If you built a better product and people are still choosing your competitors over you, there’s a reason that has nothing to do with how good your product is.

Maybe you’ve tried every marketing tactic you can think of, but nothing sticks—and even when you find great customers at first, you don’t know why they chose you or how to find more people like them.

For the last 5 years, I’ve been studying and talking with founders about exactly why this happens and how companies like Apple, Tesla, and Salesforce become impossible to ignore and easy to buy.

Companies like Apple understood decades ago that they can’t sell their product simply by being better. They use a psychological principle that makes customers feel like the product was made for them, and it’s why better products lose to better-positioned ones.

The first thing I noticed with this homepage

This morning I was looking at a product’s homepage. After being on the page for just a few seconds, I was irritated.

The name of the product is Olostep. As you can see, the headline for the product is “Web Infrastructure for AI.”

Below it, the subheadline shows five capabilities: Scrape, Crawl, Map, Search and Answer.

When you look at the homepage for the first time, everything looks perfect, and nothing seems wrong with this kind of main headline.

But this kind of message is the single biggest reason why companies lose to their competitors even after having better products and putting a lot of time into marketing.

If you look at the entire page, you will find that the customer is missing from this page.

I am not saying that the term “customers” isn’t mentioned somewhere. I mean there’s no moment on the page where a real person reading this homepage could say stuff like “Yes, this is the situation I am stuck in.”

The headline is telling what the product does. It doesn’t tell people when they actually need the product.

What I have observed after studying hundreds of companies is that top companies like Apple validate people’s situation before they even start talking about the solution.

But most founders fail with their marketing efforts and are unable to overcome customers’ thinking that they can just talk about their product directly.

What current founders do is that they put a lot of effort into building a good product, and when it’s time to write the marketing message or description of their product, they just open apps like ChatGPT.

Founders expect that AI will write their product messaging in a way that they will be able to describe their product correctly.

But this never happens. Because of this, even after putting a lot of effort into marketing their product, people never relate to their product. And as a result, they never make the number of sales they were expecting and lose to a worse competitor.

A trillion-dollar company like Apple never skips questions like “where does this product fit into someone’s life?”

Because of this, they can fit their product into someone else’s life. These top companies never become impossible to ignore by describing their capabilities.

They became impossible to ignore because they understood exactly who their customer was, what that person wanted to feel and what solution they were looking for before they decided to buy their product.

Losing deals, wasting marketing budget, still can’t explain why customers choose you

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We’ll look at your positioning and marketing together, identify why your current message isn’t landing, and work out what needs to change so the right customers understand why they should choose you.

I’ve spent the last 5 years studying and working on positioning with founders, helping them understand why the right customers choose them and turning that understanding into marketing that makes those customers easier to attract.

The problem this kind of homepage creates

Let me first show you exactly what this kind of messaging costs.

And why it is directly connected to the problems most founders remain stuck with, which include losing to worse competitors, not knowing why customers choose them and doing a lot of marketing but failing to attract buyers.

When your messaging doesn’t reflect the customer’s situation, they don’t recognise themselves in it.

Messages like “Web Data Infrastructure for AI” tell people what your product does. It doesn’t tell people when they need it.

If you can’t show people when this product becomes useful in their situation, they have no reason to see it as the solution; people will choose your competitors instead of your product, and it doesn’t matter how many ads you keep running.

Let’s suppose I am a developer who lands on this page. I read the main message and think, “Okay, this is some AI infrastructure tool”, and immediately start comparing it with every other infrastructure tool I could find on the internet.

I open a new tab and start to look for “web data infrastructure for AI” tools.

Out of those tools, a few tools describe things in a way where I can recognise my workflow and how I work, and I understand stuff like “when will I need this tool?”

I tell myself that I can’t recognise myself in a tool like OloStep, but this new product describes my situation exactly, and I am going to choose it.

As a customer, I have never used the OloStep product and made a decision that this product is bad. It’s just on the basis that they didn’t recognise the customer workflow on their homepage.

Suppose there is one software which provide project management software for teams, and they describe their product as “Project management software for modern teams.”

And the other company describe the same product as “Stop losing important work in Slack, emails, and meetings.”

The second message puts me inside a situation I already recognise. I can see myself dealing with Slack, emails and meetings, and I can immediately understand why I might need this product.

The other problem with this kind of marketing message is that everything is led with capabilities instead of what’s happening in the customer’s situation.

Scrape. Crawl. Map. Search. Answer. All of these things describe what the product does. But customers don’t wake up thinking, “I need to crawl something today.” They think, “My AI agent needs live web data, and building that myself is a very challenging task.”

That’s the situation the customer is actually in. But this homepage doesn’t show them that situation.

And when your messaging doesn’t connect your product to the customer’s situation, you make yourself easier to compare with every competitor.

Once you position yourself as “web data infrastructure,” the comparison becomes: “Which web data API is better?” Now you’re competing on speed, price and features.

A race that has nothing to do with why the right customer should choose you.

And that’s why you keep trying different marketing tactics without anything sticking, losing to competitors you know you’re better than and struggling to find more customers like your best one.

All of these problems can come from the same place, which is that you haven’t figured out what makes the right customer choose you. So before you change another headline or launch a new campaign, let’s find out how to do it.

Here’s How To Fix This

Before rewriting anything, you have to find the answer to one question:

What is happening in the customer’s world immediately before they need this product?

I don’t know the exact situation for Olostep, but if I had to guess, it’s something like this: a developer is building an AI agent that needs live information from the web, and getting that data is becoming increasingly difficult. They could build all of the infrastructure themselves, but they don’t want to. They just need reliable access to the data.

Now we have something we can actually position around. We know what is happening in the customer’s world, what is making their life difficult, and where a product like Olostep could fit into that situation.

And from here, there are multiple ways we could position the product.

Option 1: Centre the AI agent problem.

“Your AI agent needs the live web. We make sure it gets there reliably.”

I am not saying this should be the final message. Because it is not good, but we can add more steps to better position the product from here.

There is a lot of improvement that needs to be done, but when you start from here, everything changes, and people start seeing themselves in it.

Option 2: Centre the build vs buy decision

“Stop building web infrastructure. Start shipping AI agents that actually work.”

Option 3: Centre the bottleneck moment

“When your AI pipeline needs live web data, Olostep handles everything between the request and the answer.”

Companies like Apple use customer situations

Take the Mac mini homepage, for example.

Apple didn’t write “compact desktop computer with M6 chip and fast processing.” They wrote “Little-do-it-all.”

But notice what happens when you read “Little-do-it-all.” You don’t immediately start thinking about the processor, RAM, or number of ports.

You start thinking about what you could use this computer for and where it might fit into your life. The message connects the product to a situation rather than making you memorise what the product contains.

That’s what I mean by understanding the customer’s situation.

The situation exists before the product enters the picture.

Someone might want the capabilities of a powerful desktop without wanting a large computer taking over their workspace. Apple is showing them where the Mac mini fits into that existing situation.

Three words, and the customer can immediately understand why this product might be relevant to them. You don’t need to know a single specification.

That’s the difference between describing your product and understanding the customer’s situation.

When you understand the customer’s situation, your marketing finally has a clear story to build around.

You stop competing only on product features, and you start understanding what made your best customers choose you in the first place.

That gives you something most founders are missing: a positioning you can build your marketing around, a reason for customers to choose you over seemingly better alternatives, and a way to find more people like the customers you already have.

Losing deals, wasting marketing budget, still can’t explain why customers choose you

→ Book a Founder Strategy Session

We’ll look at your positioning and marketing together, identify why your current message isn’t landing, and work out what needs to change so the right customers understand why they should choose you.

I’ve spent the last 5 years studying and working on positioning with founders, helping them understand why the right customers choose them and turning that understanding into marketing that makes those customers easier to attract.

A few days ago, I came across a post from Lenny Rachitsky on Twitter/X.

If you don’t know him, he has over a million Substack subscribers and runs one of the best-known podcasts in the startup world. He posted that YouTube’s team had shut down his channel.

What happened was that the YouTube team thought he was impersonating himself. For any creator, losing a channel like that overnight is a serious problem.

The amount of work that goes into producing videos on YouTube is enormous. So when YouTube shuts down a channel, it feels like the creator must have made a serious mistake.

He filed an appeal and got it back. But that’s not what I was thinking about.

What stayed with me was thinking about all the channels that clip others’ content, add ten seconds of commentary, and call it their own.

Very big channels are built entirely on someone else’s work, someone else’s ideas and someone else’s audience also.

Just that these channels are repackaging in a different way.

And I started thinking about why people do this.

The answer is obvious to me. It works.

At least for a few people who just want to grow such things. There is an opportunity because you’re doing some kind of social hacking, and people like famous creators. So everyone can do that.

Demand exists. People are trying to fulfil that demand by using all sorts of tricks, including clipping content.

This is exactly how most founders also end up in markets they don’t actually care about.

A niche is exploding. Funding is flowing in. On every social media platform, success stories are present. Smart people on Twitter are talking about it constantly. And building in that space feels like the right kind of thing to do.

So they start doing it. Everyone feels like it’s the right thing to do because the demand already exists.

Building something but feeling stuck?

I’ve built a $50K+ writing-first business, grown an audience of 10,000+ readers, and spent hundreds of hours studying positioning, founder branding, and business strategy.

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The Dangerous Thing That Happens Months Later

Think about those clipping channels for a second.

At the start, everything works. The views come in, and they are growing, actually. But the entire foundation of their channel is borrowed content and authority.

