As a Founder, Do Not Follow My Advice! ❌ I don't listen to the...
John Rush@johnrush
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Jan 26, 2024
~2 min read
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As a Founder, Do Not Follow My Advice! ❌
I don't listen to the users when I build products.
I only listen to myself.
My only goal is to please my own taste and fall in love with the result.
No, this is not sarcasm.
Almost every guide or piece of wisdom from a founder starts with: "Ask what users want", "Validate it with users, listen to users".
Only today I realized that I never do that to the product, I do that to my marketing methods.
I validate my marketing messages, design, and brand.
I validate the pains I should focus on when I promote it.
But the product...No.
The products and roadmap are coming purely from my heart.
However, I talk to users all day long.
They tell me their problems, ideas, feedback, and requests.
It shapes my world, and I change. So what my heart wants changes too. However, 99.999% of users just want the same thing they had somewhere else.
Henry Ford: “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
I talk to at least 20 founders every day who reach out to me asking:
- "I built this, what do you think? Would you use it?"
I often ask them back:
- "Are You Using It?"
If yes
- "Are You Proud Of It? So proud that your heart beats faster when you enter it.
You love it so much that you just spend time inside the product as if it's a social media or YouTube.
Is this happening to You?"
If that's not true, My advice is:
Go test your marketing methods even before you write the first line of code. Because that takes time to figure out the best marketing language.
But on the product: it's like food. Some you just LOVE, others you can't stand and the rest is okay.
"Okay" = Bad.
Users won't change their behaviour and put their credit card on it.
Your #1 goal is to build what YOU love.
Unless you're a phsycopat, what's loved by you, will be loved by many.
Even if you are a psychopath, there are plenty of other psychopaths in the world too.
I don't listen to the users when I build products.
I only listen to myself.
My only goal is to please my own taste and fall in love with the result.
No, this is not sarcasm.
Almost every guide or piece of wisdom from a founder starts with: "Ask what users want", "Validate it with users, listen to users".
Only today I realized that I never do that to the product, I do that to my marketing methods.
I validate my marketing messages, design, and brand.
I validate the pains I should focus on when I promote it.
But the product...No.
The products and roadmap are coming purely from my heart.
However, I talk to users all day long.
They tell me their problems, ideas, feedback, and requests.
It shapes my world, and I change. So what my heart wants changes too. However, 99.999% of users just want the same thing they had somewhere else.
Henry Ford: “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
I talk to at least 20 founders every day who reach out to me asking:
- "I built this, what do you think? Would you use it?"
I often ask them back:
- "Are You Using It?"
If yes
- "Are You Proud Of It? So proud that your heart beats faster when you enter it.
You love it so much that you just spend time inside the product as if it's a social media or YouTube.
Is this happening to You?"
If that's not true, My advice is:
Go test your marketing methods even before you write the first line of code. Because that takes time to figure out the best marketing language.
But on the product: it's like food. Some you just LOVE, others you can't stand and the rest is okay.
"Okay" = Bad.
Users won't change their behaviour and put their credit card on it.
Your #1 goal is to build what YOU love.
Unless you're a phsycopat, what's loved by you, will be loved by many.
Even if you are a psychopath, there are plenty of other psychopaths in the world too.
