Okay, so I know everyone's feed has been taken over by the Studio Ghibli but I'm curious what else people have been able to create or seen that's really left an impression. Here are some that I've created! Also on X.
Giving away a product for free builds a nice illusion of fast growth, but transitioning to paid later is honestly brutal. Users get so used to getting everything for zero cost that asking them to pay later changes their entire mindset from curious explorers to strict critics overnight. Looking back I wonder if starting with a small paid tier right from the beginning filters out the wrong crowd and saves you from that sudden growth cliff.
Have you tried charging from day one or did you also struggle moving away from a free model?
When a free user complains, it's easy to ignore. But when a long time paid customer drop a harsh cancellation note or leaves a blunt review, it hits differently even if the overall churn rate is low.
Early on, every churned user feels like a personal failure of your product vision.
As you scale, do you naturally build a thick skin toward churn feedback, or do you just learn to separate product noise from signal?
I ve seen so much advice about partnering with well-known Hunters for your PH launch. But does it really move the needle? Anyone have real numbers or war stories? Also, how to find and approach them?
It is so easy to fall into the trap of redesigning your landing page hero section four times before the actual app logic even functions. tweaking gradients, adjusting border radii and swapping fonts feels like real work, but it is just a clever way to procrastinate on writing difficult backend code. I now build the ugliest functional UI possible first and ban myself from touching CSS until the core workflow is tested.
How do you keep yourself focused on building functionality instead of tweaking pixels too early?
Is this normal? I'll be honest I rarely scroll down and click 'show-all' before today. That's a mind-blowing amount of work and dedication that likely won't get much spotlight in the heat of competition. Do you have any tips for finding the diamonds? Is there anything we can do in the community-sense to ensure good products get seen? It's suddenly feeling rather intimidating to launch a new product.
This question has sat in the back of my head for months and I still don't have a clean answer.
For internal work the bar is forgiving. A draft brief with rough edges, a slightly off tone in a Slack summary, a CRM note that's 80% right. You fix it and move on.
We used to think high onboarding ratings meant we built something sticky. Turns out, getting a 5-star review during a test run doesn't mean people will actually open your app next week.
If a tool demands extra mental effort instead of sliding smoothly into a daily routine users just drift away.
How do you design your product to become an automatic part of someone's morning workflow?