And then, one of two things happens. Either YouTube detects what you’re doing and reduces your visibility, or people simply get bored because your channel keeps repackaging someone else’s content.

It is the same thing that happens with the founders.

Someone enters an AI tools market because everyone is talking about it. The first few months feel like “Wow. I am onto something.”

But after six months pass, the work gets repetitive, and progress entirely slows. Building in that space feels less exciting, and you start to feel like there is nothing you can contribute in a new way.

Founders tell themselves that they need more discipline and more consistency to do the same work.

But it’s actually not the problem.

The excitement they were running on was never really theirs. They got excited because the market was feeling the excitement. They got excited because people on Twitter were talking about it.

Once people stop talking about it, there is no excitement left because the excitement was never really the founder’s to begin with.

Founders ran out of the borrowed excitement.

Opportunity Doesn’t Create Endurance

Biz Stone is the co-founder of Twitter.

Before building Twitter, he was building Odeo.

Odeo entered podcasting because the market looked promising.

Podcasting was growing. A new category was forming in real time. The opportunity was obvious, and the timing felt right.

The team understood that space mattered because the market was growing and everyone was talking about it.

But over time Biz noticed something unusual and learnt a very hard lesson.

Very few people inside Odeo actually loved podcasts themselves. They weren’t constantly listening. They weren’t obsessed with that thing. They understood the market but weren’t emotionally connected to it.

And when Apple entered the podcasting niche and things got harder, it created a gap which was almost impossible to ignore.

Since no one inside the company was genuinely excited about podcasting, there was no motivation left to keep pushing when a big player entered the market.

After running the same business for long enough, you realise that market excitement stops being enough. Only your own obsession lasts.

If you’re excited to enter a space because you are the first one to push through. That excitement won’t last for long.

That’s what Biz learned from Odeo.

Startups, or even the work of building a personal brand, can’t be sustained by market opportunity alone.

They will only be sustained by obsession. Obsession will beat everything. The founders who survive difficult markets are usually the ones who keep thinking about the problem without the hype.

Think Differently, and It Will Change Everything

Stop asking “where is the biggest opportunity?”

Start asking “what problem would I happily spend years thinking about?”

When I started writing about positioning for programmers and SaaS founders, it wasn’t a hot market. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

There were months where nothing was working, and I didn’t know what kind of content to produce.

But I am just obsessed with helping programmers and SaaS founders with positioning their personal brands and their SaaS product. I kept going. That’s the reason I’m still here writing about this years later.

Most founders who entered the AI tools market because Twitter told them to have already moved on. Because borrowed excitement has an expiration date.

Three things to follow from this:

1. Choose the problem you’re naturally obsessed with.

2. Let the market opportunity amplify your obsession

3. Build where your curiosity survives long after the hype is gone.

If you’re a programmer building something online and keep running out of energy, the problem isn’t discipline. It’s that you’re building around someone else’s excitement instead of your own.

That’s exactly what I help programmers figure out. Book a call with me.

Building something but feeling stuck?

Over the last few years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours studying positioning, founder branding, messaging, and business strategy while building a $50,000+ writing-first business and an audience of 10,000+ readers.

If you’re building something meaningful and want another perspective on your business, I’d love to think it through with you.

Free first call.

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Are you trying to grow your startup, but you don’t actually know where the mistake is happening?

Even after doing all the marketing work, not many people are becoming your customers. Your conversion rate is still low.

After reading about many billion-dollar companies, talking to founders and VCs, and reading many books on marketing and positioning, I realised something.

Many programmers aren’t struggling because they aren’t doing the marketing. But they struggle because they’re trying to own two positions at once.

Let me explain this in detail.

Building something but feeling stuck?

Sometimes the problem isn’t your product, your marketing, or your content. It’s that you’re solving the wrong problem.

I’ve spent years studying positioning, founder branding, and business strategy while building a $50K+ writing-first business and an audience of 10,000+ readers.

If you’d like another perspective on your business, I’m opening a few Founder Strategy Sessions each month.

→ Book a Founder Strategy Session

Why Keeping Your Options Open Feels Like The Right Move

I have been consistently producing content for programmer-founders for the last couple of years.

I wanted to build a product for this audience for quite a long time. There were a lot of different kinds of products I thought about building.

Some of them were an online writing course, an email growth course, and a storytelling course.

To date, I haven’t built any course. I only created a few PDFs, and even those I never promoted to my community.

The reason I never built any of them is very simple. It is that I couldn’t decide which one to commit to. Each idea felt valid. Each one had a different type of person who would benefit from it.

People also said that they wanted some help with these things. But I didn’t do it.

And every time I got close to starting to build one, I’d talk to someone who needed some other thing instead, and I’d get lost.

So I kept all my options alive. I felt responsible for doing it. Like I was waiting for enough signal before committing to one of them.

This is exactly where most founders also get stuck.

If their product genuinely helps freelancers and also helps agencies, and both groups are paying for the product and are happy with it, choosing one audience feels like an unnecessary sacrifice rather than a strategic decision.

Speaking to both feels logical because both audiences are already paying. Waiting for more data is the responsible approach because more data should produce a better answer.

And committing to one type of customer feels like the wrong thing to do because it means you have to leave the other audience. You have to abandon real users and revenue by choice.

The Problem With Keeping Your Options Open

So here’s what actually happens when you keep both options alive.

The homepage starts doing two jobs at once. One paragraph speaks to freelancers. The next one speaks to agencies.

Founders keep changing the main message on the homepage depending on whom they spoke to last.

Case studies become inconsistent.

One customer story is about a solo operator saving time. The next story is about how a 10-person startup solved a completely different problem using the product. It tells people that these types of people are winning in life. But together they send a signal nobody asked for.

And then word of mouth also doesn’t work for them.

A freelancer recommends your product to someone they know. That person lands on your website and sees that the page isn’t written specifically for freelancers because it also addresses agencies.

So instead of trusting your product, they ignore it because it doesn’t feel like it was built specifically for them.

A similar thing happens when agency founders recommend your product to other agency founders.

As a result, even though in your customer surveys people are mentioning that they are highly likely to recommend your product, it doesn’t mean this will drive your revenue up.

If one type of audience can’t feel like this product was specifically built for them, they will never buy.

So you might believe that two audiences create two separate opportunities for you. But it actually creates a blurry position that belongs to nobody.

The founder solved the problem of ‘leaving nobody out’ by creating a new problem: ‘No one feels like this product is built for them.’

The market can only remember one thing

To explain things in a better way, I am going to give a slightly different example.

Marc Benioff was doing the same thing in his life after starting Salesforce.

One month after starting Salesforce, he was still working for Oracle. From his perspective, he was doing a responsible thing.

Why abandon a successful career before his startup proved itself? Why close one door before the other was fully open?

But to everyone around him, he wasn’t sending one clear signal. Part of him belonged to Oracle, and part of him belonged to Salesforce.

And that split wasn’t just about his time; it showed up in how confident he was about his idea when he talked to anyone else.

An early investor at Salesforce named Magdalena Yesil told him something simple. It was time to leave Oracle.

Everyone needed one clear commitment from him.

Once he made that decision to leave Oracle, nothing about the product changed overnight. But it changed the signal he was sending to early employees, investors and future customers that he was actually committed to one mission.

From then on, everyone saw one founder building one company.

That’s exactly how buyers’ minds work.

Imagine you’re looking for a coffee shop. One sign says “coffee”. Another one says “Coffee, sandwiches, groceries, office supplies and gifts.”

Both businesses are essentially doing the same thing. Both are, in fact, selling coffee. But the signal they are sending to the prospective customers is totally different.

If you want just coffee, you know actually which one you will walk into.

People don’t remember products that mean different things to different people. They remember products that own one clear idea.

Marc didn’t wait for the market to tell him which identity to choose. His commitment created a clear path forward.

This thing changes everything

The question most founders ask is “which audience should we keep?”

That’s the wrong question. It keeps you in analysis mode, waiting for the market to hand you an answer it was never going to give you for a very long time.

The right question is, ‘Which audience do we want the market to remember us for serving?’

That one shift moves you from waiting to deciding which audience you should really go after. And the decision itself is what creates the clarity.

In practice, three things follow from this:

1. Choose one primary audience. Not the one that feels safer. The one you can serve most specifically and talk about most honestly.

2. Build one consistent message around them. Your homepage, case studies, and even the way you describe your product in conversations should all point to the same person.

3. Let the market associate you with that one position before you even think about expanding.

Here’s one thing you can do in the next 10 minutes.

Open your homepage. Read the first three sentences.

Then ask: if only one type of person landed here, would they immediately feel this was built for them? Or would they have to figure out whether they belong?

If you have to think about it, the answer is clear: they have to figure out whether they belong.

Pick the audience you’re going to commit to. Not forever, but just first. And try to do positioning correctly from there.

Still thinking about your own business?

If this article made you question something about your positioning, founder brand, or growth strategy, let’s apply the same thinking to your business.

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It sucks when you build a genuinely useful product and people still don’t care about it.

It sucks even more when the problem isn’t the product itself, but a small messaging mistake that makes your business sound exactly like everyone else’s.

One simple shift in how you describe your product can completely change how people perceive your product.

In this article, I’ll show you the customer insight that made me rethink positioning, SaaS marketing, and almost every online business I study today.

The biggest mistake founders make

Take a look at the above homepage.

The headline says:

Exposure management for the AI era.

And technically, it is accurate. There is nothing wrong with that kind of description from the builder’s perspective.

