Jake Friedberg

I think we all lie every day (even when we say "Good night" to someone, and we don't even have to mean it sincerely).

We also lie on our resumes, we don't fully disclose everything on our tax returns, and we sometimes fake income.

Working towards launching my app.
It's too early for meaningful data, growth trends, or any real signal on what's working, and I'm okay with that.

What I've noticed though is that the internet is full of milestone posts. First 100 users, $10k MRR, viral launches. And when you're pre-data, it's easy to accidentally use someone else's month 18 as your week 1 benchmark.

I'm not losing sleep over it, but it did get me thinking about how founders define meaningful progress before the numbers are there to tell the story.

My current approach is staying focused on qualitative signals are the right people finding it, are early users actually engaging, are conversations happening. But I'm curious what others have done:

We re all builders here, which usually means at some point we looked at something clunky, slow, or frustrating and thought, there has to be a better way. Most products don t start with a grand vision; they start with irritation, curiosity, or firsthand pain.

I d love to learn more about how others here have navigated that journey:

How did you uncover the problem you decided to work on?
What signals told you this problem was worth solving?
How did you validate (if at all) whether people would actually pay for a solution?
Has your product stayed true to the original problem, or did it evolve into something different?
What surprised you the most along the way?