Nobody cares about your product. They care about their problem.
Nobody cares about your product.
They care about their problem.
I think I spent months getting this backwards.
When I started building Ashive, most of my attention went into improving the product.
New features.
Better onboarding.
Smarter prompts.
I kept asking:
"How do I make Ashive better?"
What I should've been asking was:
"What problem is painful enough that founders actively want help solving it?"
Recently, a founder used Ashive and gave me feedback about where they got stuck.
What surprised me wasn't the feedback itself.
It was realizing they weren't thinking about Ashive at all.
They were thinking about their own business.
Their own uncertainty.
Their own next step.
Ashive was just the tool they happened to use while trying to solve that problem.
That sounds obvious.
But I think a lot of founders quietly fall into the same trap.
We become obsessed with our product because we spend every day building it.
Users don't.
They wake up thinking about their problems.
Not our features.
I've been testing this idea with Ashive recently.
If you're building something and currently stuck on a decision, positioning, validation, or growth problem, drop it below.
I'll run it through the same process I use inside Ashive and share what I'd do next.
I agree, and I think there is an interesting step before that.
People care about their problems, but they do not always realize they have one.
Some of the hardest products are not solving obvious pain. They are making hidden friction or overlooked problems visible enough that people recognize them.
I have seen this with website owners. They often focus on traffic or features while missing the small moments of confusion, hesitation, or complexity that quietly affect outcomes. Once those become visible, the conversation changes completely.
Sometimes the first job of a product is not to solve the problem. It is to help people see the problem clearly enough to want it solved.
I really like that distinction.
I think I've been assuming people already know the problem they're trying to solve. But now that you mention it, a lot of founders don't say I need clarity. They usually describe symptoms like feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or constantly switching priorities.
That's a really useful way to think about positioning. Appreciate you sharing it.
This is such a crucial realization. I've noticed the same pattern with founders I've talked to - they pour energy into building when they should be obsessed with understanding the specific pain point their customer wakes up thinking about. The shift from "how do I improve my product" to "what problem keeps my user up at night" changes everything about prioritization. Did you find Ashive's positioning or messaging changed once you reframed it around the user's problem instead of the product itself?
I think it ended up being both.
The messaging definitely changed. I stopped thinking about Ashive as "an AI Founder OS" and started thinking much more about the founder's actual problem instead.
But it also changed the product itself. I moved the signup later so people could actually experience some value before being asked to commit.
I'm still early, but it feels like I'm making decisions from the user's perspective a lot more now instead of my own.