If you’re a cybersecurity professional, exposure management matters.

For those of you who don’t understand it, let me explain it in a few sentences.

Exposure management is the process of finding, prioritising and reducing security weaknesses before attackers can exploit them.

In simple terms, it helps security teams identify where they are vulnerable and fix those risks before they turn into a real security incident.

Now, after reading a little bit about it, I can say that it’s a very real problem.

The issue is that when you start looking at cybersecurity websites, you begin noticing the same pattern everywhere.

You will often see phrases like this:

• exposure management

• vulnerability management

• attack surface monitoring

Everything seems technically impressive.

A programmer who is curious about cybersecurity and is reading this for the first time will probably think, “Let me find out in detail what attack surface monitoring actually means.”

Yet something still feels off.

Everything written feels totally interchangeable.

Every other website in this domain could use this language, and everything would look the same.

Maybe the software they are selling is really valuable.

But if that’s true, why does so much of the messaging feel so forgettable? The answer only becomes visible when you start looking at how cybersecurity professionals actually experience their jobs.

The real problem nobody thinks about

The reason this happens is surprisingly simple.

I have repeated this in multiple articles. And I am repeating this here.

When founders build cybersecurity products, they naturally focus on things like:

• threat detection

• vulnerability management

• security monitoring

• compliance

And again, there is nothing wrong with those sorts of things.

The software is probably helping detect threats faster. Maybe they reduce the security risks.

But the founders or people writing the pages have to realise that security leaders don’t emotionally experience their jobs through security infrastructure.

These people don’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking:

I need better vulnerability management.

They are usually thinking things like:

• I hope we don’t get breached

• What happens if something slips through?

• I can’t afford another incident

• How do I explain a failure to the board?

Compare these two messages.

“We provide real-time vulnerability monitoring.”

Vs

“Know about threats before they become tomorrow’s crisis.”

Both describe a similar outcome. But emotionally, they feel completely different. The first one describes the responsibility.

The second one describes the emotional experience and reality.

And this is the mistake many programmer-founders make.

They describe the category of the work.

The real insight

This is exactly where strong founders start thinking differently.

They understand something many technical founders miss.

People experience work emotionally first, and then logic takes over. Operational experience comes after the emotional one.

And until most programmers understand this, they will keep writing messaging like this: “Exposure management for the AI era.”

You have to know that a security leader is not emotionally living inside vulnerability scanning, compliance frameworks or threat intelligence systems.

Those are the responsibilities attached to the job.

What occupies their mind is something else entirely.

They think about the possibility of a breach. They think about the risks. They think about responsibility.

They think about the pressure of being the person who is expected to keep everything secure.

The workflow matters. But the emotional consequence of the workflow is what people actually live through every day.

And once you notice this, you start seeing it everywhere.

Healthcare thinks about patient outcomes, not documentation workflows.

The finance team thinks about mistakes, not reconciliation processes.

Founders think about growth, not payment infrastructure.

The workflow changes. But what remains constant is the psychology and the pain.

The pain created by the workflow is what motivates people to take action. Not the workflow itself.

So that’s something you must keep in mind.

If you are a programmer-turned-founder building either a SaaS or a creator business, you should always lead with the emotion that triggers the audience to take action.

Do your customers, your team, or you keep finding new use cases for your SaaS?

That sounds like growth. But it can also be a sign that your positioning is becoming weaker every day.

When positioning starts working, customers stop inventing explanations and start repeating the same one.

After studying hundreds of businesses, I noticed a simple pattern behind this.

Why Different Customer Interpretations Feel Like Success

One of the strangest things about SaaS marketing is that the signals that feel most encouraging are often the ones creating the biggest problems.

You launch a product. People start signing up, and people seem interested in your product.

And then something interesting starts happening.

Every customer describes the product differently. One person says they are using it for productivity.

Another person says they are using the product as an AI tool.

Another person compares it to a completely different category.

As a founder, this kind of thing seems very encouraging.

Generally, they start thinking: “Maybe the market is much bigger than I thought.”

The founder can see different use cases for the product. People outside your original target audience are signing up.

The founder starts thinking, ‘Maybe I was approaching the product the wrong way, and I should position it differently.’

Because there are multiple use cases for the product. Different kinds of people are getting value from your product.

This often feels like a validation, and your product appears flexible.

I used to think the same way.

I assumed that if people kept finding new ways to describe the product, it meant the product marketing was working in the right direction.

But it is not at all true.

After studying many books on SaaS positioning, understanding my own creator business and talking to the experts, I have realised something very surprising.

What looked like marketing strength is often a positioning problem.

In reality, the product positioning may be weakening every day without the founder even noticing it.

The false positive signal

The problem is that founders usually interpret this as a positive signal.

If one customer compares the product to Notion, another compares it to ChatGPT, and a third sees your tool as an automation tool, it feels like the market is revealing new opportunities.

The founder starts thinking, “Maybe this can serve all of these people,” or “Maybe the market is bigger than I thought.”

But over time, after studying SaaS companies and seeing this pattern repeatedly, I realised that this is a major marketing mistake.

Since everyone describes the product differently, everyone arrives with different kinds of expectations. They compare you to different competitors. They will request different features. They buy your product for different reasons.

At that point, the market hasn’t agreed on what your product actually is. The market is creating its own explanations because you haven’t given it a single, clear explanation of your product.

You have failed to describe who your product is actually for and what transformation you’re helping them make.

Ideally, your marketing should create a very different effect.

When the positioning starts working, the customer should describe the product in similar ways. They compare you to similar alternatives. They expect similar outcomes.

The market slowly converges around a single explanation of what your product is and why it exists.

But when every customer describes your product differently, the opposite is happening.

The market hasn’t reached a shared understanding yet.

And that usually means the market still doesn’t know exactly what category you belong to, what problem you solve, or why someone should choose you over the alternatives.

The biggest sign your positioning is finally working

For a long time, I thought marketing should be measured through things like traffic, signups, impressions and engagement.

If more people were discovering the product, surely the marketing must be working.

But eventually I realised that those metrics don’t actually tell you whether you are getting the right kind of people for the product.

The numbers like impressions, traffic and engagement only tell you people are noticing the product.

But the real signal of whether your marketing and positioning are working is much simpler.

And it is this:

As a founder, you should feel that everything is getting boring and predictable.

I’m not talking about just one aspect of the business. I’m talking about everything.

When positioning is weak, every conversation will feel different. One customer signs up because they see it as an automation platform.

Another signs up because they see an AI tool. Another signs up because they see a productivity tool.

But when positioning starts working, something interesting happens. New users begin describing the product in similar ways.

They arrive with similar problems. They use similar language. They compare you against similar alternatives. They expect similar outcomes.

If you decide to take a sales call, it will start sounding the same.

If every sales call addresses different problems, use cases, and competitors, your positioning is still weak. This means that your positioning is not up to the mark, and you are making some big mistakes somewhere in the positioning.

If every time you get on a sales call, the same objections appear, the same competitors come up, and the same problems are discussed, the market has formed a shared understanding of what your company does.

The market has formed a shared understanding of what the company does.

The Real Insight

I am building a business where I help programmers make their SaaS stand out in a market filled with thousands of similar products so that customers choose them over the alternatives.

Now imagine one person describes my business as helping founders with marketing. This is somewhat accurate.

But then someone says it’s about personal branding.

Another says it’s about content creation.

Another says it’s about SaaS growth. At first, this sounds like a good thing.

It feels like the business appeals to many people. But over time, I will realise that somewhere I am making a mistake.

Maybe the content I am producing is about different topics.

Maybe the ads I run on different platforms target different kinds of users.

This is why it is happening, and eventually I will realise this because if I am selling only one kind of transformation, then why am I producing personal branding content or maybe productivity content?

Ideally, people should describe my business in a very similar way.

Something like:

“He helps programmers or technical people build SaaS businesses that stand out.”

Or:

“He helps programmer-founders position their SaaS so customers choose them.”

Once people start repeating the same explanation, positioning starts compounding.

The market will stop debating what you do. It will start explaining your business on your behalf.

That’s why memorable businesses aren’t remembered for flexibility. They are remembered for helping people achieve one clear transformation.

Are you constantly rewriting your homepage, hoping your positioning and conversion for your SaaS will improve?

That might be the dangerous mistake of punching your SaaS in the gut.

After studying 50+ SaaS companies, creator businesses, and positioning examples, I noticed something surprising.

Many technical founders don’t struggle because their homepage is weak.

They struggle because they’re trying to fix positioning on the homepage, even though buyers often form an opinion long before they visit it.

In this article, I’ll show you why rewriting your homepage rarely fixes positioning and where positioning actually lives instead.

Why Founders Become Obsessed with the Homepage

One of the strangest things about positioning is that it’s very difficult to see whether it’s working or not.

Other things in marketing are quite measurable.

You can easily measure how many views your content got, how many people commented or how many people started a free trial from the latest influencer reel.

But it’s not at all true for positioning.

You can’t easily open a dashboard and directly measure how the market thinks about your company.

You can’t easily see what category customers are placing you in.

You also can’t immediately know what assumptions people have before they visit your website. 95% of the time, positioning lives inside people’s minds.

And that’s exactly why many founders end up focusing on the wrong thing.

Most founders believe that it’s the homepage which decides how their company is positioned.

So whenever founders think about positioning, they immediately think about the homepage. And they think positioning is very easy to change.

When growth slows down or positioning feels unclear, the homepage becomes the first thing founders touch.

They rewrite the headline. They change the subheading. They rewrite the value prop. They test different call-to-actions.

