Hello Product Hunt! Excited to Be Here đź‘‹
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Hey everyone!
I'm Asmit, an 18-year-old builder from India.
I've been teaching myself software development, talking to founders, and learning what it actually takes to build products people want. The more I build, the more I realize that the technical side is only half the challenge—understanding users is where most of the learning happens.
I'm here to learn from experienced makers, share what I discover along the way, and hopefully contribute to the community as I grow.
I'd love to get to know everyone here.
What's one lesson you've learned from building products that still influences how you work today?
Looking forward to the conversations and meeting fellow builders!
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Introduce yourselves too would love to hear about you guys 🙌🙌
@asmit_tiwari That is the right instinct. One concrete thing to make it usable.
Early on, the drop-off point matters less than the return. Where someone stalls in a flow tells you about the flow. Whether they come back on day two without you prompting them tells you whether the thing is worth coming back to. The second one is far harder to fool yourself about, which is exactly why it is the one worth watching.
So for Launch Pilot I would track unprompted second sessions before anything in the funnel. If that number is zero, fixing the funnel only gets people to the exit faster.
Good luck with it.
@rabnoor_s Really appreciate that perspective. I hadn't thought about separating activation from retention that way, but it makes a lot of sense. I'll start tracking unprompted second sessions as a core metric once the auth layer is in place. Thanks for taking the time to share this.
@asmit_tiwari One thing before you wire it up, because the window you pick decides what the number can tell you. Day two is a calendar unit, not a product unit. If the job your tool does naturally comes up once a week, everything looks dead on a day two metric and you will conclude the wrong thing about a product that is fine. So set the window from the task instead. How often would a real person genuinely have this problem? That interval is your window, whatever the dashboards default to. Also, you do not actually need the auth layer for version one. A local flag with a first open timestamp gets you most of the signal today, and you can backfill properly once auth lands. Worth having the number before you have the infrastructure, because it might change what you build next. What is the natural cadence for yours?
@rabnoor_s Thanks, this is a really useful way to think about it. I was defaulting to D2 because that's what every analytics dashboard surfaces, but you're right the metric should follow the user's workflow, not the calendar. For Launch Pilot, audits and validation probably happen weekly or around major product changes, so a 7–14 day window makes more sense. I also like the idea of shipping with a local first-open timestamp before auth. That lets me validate behavior without blocking on infrastructure. Appreciate the perspective.
Asmit, one lesson, and it cost a lot to learn.
We had a customer who had signed, was warm on every call, said all the right things. Months in I actually checked, and they had not used the thing once. Not once. Every signal I had been reading said green.
So: what someone says about your product and what they do with it are different data, and only one of them is real. Ask what a person did last Tuesday, not what they think.
You are already closer to that than most people, because you said the technical side is only half of it and understanding users is where the learning happens. Plenty of people take a decade to arrive at that sentence.
Build things and put them in front of real people earlier than feels comfortable. That is the whole trick at 18.
@rabnoor_s Thanks for sharing this. That's a great reminder that usage is a much stronger signal than positive feedback.
I've been experiencing something similar while building Launch Pilot. Conversations and compliments feel encouraging, but I'm trying to pay much more attention to what people actually use, where they drop off, and what they come back for.
I really like your point about asking what someone did instead of what they think. I'll definitely keep that in mind going forward. Thanks for taking the time to share it!