For me personally, it bothers me a lot when people try to teach others something that they didn't do themselves. It's like one blind person tries to teach other blind person to see. So the best advice is to learn from experience and it's been working for me so far. What's yours?
I recently automated my product demo video pipeline using AI to generate high-CTR video thumbnails and UGC-style covers. At first it looked like a big win click-through rates went up by than 35 percent.
Then I looked at the analytics a week later and the average watch time had dropped a lot. The AI-generated covers were making people expect something that the real product video didn't deliver. This caused a lot of people to leave away. I was focused on getting the click. I hurt viewer trust and made people stop watching.
For people who make video content for product launches how do you find the balance, between AI visuals that get clicks and real content that keeps people watching?
We tracked what users did in their first session and correlated with 30-day retention.
Users who imported a CSV: 18% of new signups, 74% retained at 30 days Users who did not import: 82% of signups, 31% retained
A massive difference. CSV import was the single strongest predictor of retention we had ever found. We promoted it everywhere.
Then we looked at the users who started an import and did not finish. 61% of import attempts failed or were abandoned. Among those users, 30-day retention was 9%. Lower than users who never tried.
Our team launched a feature and the stats looked amazing on paper clicks were up and daily usage was high.
But when we actually talked to users, they were still frustrated by an earlier step in the flow. Turns out good numbers On a dashboard just show what people click not if their actual headache got fixed.
How do you stop yourself from only fixing parts of the app that are easy to track?
Being a founder requires a completely different skillset than being an employee. And most people underestimate just how different it is until they're already in it.
For me, the biggest mistake I see founders make and one I've fallen into myself 1000 times is not delegating consistently enough. Your time as a founder is your most valuable asset. Every hour you spend on something someone else could do is an hour you're not spending on the things only you can do. And the trap is subtle. You tell yourself you'll do it faster. That it's easier to just handle it. That nobody will do it as well as you. All of that might be true. It doesn't matter.
What if you could make a completely new product with a snap of your fingers, what would you make? What do you think humanity needs and lacks the most? What would be a product that if it existed it would be like a new mobile phone?
