The classic case of over-engineering
Hey guys! Non-technical founder here who has fallen into the trap of over-engineering a product (lol). My co-founder and I are now figuring out what exact problem we solve, when we address too many use cases.
How did this start out?
We originally set out to build a privacy-first copilot.
Our heaviest users ended up being marketers, and we had to dig out why (we literally called and went to their offices):
- They had to figure out different tools
- They had scattered data across dashboards, sheets, reports etc.
- They had no time to analyse and dig deep into channels, they're busy executing
So we built a growth marketing agent: OpenSeal, a growth marketing agent that lives in your browser- and learns and grows with you and your business. Privacy-first, local-first.
I was excited, like "Ooh my 10 years of growth marketing is coming to life"
We made it context-aware, gave it deep-research capabilities, etc. Even made it able to open your browser tabs to hunt for specific datapoints.
And then the entrepreneurs came- "Oh this is super useful for my small business!"
In the usual spirit of over-engineering, we went to integrate with everything. (because the entrepreneurs used all sorts of random tools we never heard of)
And now we're in that spot of:
"Can you do a website audit and give me opportunities to address gaps the competitors don't?"
"Yes."
"Can you give me a product roadmap?"
"Yes."
"Can you optimize my ads?"
"Yes."
"Can you change this blog post to something tailored for my Canadian audience on Twitter?"
"Also yes."
So because we're privacy-first, we have no idea what people are using us for, unless they tell us.
We would really like to find a niche or specific problem we solve- all feedback is extremely welcome, with 1.5 months free to use this monster.
[We'll launch on PH in the near future!]
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