If nothing improves after changing all of this, they repeat the process.

They try to do it again. And to some founders, it feels like the right thing to do.

If positioning isn’t working, surely the messaging must be wrong. And if the messaging is wrong, the homepage seems like the obvious thing to fix.

That’s why so many founders become obsessed with homepage copy. The homepage feels measurable. Positioning is hard to measure.

One gives immediate feedback. The other doesn’t.

But this assumption creates a lot of problems for founders. Because it leads founders to believe that positioning lives on the homepage.

The Homepage measurement trap

The problem starts when founders begin treating homepage experiments as positioning statements.

They start asking questions like:

• Which headline will convert better?

• Which value prop wins?

• Which positioning performs best?

For a relatively new founder, this question makes sense.

Because they think positioning lives on the homepage, changing the homepage should reveal the best positioning.

But there is one problem.

Even if you keep changing the headline, the same audience will keep arriving at your homepage.

The people will keep on making the same assumptions.

Even if you change the wording, the market’s perception doesn’t automatically change.

The market changes nothing.

Let me explain this with the help of the business I am trying to grow.

Currently, I am building a business where I help programmers build SaaS products that customers choose over similar alternatives.

Imagine someone has been reading my content for three months.

They have read my tweets. They have consumed my articles.

They have heard other people describe my business.

By the time they visit my homepage, they already have an opinion about what my business does.

The homepage isn’t creating that perception.

It’s interacting with a perception that already exists. This is why the homepage experiments produce confusing results.

The homepage is not the source of positioning.

It is one expression of positioning.

And once I understood that, I started paying attention to how people formed opinions before they even visited my homepage.

Where positioning actually lives

Once I understood this, I started looking somewhere completely different.

Instead of asking, “What should the headline be?”

I started asking, “How are people forming opinions about my business before they ever visit the homepage?”

As I am writing this, I am realising what a big mistake I used to make.

I used to talk about one thing, and then my offer, which was generally a free ebook, was about something else.

For example, people were discovering me through my self-taught programming journey, but I was trying to sell them a guide on how to stay productive in their 9-to-5.

No matter how much I improved the headline of that offer, people would never convert because they came for something else.

This same thing happens with SaaS too.

Most people don’t discover a SaaS through the homepage.

They discover it through content, social media, referrals, communities, podcasts, competitors or word of mouth.

And all of those interactions start shaping perception long before someone reaches the website.

I can explain this to you with one more example.

I help programmers build SaaS products that stand out so customers choose them over similar alternatives.

Now imagine one person discovers me after reading twenty articles about SaaS positioning, differentiation and category creation.

Another person discovers me through a generic entrepreneurship post.

Both people may land on the exact same homepage. But they don’t arrive with the same interpretation.

The first person already sees me as someone who helps programmer-founders position and differentiate their SaaS.

The second person may simply think I’m another entrepreneur creator talking about startups.

The page is identical. The interpretation is not. That’s because positioning doesn’t primarily live on the homepage. It lives inside buyers’ minds.

The Real Insight

Most of the founders still believe that positioning could only be measured by changing the homepage.

If the headline improved, positioning improved.

If the conversions increased, positioning improved.

If a new value proposition performed better, the positioning improved.

But as I spent more time studying SaaS and many companies. I have found that positioning can only be measured by changes in market perception, not changes on a page.

If you rewrite the homepage, it doesn’t mean you have changed the positioning. If you’re rewriting the homepage and attracting the same kind of people who have the same assumptions, positioning hasn’t really changed.

You have just managed to change the wording. The market is the same, and the category is the same.

People are going to behave similarly.

But if people start describing your business differently, comparing you to different alternatives, and understanding your role in the market differently, then positioning has changed.

The homepage is simply one place where positioning is expressed.

Take my example. If I kept creating generic startup content on the internet, then changing my offer homepage wouldn’t solve the problem.

People will look at me as a generic startup content creator. Definitely, some people will convert through the homepage, but it won’t be a lot even if I am getting millions of views.

But if I kept creating content which screams “I help programmers position and differentiate their SaaS so customers choose them.”

Then people will recognise me as “He helps programmers position and differentiate their SaaS so customers choose them.”

Now my offer page will get the right kind of people, and it will convert better. I don’t need millions of views; I just need the right amount of audience to interact with my content.

This is why I always say positioning isn’t built through endless headline changes. It’s built through repeated exposure across content, conversations, referrals, communities and category associations.

The homepage reflects your positioning. It is simply one way to express and visualise it.

Can ignoring just 3 questions really turn a good SaaS product into a mediocre one?

It doesn’t sound true, but I think it happens far more than most programmer-founders realise.

After studying SaaS founders, founder stories and SaaS positioning, I noticed something surprising.

Most founders don’t struggle because they built a bad product.

They struggle because they never stop to ask a few important questions before chasing bigger opportunities.

In this article, I’ll show you the 3 questions many programmer-founders ignore and why those thing destroy their SaaS.

Founder Reality vs Market Reality

I started studying SaaS founders and companies a few years ago.

And I have realised one thing that most founders never realise.

They keep on making the same mistake after launching every SaaS.

When most founders launch their SaaS, they start with very simple features.

Suppose a founder launches a SaaS focused on recruiters. At the start, they will start with simple candidate sourcing. If they start building their SaaS for the Sales team, they might start with outbound prospecting.

But after serving the same niche for years and repeatedly helping customers achieve the same transformation, they get bored.

The niche starts feeling small, repetitive and limiting in just a few months.

That’s when expansion starts feeling like the obvious next step.

If they were building recruiting software, they might expand into outreach, CRM, and sales automation.

But over time, I realised that many founders don’t expand because the niche gets saturated or everybody in that niche knows them.

They expand because they are bored.

They don’t want to keep talking about the same transformation anymore because they feel like everybody knows them and they understand this segment very well.

Before adding a new feature, audience or market, I have now built a simple three-question framework.

It will help you to separate real growth opportunities from expensive distractions.

Question 1

Do people clearly know what your SaaS is known for?

Most founders evaluate growth using revenue.

Strong founders also evaluate association.

Ask yourself: If I asked 50 people in my market what my company is known for, what our product does, would they give roughly the same answer?

Or would I get 50 different answers?

If people don’t know your company or can’t clearly describe what your product is known for, the association hasn’t fully formed yet.

At this time, expansion will weaken the problem you are trying to solve even further.

So don’t expand before people strongly associate your company with one thing.

Question 2

Is the market saturated, or am I just bored?

This is the question most founders never ask.

After spending years inside a niche, everything starts feeling repetitive.

Suppose tomorrow I start writing about productivity tips and tricks, and if I keep writing about the same topic for years.

Don’t you think everything will start to become repetitive at one point?

After 2–3 years, I may want to switch my niche and move to some other niche.

But after sharing productivity tips and tricks for three years, if there are still people who want to become more productive and consume productivity content but don’t know me, then there is definitely room for growth.

So I could be sharing the same thing again and again, but if a huge number of people still haven’t heard of me, then there is definitely room for growth.

Why would you want to switch until you have fully established yourself in that niche?

So, as a SaaS founder, you have to realise that your familiarity with the market isn’t proof that the market is exhausted.

Ask: Have we actually run out of customers? Or have I simply run out of excitement?

Many founders confuse internal boredom with external saturation.

You have to remember that the founder experiences repetition. But the market experiences reinforcement.

Question 3

Is Expansion coming from demand or curiosity?

Founders are actually very curious people.

So they are studying a lot of things while also running their company.

And because of that, they sometimes become curious about a different niche and want their company to focus on it.

They want their company to leave its current niche and enter a new one, even when the business is still growing, just at a slower rate.

A founder naturally wants to go after a fast-growing niche.

But what these founders don’t understand is that growth is rarely linear over time.

Once people strongly associate your company with a particular category or niche, growth can become exponential. It is taking time because your positioning hasn’t matured yet.

The strongest expansion should usually come from customer demand.

The weakest expansion usually comes from founder curiosity.

Ask: Are customers repeatedly asking for this? Or does this simply sound interesting to us?

In 95% of cases, if you are below $1M ARR, you’ll notice that most expansion ideas into other niches come either from founders or from team members.

Expand because customers keep pulling you there.

Not because the current market stopped feeling exciting.

The insight

Most founders expand because they think the market is saturated.

In reality, they’re often just bored.

Founders have spent years thinking about the niche.

The market barely started associating the company with it.

Before expanding, ask:

• Do people clearly know what we’re known for?

• Is the market saturated, or am I just bored?

• Is this expansion coming from demand or curiosity?

Because growth rarely comes from chasing the next market.

It usually comes from owning the current one first.

What customer insight changes everything once you start building a SaaS business?

To understand that insight, you first need to understand why some products instantly feel relevant while others feel generic.

After studying hundreds of SaaS companies, creator businesses, and positioning examples, I’ve noticed that many programmer-founders make the same mistake when thinking about customers.

And the strange thing is that the mistake feels completely logical while you’re making it.

In this article, I’ll show you the customer insight most founders miss and why it changes how people perceive your product.

Why Most Founders Try to Speak To Everyone

When I started writing online, I initially wrote about my self-taught programming journey.

As I spent more time sharing my journey, people started resonating with the content.

At that time, I thought, why should I limit myself to only one type of audience? Only the programming audience.

I have an interest in other fields, such as self-improvement, books and movies. I should write about those things too. I wanted to talk about everything.

At the time, this felt completely reasonable.

