An honest story of a founder that didn't have a clue what he was doing.
Let's go back 14 years in time. I was just getting started with building my first SaaS apps. I failed, a lot.
At one point I basically shifted to "lending" existing proven ideas and came up with a form builder similar to WuFoo which was all the rage back then. I poured all my time in SEO, and boy did that pay off.
The app became "okay" popular in The Netherlands and at it's peak in 2017 it earned me almost 10k a month with around 700 active customers and needed only 4-6 hours a week for support and maintenance.
But that was also one of my mistakes. You see, as time progressed Google Forms and forms plugins for WordPress and other platforms became more and more popular. My app was losing it's edge and was slowly dying and what I thought that customers want was no longer aligned with their real (evolved) wants and needs.
I was basically sailing blind, having no clue who to cater to. As it was a form builder with a broad range of applications I got stuck while churn rate increased and fewer people signed up. In 2024 I made the hard decision to quit with the app.
The frustration of "not knowing" sparked the idea to create a tool that will keep me aligned with my customers and Smilejet was born. It needed to be something that is easy to set up and directly provide insights without costing too much time to analyze everything. I hope this resonates with founders as I believe many of us have faced a similar experience, especially when you build an app from scratch.
So, why use Smilejet?
Getting clarity on what customers want and need, now and in the future.
Discover small problems before they turn into a big one, affecting your bottom line.
Get buy-in and validation for your ideas.
Uncover hidden opportunities.
How does it work?
1. Actively listening to customers:
Create and deploy insanely targeted feedback forms on your website to reach your right audience at the right time. For example, ask visitors why they leave a specific checkout page just before they are about to leave and have been on the page for 30+ seconds. Or, keep it dead simple and ask for feedback by sharing a link to a feedback form on any website, social media or e-mail.
Some highlights:
- Get more and more relevant answers with AI follow-up questions.
- Go international with automatic question and feedback translation.
- Target the right audience at the right time.
- Centralize all your feedback, or let it flow through your favorite apps.
- Show forms in a modal, subtle slide-in or embed seamlessly.
- Dashboards for text analytics, NPS, CES and CSAT.
2. Passively listen (observe): an easy to use overview of automatically detected UX issues and individual session recordings.
Some highlights:
- Dashboard with automatically detected website/app issues.
For example rage clicks, error clicks, dead clicks, panic scrollers, frantic mouse movements, slow loading pages, broken images and more.
- Session replays and heatmaps.
- Monitor specific small interactions like when a visitor hovers over a newly added website feature and clicks on a specific button or a important element on your website (coming soon).
What is it exactly?
It's a hybrid between Typeform, Hotjar and Medallia. A full customer experience platform designed to understand what people (customers, employees and other stakeholders) want and need.
By both actively listening, observing and acting on feedback, I believe Smilejet helps organisations stay aligned with their audience. Make better decisions, improve market-fit and create loyal brand ambassadors.
Now it's your turn to shine!
I would love to hear stories, experiences and challenges and how they were solved.
Cheers, Ralph
Ralph, thanks for sharing such a raw and insightful journey...this is the stuff we don’t hear enough about. Your story really highlights a trap many founders fall into: initial product-market fit without ongoing alignment as customer needs evolve. Smilejet feels like a smart response to that gap. One thing that stood out to me is how you’re blending active and passive listening, that’s powerful for capturing both explicit and behavioral insights. Out of curiosity, have you thought about weaving messaging diagnostics into the platform too? I’ve seen that the ‘what do we say back to customers’ piece is just as critical in keeping engagement and retention high. Either way, big congrats...love where this is headed.
Thank you so much for the compliment and great question. Honest answer: no, but I do think it could be a powerful addition. You already can ask AI specific questions based on collected feedback like which other customers face the same issues and gain inspiration from other feedback. Also, you can already add special widget links in employee email signatures to track performance and feedback from customers as they rate an employee/the conversation.
Appreciate the thoughtful reply and I love how you're already leveraging AI to draw patterns and embed feedback loops across customer touchpoints.
From a positioning standpoint, that’s a strong foundation: showing not just what’s possible but also what’s already working today.
That said, I see an exciting opportunity here:
What if Smilejet positioned this “employee feedback” angle as a bridge between CX and EX (customer + employee experience)? Very few tools highlight how internal feedback loops can directly improve frontline messaging, retention, or even culture.
This could be a powerful wedge for teams trying to unify insight across the entire journey, not just from customers, but through the people serving them.
Killer potential here. Keep pushing the edges of what's possible.
Thank you so much, please let me know if you need help.
Congratulations! looks nice. Will try in a few days.