I built the product. Now I’m questioning whether users will build the habit.
I’ve been building VaultlyKeep, a browser-based app for keeping receipts, purchase details, warranty information, return deadlines, and supporting documents connected to each purchase.
Building the features has been one challenge.
But I’m realizing the more important question is behavioral:
Will people actually save this information before the day they desperately need it?
Most of us don’t think much about an old receipt when everything is working.
Then months later something breaks, a warranty question comes up, a return needs proof of purchase, or you simply need to remember where and when you bought something.
The information exists somewhere — maybe email, a photo gallery, a retailer account, a drawer, Google Drive, or nowhere at all.
That’s the problem I’m trying to understand better.
I don’t want to validate VaultlyKeep by asking people, “Would you use this?”
I’d rather understand what people actually do today.
So I’m curious:
When you buy something expensive enough that you might need the receipt or warranty later, what do you actually do with that information?
And more importantly:
Has your current system ever failed when you actually needed the receipt or proof of purchase?
I’m especially interested in real experiences — including people who already have a system that works perfectly well.
I’m also starting to look for a small number of people who deal with this problem and would be willing to test VaultlyKeep using real purchases and tell me where it falls short.
Criticism is more useful to me right now than compliments.
The right question is the second one — people only adopt a "someday" tool after their current system fails them once. The wedge isn't building a daily habit, it's the failed-warranty moment; that's when they'll install anything. Optimize for the 2-minute retroactive save (snap the receipt you already have) rather than the discipline nobody keeps.
Honest answer to your actual question: I photograph the receipt, it lands in the camera roll unnamed, and I find it by scrolling around the date of purchase. Its failed twice — once when a boiler warranty needed the installer invoice and the photo was too blurry to read the serial. The interesting bit for you is that I never felt the pain at purchase time, only 18 months later, so anything asking me to file things on day one is fighting uphill.
Measurement boundary between product existence and behavioral adoption. You've built VaultlyKeep (feature validation). Now you're asking about VaultlyKeep usage (behavior validation). The gap is critical - it's why people need receipts but won't save them until failure happens.
Most validation measures "stated willingness" (Would you use this?). The measurement that matters is "captured at moment of friction" - when someone is actually missing a document. That's the only moment that changes behavior. Everything else measures feature appeal, not adoption.
The habit question is the product. A vault that needs a daily save for a once-a-year emergency loses to email search, the camera roll, and the retailer account — until the day the retailer is gone or the photo is unnamed. People with "a system that works" will say it works. The useful data is the last time that system failed.
IH answers to "what do you do with receipts" will be tidy founder answers. The conversations worth recruiting from are already happening mid-failure: a return window closing, a warranty claim, an insurance proof-of-purchase. A tester who is not currently missing a document is mostly complimenting the idea.
The habit question is more interesting than the feature set.
Curious whether the people with the best existing systems still have failures at the moment they actually need the information.