Hello world!

As a founder, you have to be optimistic and believe in your product, even when others don’t. Founders’ lives are hard—we spend so much time at our computer, getting virtually beaten up by users whenever something breaks, trying to convince people to use our product and share our vision. 

That’s why it’s good to be a little delusional about our product. It certainly helped us get started when we launched a fairly audacious app idea in Stompers.

But founders also need to be ruthless about our metrics.

I’ve seen too many founders trick themselves into thinking their metrics are going to improve dramatically or, even worse, focus on the wrong numbers to convince themselves a product will take off. 

I know, because I was one of them. 

When I built one of my first apps, a livestreaming social media platform called Limelight, I started with an inherently viral concept: What if one person were famous every day? 

Limelight would randomly choose one person every day to live stream to everyone else—ensuring that any member, at any time, might get their 15 minutes of fame. The app was only live for a few minutes each day and required users to log in during that specific window. 

When I first started marketing Limelight, within weeks I had TikToks about the app hitting several million views. This was a great indication of interest, maybe even an early sign of getting closer to product-market fit, I thought. 

The reality was much more complicated.

Product-market fit: Don’t eyeball it—measure it

Like a lot of founders, I let shiny vanity metrics like TikTok views give me hope for Limelight. (Founders need optimism, remember?)

But I’m also a deeply data-driven person. I knew that things like engagement, virality, and especially retention mattered more than TikTok views.

As a founder, you have to be optimistic and believe in your product, even when others don’t. Founders’ lives are hard—we spend so much time at our computer, getting virtually beaten up by users whenever something breaks, trying to convince people to use our product and share our vision. 

That’s why it’s good to be a little delusional about our product. It certainly helped us get started when we launched a fairly audacious app idea in Stompers.

But founders also need to be ruthless about our metrics.

I’ve seen too many founders trick themselves into thinking their metrics are going to improve dramatically or, even worse, focus on the wrong numbers to convince themselves a product will take off. 

I know, because I was one of them. 

When I built one of my first apps, a livestreaming social media platform called Limelight, I started with an inherently viral concept: What if one person were famous every day? 

Limelight would randomly choose one person every day to live stream to everyone else—ensuring that any member, at any time, might get their 15 minutes of fame. The app was only live for a few minutes each day and required users to log in during that specific window. 

When I first started marketing Limelight, within weeks I had TikToks about the app hitting several million views. This was a great indication of interest, maybe even an early sign of getting closer to product-market fit, I thought. 

The reality was much more complicated.

Product-market fit: Don’t eyeball it—measure it

Like a lot of founders, I let shiny vanity metrics like TikTok views give me hope for Limelight. (Founders need optimism, remember?)

But I’m also a deeply data-driven person. I knew that things like engagement, virality, and especially retention mattered more than TikTok views.