If someone were interested in my programming journey, surely they would also be interested in my thoughts on self-improvement. And if they liked self-improvement, maybe they would enjoy my thoughts on different books too.

After all, these things felt very connected to me.

The same thing happens with programmers building their online businesses all the time.

A founder built a product and realised it could help multiple types of customers.

Maybe marketers could also use it. Maybe technical founders could use it. Maybe content creators could use it.

So naturally, they think:

“Why should we limit ourselves?”

The homepage slowly becomes a collection of audiences, use cases, benefits, and outcomes.

This might feel like they are doing the right thing. Because the founder is looking at the product and thinking:

“Technically, all of these people can benefit.”

The logical brain of the programmer is working correctly, and the intention is very clear.

And that is exactly why so many smart programmer-founders fall into the trap.

Because most of us believe that if we appeal to more groups of people, we will automatically become more relevant to them, and they will end up buying our product.

But this is where most founders accidentally misunderstand how this entire game actually works.

The Real Problem with Broad Messaging

For a long time, I thought the biggest risk was excluding people.

When I used to write about my self-taught programming journey, I knew that only a very small number of people would read the content.

I thought that if I wrote about topics like self-help or productivity, I could reach a larger number of people. I even wrote a few pieces of content dedicated to the topic.

The first problem I faced at that time was that it took me a long time to write about that topic. I wasn’t an expert on those topics, so very few people connected with what I was writing.

The second problem I faced was that the audience itself started becoming confused.

The people who initially followed me because of my programming journey were not necessarily interested in self-help, books or movies.

And the people who were interested in those topics weren’t necessarily interested in programming.

I didn’t understand why things were working this way. My thinking was pretty simple: “If all these topics are useful and connected in my mind, why wouldn’t people be interested in all of them?”

But over time, I realised I was looking at the situation from my perspective instead of the audience’s perspective.

To me, all of these topics belonged to my life. But to the audience, each topic represented a different reason for paying attention.

Someone following me for programming wanted help becoming a better programmer.

Someone interested in self-improvement wanted help improving their life. There was some overlap, but it wasn’t as large as I had assumed.

And this is exactly what happens with many SaaS founders.

A founder discovers that the product can help marketers, founders, agencies, consultants and sales teams.

So they start mentioning all of them on their homepage.

According to them, the logic is very simple for doing this: “The more people we mention, the more people will relate.”

But something strange happens.

Why Strong Founders Make One Audience Feel Chosen

Instead of making more people feel understood, the message starts sounding weaker for everyone.

Suppose you are a marketer looking for a content scheduling tool.

You land on the homepage and discover that the product is for:

• marketers

• founders

• agencies

• consultants

• lawyers

• healthcare professionals

At first, this feels like a good thing.

But after a few seconds, a question starts forming in your mind:

“Who is this actually built for?”

The product may genuinely help all of the entire audience. But because everyone is included, nobody feels chosen.

When someone lands on the page, they are asking only one question: “Is it for me?”

If the homepage mentions marketers, founders, agencies, and others, the marketer will think, ‘Okay, marketers are mentioned, but this seems to be for a lot of other people too.’

The consultant will think, “Maybe this is for a consultant. But it doesn’t really feel like it is designed around my world.”

Nobody will feel like this product exists only for them. That’s the problem with mentioning all the people you want to serve.

It’s not like any of them won’t buy the product. They may still buy, but conversion rates can double or triple when people land on the page and feel like the product exists specifically for them.

This is exactly where strong founders think differently.

Take Stripe as an example. Stripe serves startups, SaaS companies, ecommerce brands, enterprises and many other types of businesses.

They could easily build a homepage that talks about payment processing, invoicing, subscriptions, fraud prevention, revenue management and banking services.

And all of those things would be true. But instead, Stripe leads with:

Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue.

Notice what they are actually doing. They are not trying to make every possible customer feel equally represented.

They are prioritising one aspiration people have, which is to grow their revenue.

A startup founder immediately feels understood. An e-commerce business can still use Stripe. A marketplace can use Stripe, and an enterprise can use it too.

The homepage creates a clear sense of who should feel most understood first.

Stripe understood something many founders miss: A homepage is not a directory of everyone who could use the product.

Prioritising one type of audience doesn’t stop other audiences from buying. It simply gives the market a clear starting point for understanding the product.

Many successful companies serve different types of customers. They just don’t try to make all of them feel equally important on day one.

A homepage is actually a prioritisation tool. Weak positioning asks: “Who could use this?”

But strong positioning asks: “Who should instantly feel this was built for them?”

If you are building for a specific group of people, your messaging should reflect that group. But if you’re building for a broader market with multiple customer segments, the solution isn’t to list every audience on the homepage.

Many founders think: Let’s mention founders, marketers, agencies, etc.

But that usually weakens the message.

Instead, you need to find the underlying problem, desire, or aspiration that those audiences have in common.

The real insight

For a long time, I thought strong positioning meant covering every possible use case.

I thought broader messaging would naturally create broader appeal.

Not only in the case of positioning but also in the case of content. Broader content means more people, and more people mean more money.

But this isn’t true.

People don’t respond to a product because they can imagine many possible use cases.

They respond because they immediately feel understood.

Now whenever I think about positioning, I start with a different question: “Whom do I want to feel chosen first?”

Not “Who could potentially use this?”

Because strong positioning can’t be created by trying to appeal to many audiences at once.

It is actually created by focusing on what is relevant for the audience.

Most programmer-turned-founders try to make everyone feel included. Strong founders make one audience feel deeply understood, and if one message can make everyone feel understood, they try to go with it.

This is one of the most common positioning mistakes I see founders make. They know the product can help multiple audiences. But they never force themselves to decide whose problem matters most and what worldview gets priority.

Looking for 5 SaaS founders to talk to:

Also, if you’re actively building a SaaS, I’d love to hop on a quick call with a few people.

I’m trying to understand better:

• What challenges are you currently facing

• How you’re thinking about differentiating your SaaS

• Where you’re getting stuck explaining the product to people

The goal is simple: understand real founder problems and learn how to position SaaS products before marketing and launching them harder.

Can one marketing belief really turn great products into mediocre ones?

It sounds unlikely, but I think it happens far more often than most programmers realise.

After studying hundreds of SaaS companies, creator businesses, and positioning examples, I’ve noticed that the most memorable companies all approach standing out from the rest very differently.

Here’s the belief most programmer-founders get wrong and what the strongest founders do instead.

Why So Many Useful Products Feel Forgettable

When I was building my first product, I had a mindset that now seems very strange to me.

I thought that if I could build the product and explain to people what my product does clearly, I would convert a lot of people to customers easily.

As programmers turning entrepreneurs, we think marketing is as logical as code, but after actively building products for the past few years, I can see it is the most unpredictable thing in the world.

After we are done building the product, we think our job is to help people understand the product.

If someone is going to land on our website and read the description, they should clearly understand what we are offering, and we’re done with our job.

This seems like a very reasonable way to think.

For programmers, communicating technical ideas means telling people what the product does, how it works, what features it includes and what category it belongs to.

The assumption is pretty simple: “If people understand the product, they’ll eventually see the value.”

But there is one thing which actually surprised me in the last few years.

Many products were easy to understand; people understood them, but they didn’t feel compelled to buy the product. In fact, they actually ignored many such products and never talked about them.

The Real problem with keeping things neutral

I had to shut down my first product after a few months of building it.

When I analysed what I did wrong, I thought I needed better copywriting skills. Or maybe I needed better communication skills.

Until then, I had very little knowledge about how to separate my product from thousands of other products.

But as I started spending more time inside the SaaS positioning world and studied it more deeply, I started noticing a pattern.

Many founders were already explaining their product clearly.

They made features clear. They made the category clear along with functionality.

Yet people still weren’t paying attention. I used to get very confused when I saw that everything was perfect. Why weren’t people talking about the product?

But then I realised something more important.

Most programmers-turned-founders think marketing should work the same way documentation works.

Stay objective and avoid strong opinions. Only explain the functionality.

And let the product speak for itself.

The problem is that if you want to differentiate your product, you can’t communicate like documentation.

Documentation will just help you to explain things. But it will never help you to persuade people.

Take Wispr as an example.

Imagine if they described themselves like this: “We provide voice-to-text software.”

There is nothing technically wrong with that statement.

In fact, it clearly explains what the product does. But just look at their homepage.

Screenshot from Wisprflow.ai

They use the homepage messaging, which is this: “Don’t type. Just speak.”

For the first time, when you read a message like this, you can feel like there is a subtle difference between “We provide voice-to-text software” and “Don’t type. Just speak.”

The first statement describes a category.

But the second statement contains a tension. There is a hidden belief that this company wants to push, which is that typing is the wrong workflow, but speaking is a better workflow.

And suddenly, the company is no longer just explaining what it does.

It is challenging how people currently do things.

I have used this whisper flow example because it explains things better. But when I started exploring SaaS positioning and learned that people remember arguments and forget descriptions, everything changed for me.

I started thinking that maybe not knowing these things had cost me my business.

Now I see it everywhere with successful companies.

How Strong Founders Create New Beliefs

Once I started noticing this pattern, I couldn’t stop seeing it.

The founders who were getting the most attention weren’t better at explaining their products.

They were better at changing how people thought about the problem.

That may sound like a small difference, but it completely changed how I think about building products that totally stand out.

Take a look at these examples.

If you want your product or offer to stand out, you can’t just say things like this:

• AI content platform

• Creator education

• Collaboration software

• Business newsletter

All of these descriptions are clear. You can understand what they mean. But none of them is going to give you a reason to rethink anything.

