Founders who've been here I need your honest advice

Okay so I'm genuinely frustrated right now and I need to hear from people who have actually been through this stage.

I'm building Talvé a professional platform for creative talent. Think LinkedIn but built exclusively for creatives. Musicians, models, photographers, producers, directors, all of them. The problem I'm solving is real. I see it every single day. I literally come across creatives who are facing the exact pain point Talvé was built to fix and I can't reach them properly.

That's the part that's killing me.

I try to post on Reddit and the bots take it down. I post on LinkedIn and Twitter and I'm facing the exact same problem my users face, you post something and get 10 impressions and you're basically talking to yourself. Building a following takes months and I don't have months to wait around hoping an algorithm decides to show my content to the right people.

I move from platform to platform every day trying to figure out where my people actually are and how to reach them and I feel like I'm spinning in circles.

So I want to ask the people who have been here before me.

How did you actually get your first real traction? Not the polished version. The real one. Which platforms worked for you at this stage? What did you do that actually moved the needle when nobody knew you existed yet? Did you go direct? Did you find communities? Did you do something completely unexpected?

Because right now I feel like I'm doing everything and reaching nobody and I could really use perspective from founders who have actually come out the other side of this stage.

What would you do if you were me right now?