Discussions

Founders keep asking me for a tour. When I sit with them, they skip it and ask where their data goes. A five-minute call answers that. A tour might just be a way to avoid the call.

People think it records the screen. It takes stills for a docs page. I can live with explaining it, or I can change it before more pages quote the name.

The old headline was plain and a little dull. The new one sounds sharper and two people asked what the product actually does. I think I optimized for taste.

I replayed a Stripe event during a deploy and the handler was not idempotent. A healthy subscription got a past-due email. The fix is in. I am still embarrassed about the note we sent.

I wrote three posts in founder communities. The comments were decent. The trial count for the week was two, and both were friends. I am not sure if the posts were too promotional or the product is just a poor fit for that crowd.

Cold email has been a poor use of the week. I tried a few Reddit threads and two LinkedIn posts. People were kind and nobody bought. If you got to the first ten without ads, what was the actual channel?

I had written them off. They returned, finished the setup they had abandoned, and paid. I almost deleted the 'trial ended' state that still held their work.

The picture on the homepage shows a button I have been meaning to move. I delayed the fix so the site would not be wrong. That is an absurd dependency. The fix ships tomorrow. The picture can be stale for a day.

Activation looks good because the founder did the setup. The invitee lands in a workspace they did not shape and stalls. I have been designing for the buyer and calling it the user.

No launch. I fixed the import timeout and answered eleven emails. Writing it down so the week still counts. If your build log only allows victories, it will go quiet at the same time the product needs you.

They paid up front and still left. The note was polite. I refunded the unused months because the contract was something I wrote in a hurry and I did not want that to be the memory.

I write ShipNotes for both and I suspect the readers are founders. That is fine if I am honest about it. I do not want to pretend it is customer education if it is a peer diary.

Half the notes say the checklist is too long. Half say a step is missing. I have been editing in circles. How do you pick when the comments disagree and both sides sound reasonable?

I improved a prompt on a Friday. Their drafts became shorter and they thought the product had lost data. Nothing was deleted. The voice changed. I had no note that explained it.

We added a draft for a status update. People use it and then rewrite it. I am not sure that is failure. It might be the product. I am unsure how to price a feature that is a starting point.