Saige Makenna

In our first six months, whenever a paid user churned, our immediate reaction was: Ah, they needed Feature X. Let s build it."

Our backlog became a graveyard of quick fixes requested by churned users. Yet, retention stayed flat.

It took us a painful realization to see that the issue wasn t a feature gap; it was a friction gap. The product required too many context switches from our users' daily routines.

For founders who survived this phase: How did you shift your team's mindset from "ship more features" to "reduce workflow friction"? What metrics actually helped you spot this early?

A recent audit of 212 brands found that the average AI search share of voice dropped from 23.4% during discovery to 15.7% when buyers asked pricing-related questions.

The same audit found that more than half of the brands had zero visibility during pricing searches in their categories.

There's this weird pressure in tech where being available 24/7 is treated like the ultimate badge of honor. I tried stepping back from answering every random comment and non-urgent email right away, and honestly, half the people just went ahead and figured the solution out on their own. It made me realize how much time I was wasting babysitting threads that didn't need me. Have you ever tried going radio silent for a few hours, and did anything actually break when you did?