What is an early sign that your product is going to be successful?
A few days ago, I read a post on Reddit saying that if you don’t reach 200 users for your tool in the first month (in this particular case, the guy was talking about a Chrome extension), then your tool is no good and you should move on.
I was scared for a moment because I definitely don’t meet this with my extension (now I’m somewhere around 75 users in 5 weeks).
But then I realised that the person who said this doesn’t even want to share revenue, and then at the same time, somewhere in the comments, he said that extensions that reached 30,000 users don’t make him enough money to support himself. Okay....
But then – what is the first sign that your tool can make it?
– that it solves a real problem?
– that it has some number of users? (if so, how many?)
– that it brings in revenue? (if yes, what amount?)
Replies
Softorino 💻📲
That Reddit rule is survivorship bias with a number attached. The early sign I trust is not user count but repeat use: 10 people who come back unprompted in week 2 beats 200 who installed once and forgot. Vanity growth can be bought, a second visit cannot. What does your week-2 return rate look like right now?
@yelyzaveta_kibets Repeat use is right but it lagged for us. The earlier tell was prompt length. People trying Zeplik out type five or six jokey words, write me a poem about my cat. The ones who've actually adopted it write long boring prompts stuffed with their own context, client names, half a spreadsheet pasted in. That shift showed up weeks before anything moved on a retention chart.
Softorino 💻📲
@asadmalik901 That maps to what I see in support tickets for the Mac apps I work on: the tourists ask how to convert one file, and the ones who stayed ask whether some format nobody has heard of is supported, because they have already moved their whole workflow across. Did the long prompts change what those users asked you for in support too?
Yeah, it flipped from how do I to why did it do that. The tourists want a walkthrough. The ones who moved their work over paste the exact prompt and the output and ask which part of their context got dropped, which is a much harder ticket to answer and a much better one to get.
Softorino 💻📲
@asadmalik901 That flip is the expensive one, because how do I has a doc waiting for it and why did it do that needs a human who understands the model. Did you end up staffing support differently for it, or writing the explanations into the product?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@yelyzaveta_kibets I cannot say how it looks with returning, but so far 78 active users.
Softorino 💻📲
@busmark_w_nika 78 with no retention view yet is the stage where week-two returns tell you more than signups do, and that is exactly where the Mac apps I work on kept losing people. Can you see repeat sessions at all, even something crude like the same user showing up twice?
The number in that Reddit post is doing something worse than being wrong: it is measuring a thing that the same person then told you does not pay. Thirty thousand users and it still does not support him. So whatever 200-in-a-month is a threshold for, it is not the thing you need.
The earliest real sign I have found is not a count at all. It is whether anyone completes a step that costs them something, when nobody is watching and nothing is chasing them.
My own numbers for why. I gave ten people free access, and these were not strangers: every one of them had described the exact problem I solve, unprompted, before I mentioned I was building anything. Two created an account. One started the setup. Zero finished. Wanting it is cheap and it is what surveys and waitlists measure. Finishing a step that costs thirty minutes is not cheap, and that is the number that turned out to predict anything.
The second sign is stranger and I trust it more. My first paying customer argued with me. He refused a design decision I had made for my own convenience, told me why, and kept using the thing anyway. Praise costs nothing and people give it to be kind. Arguing about a specific detail costs effort and only happens when somebody is already imagining living with your product. Every person who told me it looked great is gone. The one who pushed back is the one who paid.
Two things I would actively distrust at this stage. Engagement, because I have watched people scroll a screen, make nothing and leave while every metric said they were engaged. And traffic, because I once sent 1,375 clicks at a page and got zero orders, which taught me that you can pass the traffic test completely and still have built the wrong thing.
So for 75 users in five weeks I would not ask whether the number is good. I would ask how many of them came back in a week you did not email them, and how many finished the thing your extension exists to do rather than installing it. If either of those is not zero, you have more signal than the person with thirty thousand users.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@serdarships For sure, I tried to implement a particular form when people click "upgrade" – i can seee how many are open to pay. :D
vibecoder.date
People caring enough to complain about something missing within reason of course
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@build_with_aj At least, they should be paying customers, I think :D So I know that I will be improving for those who wanna invset into somthing :D
AI Context Flow
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@hira_siddiqui1 Do you register any payments? How long did it take you to have your first paying users?
AI Context Flow
Serdar, the arguing one is the best signal in this thread. Ours was a guy who spent a paragraph explaining that the model picker in Zeplik was lying to him. He was right, it was swapping models silently, and we shipped the fix three weeks ago because he bothered to be annoyed. Everyone who told me it looked slick is long gone.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@asadmalik901 What I appreciate that you take those suggestions seriously and do something about that :)
Suggestions are cheap to collect and expensive to ignore. Most of what I actually change comes from someone saying a thing is annoying, not from a roadmap I wrote in advance. And 78 active is a real number, which is more than most people posting screenshots will give you.