Now compare that to:

• Technical founders waste months creating content nobody remembers

• Most startup advice fails because it ignores psychology

• Don’t type. Just speak

Notice what all these examples have in common.

They aren’t only explaining what exists. They are challenging the existing way of doing things or what people currently believe.

The first example argues that creating more content is not the real problem.

The second is arguing that most startup advice is incomplete.

The third is arguing that typing is an inferior workflow.

Whether you agree or disagree is almost irrelevant. The moment an argument appears, people start paying attention.

The Real Insight

For a long time, I thought that if you have to make your product stand out, you can do it by explaining things better.

If people understood what the product did, how it worked, and why it was useful, I assumed they would eventually buy it.

Now I think very differently.

Customers already have a workflow, and they have habits. If you are a creator, your audience also has assumptions about how things should be done.

And most of the time, they aren’t actively looking to change those assumptions.

So to stand out, you have to start looking at the problem differently.

Strong founders understand that you can only stand out by giving people a reason to question their current beliefs.

Before introducing the solution, make the status quo feel expensive. And before explaining the workflow, challenge the existing workflow.

Because the moment someone starts questioning how they are doing things, they become far more open to trying a new one.

Open your homepage and temporarily ignore your product.

Then answer this question:

What is the current belief my ideal customer has that I disagree with?

Don’t describe your product. Challenge the existing way of doing things.

For example:

Instead of:

We build voice-to-text software.

Ask:

What existing workflow am I trying to replace?

Answer:

People shouldn’t type when they can simply speak.

Are you trying to build a SaaS product or content business as a programmer, and trying to stand out by saying things this way?

We’re building an AI workflow layer for modern teams

or

I teach founder psychology frameworks

You are doing this to separate yourself from other SaaS products or creators who are serving a similar kind of audience.

But people still don’t take your brand or product seriously.

I used to think the same way.

I believed that if the product or creators are positioned in a way that they are intellectually different, people would naturally understand the value behind it.

But after studying how successful founders introduce new ideas and doing it myself for my brand, I realised that people don’t care about the framework.

They first need you to understand their problem and frustration. And it should be showing up in the thing you’re trying to sell.

Only after that does the framework make sense.

Let me explain this to you in depth.

Why Smart Founders Build Offers That Nobody Understands

A few months ago, I was building a SaaS positioning business.

Before studying SaaS positioning deeply, I used to believe that if you are a creator building a business online, then you must separate yourself from everyone else.

Because if multiple creators are producing the same type of content and selling similar products, then emotionally it feels very difficult for people to decide whose product they should actually buy.

For example, imagine two creators both making productivity content for designers.

If both creators sound similar, then naturally, one question starts appearing in your mind:

“Why would someone choose me instead of the other person?”

On the internet, there are literally hundreds of people in the same domain. You can easily find hundreds of creators in the productivity-for-designers space.

And this is where many programmers turning founders, accidentally create the wrong solution.

At that time, I also used to think that the solution was to sound more intellectually different.

We should separate ourselves from others using frameworks, unique terminology, adding new words to the same category and using very sophisticated positioning.

So instead of clearly explaining the actual problem, people start creating complicated positioning around it.

For example, instead of saying:

“I help designers stop wasting time and become more productive while working.”

A creator might start saying things like:

“I teach a cognitive workflow optimisation system for high-performance designers.”

Even for a SaaS, a founder instead of saying this, “We help companies automate repetitive customer support tasks.”

Founders could easily say: “We are building an AI-powered communication intelligence platform for enterprise support infrastructure.”

Internally, this feels like strong differentiation.

Because the idea suddenly sounds

• smarter

• more advanced

• more unique

The founders or creators behind these offers think they are uniquely differentiating themselves, and now we are differentiated.

And for a while, I also thought this was the right way to stand out online.

The Problem With Sounding Too Advanced

The real issue is not that you are not being smart about it.

Actually, when you think about it, you’re being smart by trying to separate yourself from others.

But there is one mistake you are making as a founder.

The real problem is that founders try to sound intellectually impressive before the audience emotionally understands why the idea matters.

Most programmers turning founders introduce frameworks, systems, and category language before the audience emotionally understands the problem.

And that creates a very subtle problem. The audience now has to mentally figure out: “What does this actually help me do?”

Because most people never do the mental work required to figure that out.

For example, a creator says:

“I teach epistemic leverage for technical founders.”

That may sound intellectually smart and differentiated.

But think about the audience for a second. The audience still doesn’t understand:

• What pain is being solved

• What changes after learning it

• Or why they should care in the first place

Now compare that to:

“I help programmers stop building businesses nobody emotionally understands.”

Suddenly, the frustration becomes visible.

The audience can now instantly feel the pain, confusion and the desired outcome.

The same thing happens in SaaS, too.

A founder could easily say things like this:

We are building an AI- powered communication intelligence platform.

That sounds like the founder and team are geniuses.

But most people still don’t understand what workflow becomes easier, what frustration disappears, or why this matters emotionally.

Now compare it to this messaging:

We help support teams automatically reply to repetitive customer emails.

That is more useful and immediately clear.

That’s the deeper shift most technically smart founders miss.

Why you should be focused on a pain

As I spent more time reading different positioning books and online content.

I slowly started noticing a very different pattern among strong founders and creators.

Even though they want to separate their brand from others, they don’t start sounding intellectually advanced.

Take a look at the Stripe homepage.

Screenshot from Stripe.com

They are still starting by making the pain emotionally obvious first.

That’s the difference.

If Stripe’s product marketing team wanted to, they could have sounded intellectually impressive by writing something like:

“We are building programmable financial infrastructure and payment orchestration systems for internet-native businesses.”

And technically, that would still be correct.

But notice what Stripe actually does instead.

They start with something emotionally understandable: “Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue.”

Then immediately after that, they make the outcome and pain clearer:

• accept payments

• offer financial services

• implement custom revenue models

Now the audience instantly understands:

• What problem is being solved

• What becomes easier

• And why the product matters in the first place

That’s the deeper shift most technically smart founders miss.

Strong founders don’t try to sound smart first. They first make the usefulness emotionally obvious.

Only after the audience understands the pain and the workflow does a deeper positioning start to become valuable.

People don’t buy your product; they are buying relief, clarity, or an easier workflow.

That’s why strong positioning usually sounds much simpler than what most programmers expect.

The shift that changed my thinking

After understanding all this, my entire way of thinking about differentiation changed.

Earlier, I used to believe that strong differentiation comes from creating frameworks early and using sophisticated terminology.

Now I think about it very differently.

I realised that strong differentiation doesn’t start when people think:

“This sounds intellectually advanced.”

It starts when people feel like this person deeply understands the frustrating problem I already want solved.

That’s the shift you need to make if you want your offer to stand out. Be it a SaaS, a program or your personal brand.

You can’t just invent unique terminology and expect people to buy because it sounds different. You need to sound emotionally clear and show that you understand the frustration.

Now, whenever I look at strong founders, creators or SaaS companies, I notice the same pattern repeatedly.

They first make the painful job emotionally obvious.

They explain what frustrating thing keeps happening, and they make the old way feel broken.

Only after that do they introduce the transformation, like what becomes easier, what changes practically or emotionally.

And only after the audience already cares about the outcome do they introduce the framework and sophisticated language or categories.

Because now the audience finally has context for why the framework matters in the first place.

That’s the secret to building an online business people really care about. And it actually starts way before you build a product.

Are you trying to become a founder by building either a SaaS or creating content, but it feels like nothing is going in your favour?

You keep learning, posting and building. But somehow, nothing sticks strongly in people’s minds.

Initially, I also used to think growth came from constantly evolving, exploring new ideas and expanding into different directions.

But after studying how strong founders and creators build real market association, I realised something surprising:

Most people abandon focus long before the market fully remembers them for anything.

And in this article, I’ll show you why founders get bored with focus long before the market remembers them for it, and how strong positioning actually compounds.

The Real Reason Nothing Compounds

When I started writing online, I used to believe that if you have to grow online, then you have to constantly evolve.

I thought I needed to keep exploring new directions, expanding to new interests and introducing new ideas to my content so that it keeps on evolving.

It felt like an intelligent thing to do.

Because after explaining a few concepts, I was bored. I didn’t want to repeat the same topic.

I used to feel like once I had talked about a specific thing inside my content, I should never talk about that topic again.

I found repetition boring.

Earlier, I was mainly talking about the self-taught developer journey. There are only a certain number of topics you can talk about, and once you are done with those topics, you’re essentially done with them.

Now, logically, you should be moving to the next topic. Exploring new topics and ideas felt very exciting to me.

The broader market feels more ambitious and full of possibilities. So I started shifting directions.

This doesn’t only happen to programmers building content-based businesses. This also happens with a programmer building a SaaS business.

A founder starts with a very specific niche. Maybe they are building for recruiters, designers, writers, or consultants.

But after some early traction, something psychologically changes.

The niche starts to feel too small. It feels too repetitive and too limiting.

So the founder starts thinking: “We should expand now,” or “We can serve everyone.” And this looks like a smart decision to make.

Because the founder has already spent months thinking about the same users, the same problems and the same kind of positioning for a long time.

The problem with constantly evolving

But the market experiences something completely different.

The audience may have only recently started associating your product or content with the niche at all.

The positioning is still weak externally, even while it already feels emotionally repetitive internally.

And this is where most programmers quietly destroy compounding without realising it.

