Most founders are fixing the wrong problem. I built Sensei for that
A few weeks ago I posted about building Sensei — an AI that tells founders what’s actually broken instead of giving them more validation theater.
The most useful feedback I got wasn’t “cool idea.” It was:
how do you make this something founders keep using instead of a one-time audit?
That stuck with me, because that’s the real problem.
Most founders do not need another teardown.
They need something that keeps paying attention after the first opinion. 👀
So I’ve been pushing Sensei further in that direction.
It now looks at your site, positioning, and competitors — then keeps watching. The goal is not just to hand you a one-time score and disappear. It’s to help you see what changed, what’s holding you back, and what to do next before you waste time solving the wrong problem.
That shift came from my own mistakes.
I’ve spent months building the wrong thing before.
Not because I was lazy.
Because I was too close to it.
You convince yourself the problem is onboarding.
Or pricing.
Or conversion.
Or some feature request that sounded important in the moment.
Meanwhile the real issue is sitting somewhere else entirely. ⚠️
That’s what I want Sensei to help with:
seeing the thing that’s easy to miss when you’re buried in your own product.
It’s still in beta, and I’m keeping it free to use right now while I make it sharper and learn from real founder feedback. 🚧
If you’re building something and want a brutally honest second set of eyes, I’d love for you to try it:
https://asksensei.dev
Would genuinely love feedback from other founders on whether this feels like something you’d actually come back to weekly, not just try once.
Moving from "one-time audit" to "something that keeps watching" is a much better idea and way harder to build.
The part about spending months building the wrong thing because you're too close to it, yeah, been there. I think every founder has at some point.
One thing I've learned the hard way about collecting feedback: what founders say they want and what they actually come back for are two very different things. People will tell you "yes I'd use this weekly" and then never open it again. The only signal that matters is whether they return on their own, without you nudging them. So I'd watch that metric like a hawk more than NPS, more than survey answers.
What would bring me back every week is something that tells me "your competitor just changed their pricing" or "your headline doesn't match what people search for anymore" the small things I'd never spot on my own. If Sensei can do that, you've got something founders will open as often as their Stripe dashboard.
Good Luck
“Killing 'validation theatre' is such a needed shift—founders are usually too close to their own work to see the actual cracks. 🔍 The move from a one-time audit to a continuous 'watchdog' for positioning is a smart way to solve that retention problem.
Nice idea, this could be a good way to test it. There’s a competition where you can submit Sensei — entry is $19 and winner gets a Tokyo trip.
Prize pool just opened at $0 so your odds are the best right now.”