When you re browsing the Product Hunt leaderboard or checking out top launches, which category of products actually makes you stop and click?
Example, yesterday @lazverry told me on my forum thread that they are a creator, so they spend a lot of time looking into Design & Creatives and Productivity.
Building in public is great for keeping yourself accountable and connecting with other builders and potential users, but it also means you regularly see these crazy success stories, really cool and innovative app ideas, and amazing design work that might even surpass what you could create.
I have 100% conviction in my idea and designs, but there are times when I do feel a bit intimidated.
The longer I've been an internet user, the more I feel like I'm missing out on something (FOMO) every second I'm offline. The tech world changes so fast.
My first experience with a computer was around the age of 8 I used Microsoft Paint to sketch houses because we didn t have internet at home. I got online for the first time at 11, and by 12 or 13, I had already joined social media.
Whenever a customer cancels their subscription, our automated exit survey spits out the same reason: Too expensive or Just don't need it right now. For a long time, we took those answers at face value and tried discounting our plans.
It wasn't until a few former users casually admitted on Twitter (after we built a friendly rapport) that the real reason was a lack of a specific integration that we understood the truth. The price wasn't the issue; the missing utility was.
It made me realize that standard churn surveys rarely capture the real psychological barrier to staying.
We built our entire launch strategy around the build it and they will come PLG playbook sleek landing page, Product Hunt drop, and automated email drips. We sat back waiting for the viral loops to kick in. Crickets.
It wasn't until we forced ourselves to manually DM and hop on calls with our first 50 signups that things clicked. They didn't find us organically; they needed a direct, personal nudge to realize how the tool fit into their daily routine.
It made me realize that early stage organic growth is often just brute-force founder hustle in disguise.
How did you get your very first wave of active users pure PLG magic or did you have to manually grind for every single one?
We spent weeks obsessing over reducing our signup steps. We removed email verifications, cut down profile setup, and made everything a single click experience certain that drop offs wese happening due to friction.
Retention barely budged. But when we actually looked at the users who completed the quick signup, they churned within 48 hours because they had no idea how to set up their workspace. Adding a bit of purposeful friction (like a quick setup wizard) actually improved our long-term retention.
It made me realize that fast onboarding isn't always better onboarding if it skips user education.
How do you strike the balance between a frictionless signup and making sure users actually understand the product's value?
We looked at our conversion rates last month and panicked sign ups were high, but upgrades to our pro tier were almost flat. Our first instinct was to add more features to justify the price tag.
Then we jumped on calls with a few power users who were still on the free plan. Their response caught us off guard: We don't need more features; we just hit the paywall to early before we could prove the ROI to our team.
It made me realize that sometimes a low conversion rate isn't a feature gap; it's a pricing tier architecture problem.
How did you figure out the sweet spot for your first paid tier did you rely on usage data, customer budget feedback, or just trial and error?
