We removed our Chrome extension. 300 people installed it anyway.
Earlier this year, we made what felt like an obvious decision.
We took the Bugzy.io Chrome extension out of our activation flow.
It felt clunky. QA teams told us they didn't want "another extension." We were chasing a cleaner story: SDK install, snippet integration, "real" developer setup. The Chrome extension felt like a shortcut. Too easy. Too unsophisticated.
So we hid it.
We didn't take it down from the Chrome Web Store — we just stopped promoting it. Removed it from onboarding. Took it out of demo videos. Buried it on the website. We were embarrassed by it.
Then we checked the data.
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## 300 people installed it anyway
Over the next few months, the Chrome extension kept getting installed. Not by people we sent there. By people who found it on their own.
The retention rate was 94%.
That number stopped me cold.
Most Chrome extensions have terrible retention. Users install in a moment of curiosity, try it once, and uninstall within a week. We were seeing 94% of users keeping it installed weeks after install.
These people weren't installing out of curiosity. They needed it.
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## What we got wrong
We had assumed QA teams wanted "real" technical setup. SDK integration. JavaScript snippets. Developer involvement. We built our activation flow around that assumption.
The data was telling us something completely different.
QA teams kept finding the Chrome extension organically — through Chrome Web Store search, through Bugzy.io references they dug up, through word of mouth. They installed it themselves and kept it.
Why? Because the Chrome extension solved a real problem the SDK didn't:
It worked without a developer.
QA teams don't always have a developer available to install an SDK. Sometimes they need to report a bug right now, on a staging environment, on a Tuesday afternoon, without filing a ticket asking engineering to integrate a snippet.
The "unsophisticated" Chrome extension was actually the most direct path to getting started for our exact ICP.
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## What we did about it
We brought it back. Loudly.
The Chrome extension is now the primary activation method on Bugzy.io. Three options on the project setup screen:
1. Quick — Install Chrome extension (no developer needed)
2. Advanced — SDK or snippet integration
3. Need help? — Send setup instructions to your developer
The "unsophisticated" option became the lead. The "real developer setup" became the fallback.
We also rewrote our landing page to feature the Chrome extension. Added it back to onboarding. Made it the first thing demo videos showed.
The retention rate is still 94%.
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## The lesson I keep coming back to
We had an organic signal for months and ignored it because it didn't match our internal story about what "real" SaaS activation should look like.
The signal was right. We weren't listening.
I think this happens to founders more than we admit. We build a narrative about what our product should be, what our users should want, what "real" adoption should look like. Then real users show us something different — and instead of updating the narrative, we double down on the wrong version.
The signal had been there the whole time. We just didn't want it to be true.
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## What I'd tell another founder
If users are doing something with your product you didn't tell them to do, that's not noise. That's the most valuable data you have.
A 94% retention rate on an "unsophisticated" feature beats a 30% retention rate on the "real" feature you wanted to be using. Every time.
The market doesn't care about your taste. It cares about whether your product fits the actual job customers are trying to do.
Ours needed to capture bugs in one click, without involving a developer, on any web app. We thought they wanted technical sophistication. They wanted to stop having that conversation with their dev team.
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## Where we are now
The Chrome extension is back within our activation path. Live demo at https://bugzy.io/live-demo (no signup) for people who want to try without installing anything, or grab the Chrome extension at => https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/bugzy/phgpacobfekpkbpblndhnhhknegegnhc directly.
We're still figuring out the rest of the funnel. Activation from signup to active team is the hard part. But the Chrome extension story reminded me to watch organic signals more carefully and trust user behavior over our internal narrative.
We're still figuring out the rest of the funnel. Activation from signup to active team is the hard part. But the Chrome extension story reminded me to watch organic signals more carefully and trust user behavior over our internal narrative.
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## One question
Has anyone else accidentally killed something users actually wanted? What was the signal that made you bring it back?
Curious to hear other founder stories where the data told you you were wrong before you wanted to hear it.
