Everyone tells you to “build something people want.”
But sometimes people want what you’re building — they just don’t want to use it.

This week’s story comes from two pre-seed founders in the creator tools space who mistook applause for traction.
Their product got all the right signals — except one: usage.

What followed was a hard lesson in the difference between being liked… and being needed.

We launched to a bunch of noise. Twitter threads, Substack mentions, a few early angels posting about us.

People loved the idea.

Every call ended with: “This is awesome, we totally need this.”

We had dozens of demo requests. 400 people on a waitlist. Investors leaned in. It felt like we were on to something.

But when we opened up the beta, usage dropped off a cliff.

We mistook praise for demand.

The product wasn’t bad — it worked. But once people logged in, they didn’t stick.

Some uploaded one file, played with the editor for 5 minutes, and never came back.

We kept tweaking the UI. Adding onboarding tips. Changing button colors.

But deep down we knew: it wasn’t the polish. It was the value.

We hadn’t nailed a real, urgent problem. People liked the idea of our tool, but they didn’t need it enough to change their workflow.

A month after launch, one of our early users told us on a feedback call:

“Honestly, I love it. But I already have a guy on Fiverr who does this for me.”

That single line hit harder than all the analytics.

We were building for convenience, not necessity.

We paused feature development.

I started scheduling short, 20-minute calls with podcasters who weren’t using us.

We heard the same thing over and over: “It’s cool, but I don’t have time to edit clips myself.”

We’d built the wrong abstraction. What they needed wasn’t a better tool — it was less work.

We’re now prototyping a fully automated version: upload your podcast, get 3 ready-to-post TikToks in your inbox.

It’s early. We’ve got 12 active users on the new version.

But for the first time, they’re coming back without reminders.

That feels like the real metric.

“Praise is cheap. Behavior is the truth.”