The Confident Idea
Sarah (not her real name) had a brilliant idea: a project management tool specifically for creative agencies. She'd worked at an agency and saw the problem firsthand. This was going to be huge.
She spent 6 months building. No market research. No customer interviews. 'I know the market,' she said. 'I lived it.'
The Launch Disappointment
Launch day came. She'd been featured on Product Hunt. 200 signups in the first week. She was excited.
Then the engagement dropped off a cliff. Users signed up, poked around, and didn't come back.
She dug into the feedback: 'Why do you have this feature?' 'Why did you focus on this workflow?' 'I thought you solved X problem, but you actually solve Y.'
She'd built the wrong product. Not wrong for everyone—wrong for her target market.
The Diagnosis
The real problem agencies face isn't project management—it's time tracking and billing. She'd solved project management.
Her ideal feature set was solving 'dream workflow' problems that agencies didn't actually care about. She'd built for herself, not for her market.
She could have discovered this in hours using market research. Instead, she discovered it after 6 months of engineering work.
The Recovery
Sarah didn't give up. She rebuilt based on feedback. Took another 3 months.
The lesson she learned: Validate before you build. Run market research. Talk to customers. Use tools like TestSynthia to simulate market reactions before you invest months in engineering.
Today, she runs a successful product. And she validates every major decision with market research first, builds second.