I gave founders detailed feedback on their ideas — and almost nobody responded. Why

I’ve been experimenting with something recently.

Instead of just saying “this sounds interesting”, I started giving founders structured, detailed feedback on their ideas — breaking it down into:

where the signal is actually strong
where it might be misleading
what I’d test next before building

The goal was simple:
help answer “is this actually worth building?”

But here’s what surprised me:

👉 almost nobody replied

No discussion
No pushback
No follow-ups

Even when the feedback was specific and directly tied to their idea.

This confused me — because in theory, this is exactly what founders say they want:

real validation
honest feedback
clarity before committing months to something

But in practice… it doesn’t seem to trigger engagement.

So now I’m trying to understand what’s actually going on:

Is detailed feedback the wrong format?
Do people prefer shorter / more opinionated takes?
Is timing/distribution more important than the content itself?
Or do founders just not engage deeply unless they already trust the source?

One thing I have noticed:

People respond much more to:

simple questions
relatable experiences
short, opinionated comments

…than to long, structured breakdowns

Which feels backwards — because the deeper analysis is usually way more useful.

Curious if others have seen the same:

👉 What actually makes founders engage with feedback on their ideas?
And what makes them act on it — not just say “this is helpful”?

(For context: I’m building a small tool around this problem — trying to turn early validation into something more concrete and actionable. Still very early, just trying to understand what actually works.)