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It works, it is live, nobody came: what the people who got out of that actually changed
Not criticism, not churn. Silence. Asked a lot of people who had been there; the ones who got out changed one of four things and none of them were the product.
- Stopped launching, started going where the problem is already discussed. A launch is one day of attention from people with no problem. A thread where somebody describes your exact problem is one person who has it today, and the thread stays.
- Realised they had shown it to the wrong ten people. Friends, other builders and a general audience all say it is nice. None of them have the problem.
- Narrowed the description until it excluded most people. Everyone who did this said the narrow version brought more users, not fewer.
- Concluded the problem was real and rare. Not the people who quit early. The ones who did the first three and got the same silence.
Nothing helped that was product work. Rebuilding, features, redesigning the page, another directory. Everybody tried at least two; nobody credited any of them.
Silence is information about distribution, not a verdict on the product. The trap is that building is the part you are good at.
@distribution_first · 3w ago
I answered a distribution problem with product work four times. Each time the reasoning was plausible and the result was a better product and identical silence.
What broke it: no product work in a week where I had not spoken to somebody who was not already a user. Most of what I built in those two years turned out to be unnecessary.
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