I FAILED big with one of our 2025 projects. Here’s the story (and what I’ve learned) 👇 Back in late 2024, Fabien (my co-founder) and I launched KarmaLinks.io. The idea was simple: Solve one of the worst pain points in B2B SaaS SEO: link building. If you’ve done it, you know: It’s a nightmare. You end up in shady Slack groups full of spammy profiles (mostly from India or Pakistan — no offense, but that’s where most of the low-quality stuff comes from 🤷‍♂️) So we thought: “Let’s clean this up. Build a curated space. Quality domains only.” We studied the market. Turns out a good backlink can cost hundreds of dollars. EXCITING! LFG! We did the usual playbook: ✅ Outbound to B2B SaaS SEO folks ✅ Discovery calls ✅ Validated the pain ✅ Built an MVP in 2 weeks ✅ Launched it And... We got traction! 🚀 Signups rolled in — validating the problem. But then came the complaints. People were confused. The UX was off. And we realized something painful: 👉 The MVP didn’t actually solve the problem the way we imagined. So we paused. Rebuilt everything. Launched a V2. And to our surprise, most of the early users came back. (Anyone who’s launched a V2 knows how rare that is. Reactivating disappointed users is hard.) From there, we did outbound to every B2B SaaS company on G2. We reached ~150 active domains at peak. At that point, we thought: “Alright, we’re on our way. Let’s hit 500+ domains and then monetize hard.” After all, it’s a marketplace. The more domains, the more valuable the network. So we delayed monetization to focus on growth. Big mistake. Why? 👉 We underestimated the market size. There simply aren’t that many B2B SaaS companies with decent SEO metrics. And you can’t let in just anyone — because low-DR backlinks don’t help. Problem #2: Without thousands of active users, we couldn’t deliver enough backlinks per customer. So KarmaLinks became “just another tool” in the stack — offering 2 to 5 links a month. Not bad, but not game-changing either. And if it’s not game-changing, people churn and focus on other channels. So now we’re here: ❌ Not enough signups to make it a profitable business. ✅ But 50+ domains still actively exchange backlinks every week. Which raises the question: Do we kill it or double down and try to pivot again? Not sure yet. But figured I’d share this here, both the success and the failure. Curious to hear your thoughts: What would you do in this situation? 🤔 ---------- 👋 Hey, I'm J.Y! I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 Employee Engagement Software that lives in Slack. I post about my journey and share what I've learned along the way. Follow me for more content like this 👆