A stranger used my product today and didn't sign up. I'm counting it as progress.

this is underrated. most people ignore the “no signup” users but they’re the best signal.
a stuck user is still a successful interaction, just not a conversion yet.

This realization was powerful. I'm currently on day 6 of WorkFriction, which is essentially an experiment where I'm collecting anonymous work pains from 9 different industries without writing any code. I've just been counting the number of people who have signed up as my sole measure of success, but you are absolutely correct—the true measure of success is getting people to care enough about the pain to articulate it.

I think early on, that kind of interest is a signal by itself. We've been seeing something similar with a new app we're running ads for. Even when nobody signs up or buys, people actually click and explore. While we're wondering why they don't buy - we try to understand that it still means interest.

Feedback from a stranger is worth more than a hundred notes from people who know you, because strangers have no reason to be kind. So yes, count it. But here is the trap: feedback feels like progress, and that feeling can keep you in the learning phase long past its usefulness. The honest test is whether this person getting stuck actually changes what the next person sees. If you move the wall and the next stranger gets one step further, that is progress. If you are collecting insights but the funnel looks identical next week, that is procrastination with better notes. One stranger showing you the wall beats a thousand views. Now go move the wall.

What you got here was rare: a user who actually told you where they got stuck. The silent majority just closes the tab. The hard part is that your analytics shows "no signup" but not "abandoned at the signup wall vs. never understood the value prop vs. hit a broken UI element." All three look identical in your funnel. One thing that's helped me: instrument specific exit points, not just the funnel steps. If you know which button was the last thing they clicked before leaving, you have something actionable to fix—vs. "people aren't signing up" which is just a restatement of the problem.

curious what you actually changed because of it, specifically. "it changed how I'm thinking about the product" is the kind of sentence that can mean anything from a copy tweak to rethinking the whole onboarding flow. the concrete version of that answer is probably more useful to other people reading this than the general lesson about valuing feedback over signups

Same kind of week here. A contributor opened a PR against my project's repo without me ever reaching out to them — felt like a bigger deal than anything from my Product Hunt launch. Small, unprompted signals like that seem to be the realest kind of validation, even if they don't move any dashboard number.

This is such an underrated milestone.

The first stranger who uses your product and gives real feedback often teaches you more than weeks of building in isolation.

That's definitely progress.

This is the right way to think about it. The signup is a trailing indicator — it measures trust, not value. Someone staying long enough to not sign up means they found the product real enough to try.

I had a similar moment: checking session recordings and seeing a user who went through BugCapture's full flow, exported the markdown file, then left without creating an account. First instinct was 'failed conversion.' Then I realized: they got exactly what they came for. The tool worked. The conversion problem was that I hadn't given them a reason to want an account beyond the first use.

A stranger using your product without signing up is a signal. The question worth asking is: what would make them want to come back?

Honestly, a stranger using your product is validation in itself.
Signups tell you people are interested.
Usage tells you the problem might actually be real.
I'd rather have 1 stranger try the product and leave than 100 friends tell me it's a great idea.

I had something similar with zer0email . Someone connected their inbox during onboarding, saw the auto-labeling kick in, then dropped off right before setting up their first routing rule. Turned out the rule builder assumed people already knew what they wanted automated, when most people connecting an email tool for the first time don't have that figured out yet. That one drop-off point told me more about the actual gap between "this looks useful" and "this fits my workflow" than any amount of traffic would have.

That first anonymous use is underrated signal. For Kinetic Override I’m trying to separate curiosity from fit: if someone lands from “Android auto clicker” but bounces, the problem may be trust/permissions; if they land from “record tap sequence” and stay, the macro-recorder wording is probably doing its job.

This is an underrated insight.
Most founders treat signups as signals.
But often the strongest signals appear before the signup.
A user getting confused. A user hesitating. A user asking the same question others have asked before.
One person getting stuck might be random.
Ten people getting stuck in the same place is a pattern.
And patterns are usually more valuable than metrics because they tell you why the metric exists.
I'd count meaningful feedback as progress the moment it starts repeating.

I’d count it as progress when the feedback changes the next test you run. A stranger getting stuck is useful, but the real signal is whether the friction maps to a repeatable pattern: unclear promise, too much setup, missing trust, or wrong timing. I’d turn this into one follow-up question and one product change, then watch whether the next stranger gets stuck at the same point. That gives you learning without pretending feedback is the same as demand.

The framing shift from "signups" to "understanding" is the right one, especially early. A signup from someone who doesn't understand what they're using is actually worse than a non-signup with a clear explanation of where they got stuck, the first one gives you a false positive, the second one gives you a map. Sounds like you got the more valuable outcome today.

The "before signups come understanding, before understanding comes observation" line is the whole post. Most founders treat feedback as a worse version of signups, when its actually the earlier version of them - just denominated in a currency we havent learned to value yet.
Im in the exact same spot rn with my own thing - low signups, zero paid trials, but 3-4 strangers have taken the time to tell me where they got confused. A month ago id have called that a failure. Now i realise its the only signal that compounds. A signup tells u someone clicked. A stranger writing 5 sentences abt where they got stuck tells u why everyone else didnt.
To ur question - imo feedback counts as progress the moment u stop being defensive about it. Thats the actual leading indicator, not the count of comments 🙌

You really should investigate why they didn't sign up

I'd rather have one stranger explain why they didn't sign up than five friends tell me the product looks great. Honest friction is usually more valuable than polite encouragement.

I've readed this story and it looks good
can you add it to https://dev.us.kg/t/stories