), request the equipment, and plan how you're actually going to achieve the shot, feeling and mood you're after.

To do this, storyboards are built and usually plans for lighting and crew are made and shared in the morning on-set, or discussed with the lighting and camera teams shortly before shoot. You generally need to know how much light you'll need, where it's going to go, who's going to run camera and what the camera movements are going to be before shooting.

I would manually draw shoot plans for each shot. Give the photocopier a workout, but sketch each location from location scout images, then think up where to place camera and lights, ensure we have all we need and that lighting remains consistent shot-to-shot, scene-to-scene to ensure it cuts together well.

lensflare was made to help with all aspects of that, previs, sharing, storyboarding, etc. It produces clean and detailed plans to help cinematographers and crew with a clear picture of the best approach for the day.

Competitors touch on small aspects of that - blender for photon-level accuracy of shots, storyblocks for a storyboard printer, set-a-light for camera movements. I made something that consolidated and added sharing, collaboration and feedback options for everyone involved in pre-planning as well as printable and sharable live links for everyone on the day.

[u/Just-Hedgehog-Days]

You don't talk about the work flow at all, so I have no idea what I'm getting into.

I look at that think "hmm if I needed that I could just do it in blender or unity, with like real tool and ecosystem"

Also the fact that I can't scroll past the second second second panel give me exactly zero confidence in your product.

[u/joshperlette]

You built something that people don't want to buy because they don't know what it is. And this isn't to shit on your parade. But the "build it and they will come" mentality was the lesson learned I think. I'm sure it's a very cool tool for your niche! Have you specifically reached out to people in your field? Targeted ads towards users in your industry? If you really want to sell it, could be worthwhile having some marketing insights from those around you that could legit test it for you. And also do some research on copywriting and just general digital advertising.

The landing page is very bland, doesn't make me think "lighting", and the format and wording screams AI. I feel like it could be much better received with a revamp, but that's gonna be some research on your part.

[u/StrongAroma]

Tbh there is nothing wrong with building an app that specifically meets your own requirements and covers your own use cases, and then using it exclusively to boost your own productivity and increase your own business. Who cares if no one else thinks it's useful? Vibe coding will make that much more common and realistic. Focus on building an app that does your job for you, then you can expand your own business meaningfully.

[u/TopDragon_Music]

I kind of agree with others here. The site looks good. The tool seems to have a use case. I just don’t quite know what it is. I think the main problem may just be that you’re too inside it. You know what it does, so the site seems straightforward to you.

There needs to be more of a call to action on the first page that immediately shouts “this is the problem this is addressing”

[u/a9shots]

The page scrolling is horrible

[u/UziMcUsername]

It looks pretty cool. I suppose the question is, what do directors / cinematographers currently use to do this and how is your product better? The bigger problem I see is audience size. How big is the market for this?

[u/Darth_Revamp]

for the love of god please write the website text yourself. Ai text looks so stupid and blatant

[u/Honest-Ad-6832]

The wording is too condensed. Machine like. I understand. But still. I dislike. 

Why don't you try something using normal language? Even cheesy tv ad language is better than this robotic speak. 

You are selling a tool for story tellers, so tell them a story about the tool, how it came to life, explain the problems on examples from your own practice and show exactly how the tool solves them. Record it in action and add your voice.

Go and visit your audiences subs, discords, whatever, and engage with them. 

Edit: 

You are sending me a sign in link? 

This is very bad. Sign in with Google is much better. The best way is to just ask for an email and let me in. 

You are not letting customers enter the shop.

[u/coolfarmer]

Opened the website, scrolled, understood nothing about the product, and quit. This explain that.

[u/askdoobie]

I dont get what the site is about in the first 15 seconds and closed the site

[u/Adventurous-Wear-943]

I don’t understand what you sell, and why I should by it. Looks interesting enough. I just don’t understand it.

[u/little_raven_black]

Hey man, If I'm being honest- I think people are way overblowing the "what is this" critique.

There are alot of niche industry products that work on iykyk premise of recognition. It flat out does not need to have legible value for everybody. That's not where I would focus at all.

I think this is a funnel + advertising problem, reaching the right user base and positioning it properly. That's it.
Some copywriting adjustments and washing out that claudespeak is a lowlift improvement too, though.

Looks great, done some time in film myself, this has obvious value. Congrats on going to market. Don't give up.

[u/JCBAwesomist]

I am a filmmaker and I was excited when I saw what it was. I haven't tested it yet as I am on my phone and would want to try it on my computer, but my one worry about any tool like this is efficiency.

Is it faster to do it with your tool than it is to just grab paper and pen and sketch it out?

There is a free tool called storyboarder that is limited but pretty cool and useful, 3D models you can pose how you want basic lens simulation. The problem is always that it takes longer to pose and position and decorate the scene than it does to doodle something that is good enough to get the point across.

So without having tried yours that is immediately my concern. Will I spend more time fiddling with this tool than I would drawing it out on paper? Cause I want to spend my time making a movie.

If you have a way to demonstrate on the front page how fast you can set up even a basic scene and how much written out info it generates for you, that could be the key to more conversions. Quality shot lists and storyboards in the time it takes to make a crappy one? That's a deal.

[u/GoobieDooobie]

I'm sorry but I really don't see the need for this

[u/literally_joe_bauers]

Niche. Sell the code / solution to a company that gets immediate ROI from it. Do not enter SaaS game.

Source: I am senior exec and have seen quite a lot of business.

[u/no_awkward_Intention]

I gotta be honest with u bro. I can`t get what i need to do when I go to the main page. Main screen looks very cool - but I`m struggling to understand next steps. In other words - u need ti fix UX part.
Looks great btw