Why I delayed my core feature and now finally launching it on v3

1 month, 62 signups, and a lot of clarity

If you’ve found value in this journey, it’d mean a lot to get your support on the v3 launch:
👉 https://www.uneed.best/tool/promptperf

When I first set out to build PromptPerf, the big vision was obvious:
A tool to evaluate prompts across multiple models GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and more.
That was always the goal. But I didn’t start there.

Instead, I took a different path one that felt slower, but turned out to be much smarter.

Three weeks after the waitlist landing page went live, I shipped the first working version.
It was barebones, but functional:
→ Enter your API key
→ Download the template
→ Manually write your test cases
→ Upload the CSV
→ Evaluate on one model

And guess what? Almost nobody used it.

That was the first lesson: friction kills usage.

So I shifted focus not to build more features, but to remove barriers.

🔹 v1: CSV upload + user’s own API key
🔹 v2: Removed API key requirement
🔹 v2.5: Added test case templates, onboarding flows, and a browser-based editor. this meant, user could evaluate within seconds

These fast, lightweight iterations taught me more than any feature request:
→ The problem wasn’t depth, it was setup fatigue
→ Most users didn’t want more options, they wanted momentum and ease to use

Show the problem to the user. They might not know what problem you are solving

That changed everything.

By the time v2.5 rolled out, I saw something I hadn’t before:
8 out of 10 new users were running at least 1–2 evaluations.
That was the first real signal.
Not just signups. Not just traffic.
Usage.

Only then did I ship the “hero feature”:
✅ Multimodel Evaluation — side-by-side comparisons across GPT-4, Claude, Gemini
✅ Rebuilt the dashboard
✅ Redesigned the export logic to cleanly handle multi-model output

Looking back, the big takeaway is clear:
Shipping the complex feature first would’ve hidden the real problems.
By delaying it, I uncovered what actually stopped users from completing the flow.

Now they’re not just signing up — they’re staying.

Still building. Still learning.
If you’ve found value in this journey, it’d mean a lot to get your support on the v3 launch:
👉 https://www.uneed.best/tool/promptperf