I spent a day trying to get our first alpha users. 0 applications.

Yesterday I spent most of the day trying to get the first founders into the alpha of something we’re building.

We got 0 applications.

At first that obviously doesn’t feel great, but it’s also useful information. It forced me to question whether I was asking people to try a product before properly understanding whether they actually experience the problem.

We’re building Tempest, a decision workspace for founders navigating fragmented context.

The problem we’re exploring is what happens when the context behind a startup gets spread across customer conversations, AI chats, notes, docs and your own head. You make a product decision, move on, and a few weeks later you remember what you chose but not always the full reasoning behind it.

So I’m changing how I approach the alpha.

Instead of starting with “want to try our product?”, I’d rather understand how founders currently deal with this.

If you’re actively building something, how do you keep track of the reasoning behind important product decisions, especially when customer feedback, AI conversations and your own assumptions all played a role?