Threads for founders

‘Would you use this?’ can lead to an encouraging conversation without teaching you much. Ask about the last time the problem happened.

What triggered it? What did the person try? Ask them to walk through the actual sequence of events.

Listen for the workaround. A spreadsheet, repeated copy-paste, or a manual handoff tells you where the effort lives.

Write down what happened separately from your interpretation. Bring those notes into your next product decision.

A useful building-in-public update can start with one decision, even when you have no launch to announce.

Describe the tradeoff: improve onboarding or add the feature people keep requesting. Explain the constraint you’re working within.

Share the evidence you used and what remains uncertain. Readers can learn from your reasoning without seeing private customer data.

Name what you will watch next. Return to the decision when you have evidence, and explain whether your thinking changed.

A signup count doesn’t tell you whether someone reached the useful part of your product. Walk through the first session yourself.

Start with a fresh account. Note every choice, empty state, and instruction between signup and the first useful result.

Choose one point of confusion to improve. Make the next action clearer, then observe whether people complete it.

Keep a short record of the change and what you saw. Use that record to plan the next onboarding improvement.