I’ve gone from idea stage to active users, and somehow feel more lost now..
I’m at a really weird stage with my first startup and honestly don’t know what the correct next move is.
I started my English teaching business 3 years ago, and recently built an AI platform for online tutors because I was frustrated with how much unpaid admin work came with teaching online.
It takes rough lesson notes/PDFs/PPTs/etc. and generates organised notes, homework, flashcards, lesson plans, progress tracking, all automatically.
The thing is:
- the platform actually works
- I use it myself every day
- I have a handful of tutors using it heavily
- the feedback has been genuinely strong
- people keep telling me it saves them huge amounts of time
…but now I feel stuck between “this could become something big” and “I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing next.”
Do I:
- just keep recruiting more tutors manually?
- start charging?
- raise funding?
- stop building and focus only on distribution?
- niche down harder?
- create content?
- push partnerships?
I feel like I’ve gone from “idea stage” to “real product with real users” and suddenly there’s no clear roadmap anymore.
This is also my first real startup, so I’m figuring a lot of this out as I go and currently doing almost everything by myself - design, development, product management, user onboarding, support, outreach, marketing, testing, and constantly improving the platform based on tutor feedback.
Would genuinely appreciate advice from founders who’ve been through this stage before.