They interrupt repeated association too early.

A creator keeps changing themes before the audience strongly remembers them for one thing. A SaaS founder broadens positioning before deeply owning the original category psychologically.

If you have <$80k MRR, then for a SaaS, it usually means people still don’t really know you.

If you are running a business which keeps evolving its identity before fully compounding, your business will never grow after a certain point, and changing identity always has a negative effect.

Instead of your product making more money, you actually start to make less money because of a constantly changing identity.

Markets don’t naturally remember complexity; they compress people and products into simple associations.

The creator who talks about startup psychology.

The SaaS tool for designers.

The founder who explains buyer psychology.

That is what compounds attention, trust, demand, and audience memory over time.

But most founders abandon focus long before that association fully forms because repetition starts feeling emotionally exhausting to them internally.

Why Strong Founders Stay Focused Longer

I have noticed that mentally strong founders and creators understand something normal programmers don’t understand:

Focus is not a natural thing.

Take a look at the successful founders like Marc Benioff.

When he started his company, he was focused on Salesforce automation and built Salesforce.

So what is he currently focused on? The same thing: Salesforce automation

The core problem remains the same.

Humans naturally drift towards novelty, stimulation, new intellectual directions and emotionally exciting side paths.

After a while, the mind starts craving something different.

So people start to rationalise the shift. They say things like this: “I’ve already explored this enough”, or “I don’t want to become boxed in”, or “My interests have evolved.”

And emotionally, those thoughts feel completely valid.

But strong founders separate internal boredom from market reality. They understand something most people miss.

A creator who has 20k followers, decent engagement, and loyal readers may still have an extremely weak audience association.

People may enjoy their content, but still do not clearly know “what that person is actually known for.”

And the same thing happens in SaaS.

A company doing less than or around $1M in revenue, with decent traction and growing revenue, may still not own a niche in people’s minds. Because positioning compounds much more slowly than founders emotionally expect.

All the successful founders understand one thing, which is that growth doesn’t happen through constant reinvention.

It happens through repeated association and consistent category ownership over time.

Markets love simplicity.

If you’re a creator, the audience compresses people into one category, one dominant association and one repeated idea.

But once the market strongly associates you with something specific, trust compounds very fast and attention compounds faster.

The real insight

Initially, when I started writing online, I used to only write about my self-taught programming journey.

But later I got bored with that.

And then I started writing about my experience building SaaS products and studying programmers who built successful companies.

After that, I got bored with repeating the same message.

I then switched to writing about SaaS positioning.

I was not an expert in SaaS positioning, and even after exploring it for a long time, I wasn’t able to turn it into anything meaningful.

While doing all this, I eventually understood that if I had talked about only one thing, like either my self-taught programming journey, my SaaS failure experience, or positioning for a long time.

People would eventually start associating me with that topic, but since I kept switching topics, it became very difficult for people to associate my writing with one topic.

So when I expanded out of boredom and started talking about multiple things, I did the reverse of what growth feels like.

Instead of expanding my audience, I was actually shrinking my audience because I got a few people from every niche I talked about, and as a result, nobody was interested in relating to me in particular. And my growth slowed down.

As a programmer turning into a founder, you have to realise that growth isn’t constant reinvention, talking endlessly about new things and broad identity expansion. It’s about repeated association and reinforced positioning.

The same thing happens in SaaS, too. Imagine a founder initially builds a tool only for recruiters.

After getting a few customers, the founder starts feeling “This market is small”, “We should expand to all HR teams,” or “Maybe we should target sales teams too.”

And emotionally, that feels like growth because broader markets sound bigger and more ambitious.

But externally, the market may have only just started associating the company with recruiters in the first place. The positioning is still weak. Trust is still forming.

So when the founder expands too early, the original association never compounds deeply enough.

Instead of becoming “The recruiting tool everyone knows for recruiters,” the company becomes “some general-purpose software company.”

Nobody strongly remembers what the company is specifically known for anymore.

How do most programmers decide whether users will understand their product or content?

They open ChatGPT and ask:

“Does this make sense?”

This is the problem. Because users don’t interact with your product like ChatGPT.

ChatGPT reads carefully. Users skim. ChatGPT tries to understand your logic. User leaves the moment they have to understand any logic.

And this is the death of programmer thinking.

ChatGPT and Programmers are trained to optimise for logical correctness. But users optimise for speed, clarity and emotional relief.

That’s why great founders stop guessing what users “should” do. And start watching what people actually do instead.

The Death of Programmer Thinking

Yesterday, I woke up earlier than usual.

Around 6 AM.

For most people, that may not sound early, but for me it was. I usually wake up around 7:15 AM. So when I woke up, I felt ahead of the day.

I was fully energised and focused.

And because of that, everything felt clear in my head.

I mentally planned the entire day, which task I would do, how much time each thing would take, when I would leave the house and how the entire routine would flow.

Everything looked structured and logical.

I took a bath, boiled eggs, got ready and planned to leave the house around 7 AM.

Then a thought appeared:

“Let me just watch a couple of YouTube videos first that I bookmarked.”

In my mind, it sounded harmless. Each video was only around five minutes long. Logically, I still had enough time.

But then suddenly, something else happened.

One video led to another. Then another recommendation appeared on a topic I was deeply interested in.

And without noticing it emotionally, I got pulled into the loop.

Suddenly, it was around 8:40 AM.

I was frustrated because, technically, the original plan had made sense.

But the reality didn’t behave the way I logically expected it to.

And this is exactly what happens with programmers building products or content businesses online.

They think that if something makes logical sense, people will behave accordingly.

But real people don’t behave like systems. They get distracted. They skim and react emotionally.

And this is where the programmer’s thinking quietly starts breaking.

Because logical correctness doesn’t guarantee real-world behaviour.

That’s why so many programmers create things that make perfect sense to them but fail the moment real people interact with them.

Why Users Don’t Experience Your Logic

Yesterday, when I got distracted watching YouTube videos, something important became obvious to me afterwards.

In my head, the original plan had looked completely clear.

Wake up early. Watch only two short videos. Leave the house by 7 AM. Follow the schedule.

Logically, everything made sense.

But reality behaved differently. Because once emotion, distraction and impulse entered the picture, the “logical plan” stopped mattering.

This morning, when I was about to start writing this, I realised that this is exactly what happens when programmers build a product.

We assume users will behave logically because the system itself feels logical to us.

But we forget something important:

We’re no longer seeing the product like a new user.

We already know things like what each button does, what the flow is supposed to achieve and what the content is trying to communicate.

So while using it, our brain automatically fills the gaps. That’s when things start feeling “obvious” to us, even when new users experience confusion immediately.

And because of that, programmers slowly start designing for assumptions instead of behaviour.

They think that the flow is simple, the article is clear, and people will naturally understand it.

But users never experience the product in the same context as the creator does. A programmer may carefully read every line on a landing page because they already know the idea behind it.

But a real user scans the page very quickly, gives it a few seconds, and leaves the moment confusion appears.

Similarly, a content creator may think a point is “obvious” because they have spent days thinking about it logically and explaining it simply.

But the reader finds the explanation boring and feels like the content was written by ChatGPT; they will never read it.

And this is where the Abstract User Fallacy quietly starts destroying progress.

The founder keeps refining the logic internally instead of observing where people actually struggle.

So instead of asking: “Where are users getting confused?”

They ask: “How do I explain this better?”

But often the problem isn’t explanation. The problem is that the creator is designing for a version of the users that exists only in their heads.

A story from Marc Benioff completely changed how I think about users.

Watching Users Changed Everything

Marc Benioff understood something most programmers miss early in their journey of building a startup.

He understood that logical correctness doesn’t guarantee usability.

When he started building Salesforce, he didn’t treat users like abstract “end users” sitting inside a document.

He brought real people into the process early.

Sales professionals, engineers, colleagues, and usability testers interacted with rough versions of the product while it was still incomplete.

And instead of defending the design, Marc watched where people struggled.

One sales professional didn’t care how impressive the system was.

She simply said:

“This should take fewer clicks.” Engineers pointed out things that slowed them down and created frustration.

Then something even more interesting happened.

During usability testing, they noticed users struggling to find the button used to create a new account.

Logically, the placement made sense. Technically, nothing was wrong.

But in reality, users kept missing it.

So they made a small change and moved the button to the left. And this tiny adjustment dramatically improved usability.

That moment proved something important: Users don’t experience products the way builders imagine them.

Programmers usually assume that the logic is clear and that users will understand it. But Marc approached things differently. He didn’t ask, “Does this make sense logically?”

He asked, “Where are people struggling in reality?”

That’s the shift most founders never make. Observation reveals what users actually do.

The real insight

For a long time, I trusted my own logic too much.

If a product flow made sense to me, I assumed users would understand it too.

If a piece of content felt clear in my head, I assumed the reader would naturally connect with it.

And whenever something didn’t work, I thought I hadn’t explained things clearly enough.

So instead of observing where people were struggling, I would:

• Add more steps

• Add more explanation

• Reorganise the flow

• Rewrite the content

Thinking that better logic would automatically create a better understanding.

But over time, when I wrote more content and tried to build different businesses, my mindset started to change.

I started noticing that people were reacting very differently from what I expected in my head.

Some posts that I thought were “deep” got ignored completely.

And sometimes, a very small point would suddenly deeply connect with people.

Certain lines would get comments. Some ideas would make people respond emotionally.

That’s when I realised something important:

People were actually revealing what mattered to them through behaviour.

Not through my assumptions. And the more I paid attention to reactions, the more clearly I started seeing what people actually responded to.

