Happy New Year to everyone!

As mentioned, we took a break from all platforms and social media, including PH, because we really needed it.

We gladly spent these days...

A while ago, I commented on a product launch here on PH. I was genuinely interested, so I asked a question about the product and wished the team good luck. I just wanted to be supportive and know more about what they were doing.

The day after the launch, one of the team members added me on LinkedIn, and I accepted. They thanked me for my interest and asked if I d be open to a partnership. Sounded great to me, so we booked a call.

During the call, though, it became clear that partnership meant different things to us:

For them: You test our product with your clients.

With the new year around the corner, we re doing what many others are doing: looking back.

I started using PH this summer, slowly trying to understand how the platform works (I still have doubts about some features, but I'm making progress at least.)

At first, my goal was simple: engage authentically. I didn t want to comment just for visibility or talk about things I didn t care about. So I stayed low-profile, joined conversations that genuinely interested me, and tried posting a few threads before launching NiceJourney (this last part didn t go that great, actually, as the majority of my threads were rejected).

Yesterday, we launched NiceJourney and ended up at #23!

Not bad, not great, just somewhere in that weird middle zone.

And honestly, today we re not sure how to feel about it.

Building the product is the fun part: you sketch, you code, you design, you tweak, and suddenly you re proud of this shiny thing that (hopefully) works. Then comes the harder question: Who is this actually for?

You might be tempted to say: Everyone! Anyone! People who breathe oxygen! But if your audience is everyone, your message doesn't reach anyone. The more you try to appeal to as many people as possible, the more you lose touch with your real target, who would gladly pay for what you sell.

All founders feel the same way:

• You re too close to your product, and while you're convinced you're seeing the bigger picture, you're actually not.

• Narrowing your audience feels like losing potential customers instead of gaining clarity.

• For you, every user matters. In reality, users are NOT buyers: not everyone who likes your product will pay for it.

• Your product solves 10 problems, but you know you can only market 1 at a time.

Somewhere along the way, startup culture decided that the only acceptable speed is faster than yesterday.
Ship fast. Fix later. Break things. Move fast. Break more things.

Obviously, nobody wants to spend three months debating the color of a button.

But when it comes to creative work (branding, design, copy, storytelling), sprinting nonstop comes with side effects:

• ideas get flatter

• decisions get safer

• and suddenly your unique identity feels suspiciously template-ish

If you ve never heard the term enshittification, you re in for a treat.
It was coined by author Cory Doctorow, and it perfectly describes what happens when platforms get so big that they slowly turn to...crap.

• Instagram turning into a shopping mall

• Amazon burying real products under a mountain of ads and sponsored maybe-it s-real-maybe-it s-not listings

• TikTok pushing whatever keeps you scrolling, not whatever you actually care about

• Twitter/X well, everybody knows

Doctorow explains enshittification in three phases:

1. The platform showers users with value: Everything is free, fun, simple, and frictionless. You think, Wow, capitalism isn t so bad after all.

2. The platform squeezes users to please business partners: More ads. More promotions. More recommended for you content that you did NOT ask for.

3. The platform squeezes partners to please shareholders: Everyone gets annoyed. The user experience collapses. And the magic disappears. Products that once felt cool now only make you more stressed and dissatisfied.

It's been almost one month since our launch on PH, and the year is coming to an end.

But we're already preparing for the next steps!

We'll use the holidays to refine our offer, strengthen our website, and do whatever needs to be done, with your help.

If you scroll through the SaaS category here on PH, you might notice the same patterns almost everywhere:

• Blue + purple gradients: It s the unofficial uniform. If your logo doesn't have a neon-ish gradient, then you're not a SaaS.

• Rounded geometric logos: Circles, dots, abstract blobs...lovely, but indistinguishable.

• Overused tech fonts: A variant of Inter or a slightly modified SF Pro. Clean? Yes. Memorable? Not really.

• Taglines that all say the same thing: The AI platform that boosts productivity. Your all-in-one workspace. Do more with less. Okay, but which product is this again?

Sameness is comforting because you know others have succeeded using those patterns, so you feel safe doing the same thing. After all, you're already risking a lot launching a new product.

But this mindset is counterproductive, especially when new products are launched every week, and competition is fierce.

Generative AI is certainly at the center of any discussion, and everybody wants to build something with it (we see it every day in the lists of launches here on PH).

Sure, we get it. When giants like OpenAI or Gemini make huge waves, everyone wants to swim in the same ocean, hoping to surf the hype.

But we decided to go the other way.
Not because we hate AI, but because we believe that human creativity remains fundamental to building unique brands.
AI is incredible at helping with certain tasks: it speeds us up, gives us variations, fills gaps, and sometimes saves us from creative block. But it cannot be truly original and imaginative, two elements that are essential in branding.