If you’re not your app’s #1 customer, you’re missing the best feedback loop you’ll ever have

I’ve come to believe that one of the most underrated practices in solo dev and indie hacking is this:

Be your own biggest user.

Not just testing flows or checking UI bugs—actually use your app daily in real-world scenarios. If your product doesn’t deliver value to you personally, it’s going to be 10x harder to deliver value to anyone else.

I’ve been building an app called PitchGrid to help youth athletes (and their coaches/parents) compare videos side-by-side and track their progress over time. It started to help my daughter with her softball training, and I still use it several times a day—sometimes not even for the core use case. My kids did something funny while playing in the backyard and I caught it on video, so I used my app to sync a few videos of them playing, plus the one where she slipped and fell, and used the export feature to send the funny clip to the family.

Being my #1 customer has been invaluable:

• I caught critical bugs I would’ve never seen in scripted tests.

• I scoped a new feature, then paused to fix what I thought was a minor UI issue… and that turned out to expose a hidden edge case that caused crashes.

• It keeps me honest—if something annoys me after 3 days of use, I know it’ll annoy real users too.

Honestly, building something you use religiously means you never run out of motivation or insight. You’re not guessing what people might want—you’re fixing your own pain. And if you’re not seeing daily value in your app… that’s a red flag.

So here’s my hot take:

If you can’t find a reason to use your own product every day, it’s time to rethink your value prop—or pivot entirely.

Curious to hear from others:

• Do you actively use what you’re building?

• What’s something your own use helped you catch or improve?