Marketing has no stack trace. Rude.
I’m one of the people building GetSheetAI, an AI tool for Excel and Google Sheets. The Excel side feels much more mature now. I wish I could say the same about my marketing.
With a bug, I can usually reproduce it, inspect something, and try a fix.
With a quiet launch, I get to wonder: wrong audience? Confusing explanation? Wrong problem? Should I change the headline or my entire personality?
The dangerous part is that building another feature feels productive. Asking someone why they didn’t try the product feels awkward. Guess which one I’m more tempted to do.
For those who got past this stage: what conversation helped you tell the difference between bad messaging and a product people didn’t need?
Not looking for a list of 50 places to post. I’m already capable of being ignored in several tabs at once.
The cleanest test I know: ask five people what they do today instead of using your product. If they describe a workaround with steps, a spreadsheet, a template, someone's Sunday night, then demand exists and you have a messaging problem, because they're already paying for that job in time. If they shrug and say it doesn't really come up, that's a product problem and no headline touches it.
The conversation that helped was asking one person who almost tried it: "what job were you hoping this would finish in the next ten minutes?" If they can't name a job, it's usually need — not wording. If they name a job and still bounce, the copy failed the handoff. Features feel safer because they leave a stack trace; quiet launches don't. One awkward question beats another silent ship.