u/Expensive_Style7161

build for people who can pay. Go upmarket. Charge more.

I built a tool for nano and micro creators, people doing 2-3 brand deals a month, making maybe $500-$2000 from them. Because nobody built anything for them. The whole market is tools for brands to find creators, nothing from the creator's side to help them actually close and manage deals.

Underserved is an opportunity if you price right and solve something that directly makes them money. A tool that helps you close one extra deal a month pays for itself instantly. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'd rather be wrong building for an ignored market than right building another enterprise dashboard nobody needs.

What's a market everyone ignores that you think is actually an opportunity?

Early on I was convinced creators needed a beautiful portfolio builder inside their deal CRM. Spent weeks on it. Polished it. Was proud of it.

Then I started actually talking to creators.

Nobody mentioned the portfolio. Every single conversation came back to the same thing, they're losing deals they already had because there's no system for what happens after a brand shows interest. Follow-ups forgotten. Context lost. Deals dying in silence.

I'd been building what I thought looked impressive instead of what actually hurt. Scrapped two weeks of work. Rebuilt around the follow-up problem. Feels more honest now.

What's the most expensive assumption you've thrown away mid-build?

Spent months collecting this forums, DMs, Reddit threads, direct conversations. What creators think kills their deals: pitch quality, follower count, niche, posting frequency.

What actually keeps coming up: no follow-up after initial interest, responding too slowly, forgetting which stage each conversation is at, not knowing what they agreed to in a previous message. Operational chaos dressed up as a reach problem.

The frustrating part is it's entirely fixable. It doesn't require more followers or a better niche. It just requires a system most creators have never thought to build.

Does this match your experience or am I seeing a skewed sample?

I've spent months deep in this space and the pattern is uncomfortable.

Creators blame their numbers. "I only have 8k followers", "My niche is too specific." "Brands want bigger reach."

Sometimes that's true. But a lot of the time the deal was already there and they fumbled it operationally. Brand replied with interest. Creator took 5 days to respond. Brand moved on. Or the creator followed up once, got no reply, assumed it was dead, and never tried again. Or they literally forgot the conversation existed because it was buried in DMs between memes and spam.

The creators I've seen close consistent deals aren't always the biggest. They're just the most organized.

Controversial take or does this match what you've seen?

Everyone assumes creators lose brand deals because their pitch is weak.

It's not the pitch.

I have talked to dozens of nano and micro creators while building something for this space. The pattern is almost always the same, a brand shows interest, the creator gets excited, and then... nothing happens. Not because the brand moved on. Because the creator forgot to follow up. Or followed up too late. Or couldn't remember what they'd even discussed.

They're running a business with no system. Every deal lives in a different DM, a different email thread, a different note.

The creators closing consistent deals aren't necessarily better at pitching. They're just more organized.

Curious if this matches what others have seen, is follow-up actually the problem or am I wrong?

I've been watching nano and micro creators manage brand deals in spreadsheets, random notes apps, and a chaotic mess of DMs. It bothered me enough to build something about it.

Spent the last few months building Creatrne between lectures and exam prep. It's a CRM specifically for creators to track pitches, follow up on deals, and actually understand what's working for them. Not for brands — for the creator side.

The build was mostly solo, which meant a lot of late nights debugging OAuth and questioning my life choices.

Soft launched last week. Would genuinely love brutal feedback from anyone who's worked with creators or built tools for them — what am I missing?

happy to share what I built if anyone's curious.