Mark Durnin

Hey Product Hunt,

We ve all seen those launches that look like they re crushing it but end up with zero actual retention. I ve been looking at the data from our first 5 pilot campaigns at shipshared.link, and the reality is pretty simple: most of us are accidentally scaling "leaks".

We recently worked with an Education SaaS founder who hit a 5% signup rate which is a dream for cold traffic. But because we ran a Road Test first, the session recordings showed something brutal: his mobile onboarding was completely broken. He found that "leak" for $69. Imagine if he d found that out after hitting the front page of Product Hunt. The momentum would have been totally wasted.

I ve been thinking a lot about the "distribution wall" we all hit. There s a lot of pressure to hire agencies or jump straight into CPC roulette, but I m starting to think traditional "marketing" is actually a waste of money in the early days.

When you re a micro-startup, you don't need a brand strategy yet you need human beings clicking your links so you can see what breaks. I had a wake-up call recently when I realized a Spanish-language influencer was directing a huge amount of traffic to my site. The problem? I didn't have a single word of Spanish on the site. I would have never known that was a potential market if I hadn't seen the raw traffic data first.

This is something I ll find out in just a short while, one week from now (Jan 28), as I m about to re-launch a digital detox app. If you want, follow, maybe you will be on watch of my steps and activities

However, that s not the main point of this post.