Sometimes people stopped reading after a certain section.

Sometimes they misunderstood the main point completely.

Sometimes a title I spent days and nights writing created no curiosity at all.

Earlier, I used to defend my thinking in my head.

Now I try to observe what reality is showing me instead.

That shift changed how I think about everything: products, content, positioning, and communication.

Because things don’t improve when you keep thinking about users in your head. They improve when you pay attention to how people actually react.

That’s why I have now changed everything. Now, instead of asking “Does this make sense to me?”

I pay more attention to things like:

• where people stop reading

• What people ignore

• What kind of headlines made them more curious

• what people emotionally connect to and respond to

Because those reactions usually reveal more truth than my own assumptions.

How can you apply this?

1. Watch what people do, not what you assume

As soon as I started observing people, everything changed.

My content became more specific. The number of readers for my content increased.

Behaviour reveals more than logic.

2. Look for hesitation and confusion

Friction is often more valuable than praise.

Now, when my content gets ignored or readers leave harsh comments, I take it very seriously.

I try to understand why something is bothering users. And generally, it gives me the next piece of an idea to write about.

Most of the time, what ends up happening is the second article, which I wrote based on reader comments, ends up resonating more.

3. Observe why people drop

Earlier, when I started writing, I used to never observe why people dropped off from reading my content.

But then over time, I realised most of this happens because of either a bad hook at the start, or it’s because people want stories, I give them logic.

This is why adding stories makes more sense if people are dropping off while reading.

If you are building a SaaS, then you also have to observe when people stop using your app; otherwise, you will never be able to conclude what’s really happening.

4. Stop defending the design internally

Reality matters more than correctness in your head.

If the design is bad, then focus on correcting it. Rather than validating how good your design is.

5. Treat user behaviour as a source of truth

Assumptions are guesses. Behaviour is evidence.

Most programmers think good products and content come from better logic.

But great products and strong connections usually come from better observation.

Are you explaining what you’re building clearly but still feeling like no one cares?

You talk about what you’re building. Your product. Your content.

People understand it. They say, “Makes sense.”

But they don’t act the way you want them to. They don’t make any buying decisions.

So you think:

Maybe I need to explain it better.

When I started creating content, I thought the same. I believed clarity was the problem. My content wasn’t resonating because people didn’t understand it.

But it wasn’t.

Clarity alone doesn’t make people care.

That’s when I realised I was focusing on the wrong problem.

The Situation

A few months ago, one evening, I was sitting quietly in my room.

My dad was beside me, scrolling through his phone. Everything felt normal.

Then his phone rang.

He picked it up, and within a few seconds, his facial expressions changed. I could sense something wasn’t right.

When he hung up, he looked at me and said quietly,

Someone in our family has been diagnosed with a disease…the doctors say he may have a month left.

I wasn’t very close to that person. He lived far away. We only met occasionally.

But after that call, something started changing. My dad began calling regularly for updates.

And every day or two, he would tell us what was happening.

This cousin just flew in.

That uncle drove around for eight hours overnight to see him.

People who hadn’t spoken to him in years were showing up. Sitting next to him. Talking. Just being there.

The house that was once quiet became full. And the strange part was that nothing about the person had actually changed.

Same room. Same bed.

The only thing that changed was this:

Now everyone felt like it mattered.

And that’s what stayed with me. People already knew him. They understood who he was.

But they didn’t act until it felt like it mattered.

This is exactly what happens with programmers who are trying to build something of their own. Either they are creating content or building products.

Everyone of us tries to explain everything we are doing clearly.

We think that after we have explained everything clearly, the product will start to make sense to people. People will engage with our content.

Our ideas will become understandable.

After seeing our product or content, people say stuff like “Makes sense.” But when it comes to making a buying decision, they don’t act. They don’t engage. It’s just like the moment I described earlier.

People understand everything. But it doesn’t feel like it matters to them. So they don’t take any action.

What’s actually going wrong

After a point, I started noticing the same pattern in my work.

When I started writing online consistently, I used to explain my ideas clearly.

I broke everything down so that everyone could understand it easily.

And people did understand. They would read my post and comment stuff like “Yeah, this makes sense.”

But nothing happened after that.

Almost no one joined my email list. And there was no real engagement before.

And at that time, I used to get confused. I used to think that if people are actually liking my content, then why are they not taking action?

So I did what most programmers do at this point. I tried to explain things better. I started polishing my posts and invested a lot of time making them almost perfect.

I added more examples. Simplified my language. But the results weren’t changing, and I was getting more frustrated day by day.

But the more content I created, the more I realised that this wasn’t a communication problem. It was actually a connection problem.

Connection problems arise when people aren’t able to either emotionally connect with your writing or when they don’t trust your authority.

And if you are writing about a topic where you have some kind of authority, you most likely have an emotional connection problem.

When I first started writing developer content on how to become a better developer or grow as a programmer, I had strong authority, but the emotional connection wasn’t there.

This is the only problem with creating technical content, so you have to be very purposeful in making an emotional connection. My audience failed to connect emotionally with me, so they never took action.

But the second time, when I started creating SaaS positioning content and changed the nature of the business, I wrote in a way that there was an emotional connection with the audience, but I had very little authority on SaaS positioning.

So I knew that this business would take a lot of time to generate any kind of revenue because I had to build authority in this field.

So I stepped back from doing both.

And instead of improving my explanation or trying to build more authority.

I changed the focus. I stopped talking about what made sense and started talking about what actually mattered to people.

I looked at my backstory and thought about whom I could actually help and where my stories mattered.

Then I realised that programmers who were trying to be founders need help, those who were jumping into SaaS too early, who didn’t even realise there was a better way to build a profitable business.

And that’s when things started to shift.

Because I realised something simple. People don’t act just because something makes sense. They act when it feels like it matters to them.

I was making this mistake. I thought clarity would make people care. But clarity only creates understanding, not action.

It is quite similar to that moment. People already knew him. But they didn’t show up until it felt like it mattered.

And that’s the trap we programmers fall into. We’re not failing to explain. We’re failing to make it matter.

The only way to make it matter is by telling powerful stories.

What Changed Everything

Marc Benioff is the founder and CEO of Salesforce.

Currently, Salesforce is valued at more than $250 billion.

But when he was starting Salesforce, he had no idea how to take his idea and turn it into reality.

For this, he needed the best engineers available in town. But the problem was, why would the best engineers at that time join him instead of doing their own thing?

So he needed a way to make the best engineers care about his idea. One of his close friends introduced him to Parker Harris, and now Marc needed to sell his idea to him.

When Marc met Parker Harris, he wasn’t just pitching a product to him.

He knew he needed Parker on his side because he was one of those rare talents at that time. Parker had already worked on similar software before. He was friends with others who could also take the idea to the next level.

When Marc was about to talk to Parker, there were many risks involved.

Parker had already worked on similar software before, so he was kind of bored with it. He didn’t find enterprise tools exciting. He wanted to do something more meaningful.

Marc knew he had to present his idea in a way that made Parker feel like the idea really mattered.

If Marc had explained it as most founders do and said things like:

• “Let’s build a CRM software.”

• “Here’s how it works.”

It would have made sense.

But Parker would have walked away.

So Marc didn’t explain the product. He changed the entire game by telling a different story.

He talked about how traditional software is going to die. He explained how it was going to be the end of software as they knew it.

Until then, software was delivered using CD-ROMs, and the introduction of the cloud meant the entire empire of traditional software was going to be dead in a few years.

He talked about a world where software isn’t installed.

Where everything runs on the internet.

Where the entire model of how companies use technology changes.

The talk wasn’t about CRM anymore. It was about building something that replaces the entire system.

Parker found this story very interesting.

But what made Parker join him wasn’t just the vision. Marc made the story personal. He knew Parker wanted meaning.

So he framed it as a shift that really matters. He knew Parker liked hard technical challenges. So he framed it as something that needs to scale globally.

He even knew Parker wanted to live in San Francisco. So he made that part of the story too.

Now Parker wasn’t evaluating a product. He was seeing a future he wanted to be a part of.

And that’s the difference.

Marc didn’t make the idea clearer. He made it matter by telling interesting stories.

That’s what most programmers miss.

If they are building a product, they try to explain it clearly. And if they are trying to produce content, they add all sorts of logical things to it.

In both cases, you need to create a story where the other person can see themselves. You have to do a lot of storytelling for people to take the desired action.

Because if you’re explaining things, it answers: “What is this?”

But the right kind of stories answer:

Why should this matter to me right now?

The New Way to Think

At some point, I had to change the way I was thinking about my content.

With developer content, I failed to connect with people emotionally.

With SaaS positioning content, I didn’t have much authority.

But this time, with people just like me — programmers turning entrepreneurs, I am doing things a little differently.

Earlier, I used to think:

“How do I explain things in a better way?” This is why I used to spend a lot of time polishing my content to make it seem like it was written by a professional in this space.

But this time, I am sharing my day-to-day experiences and stories so that people can relate to me as a person.

In the background, I am asking a different question: “Why should someone care about this?”

And this changes everything. Instead of explaining ideas, you start showing people their own problems. You connect with their life and situation.

You make them see what’s really at stake.

What changes if this works, and what they’re missing out on.

And when you start doing that, something starts to shift. People don’t just read your content. They start taking the action you always wanted them to take.

That’s when your content stops being information. And starts to become something they care about.

Because it is quite similar to my relative’s situation. Everyone knew he was ill.

But nobody cared to meet him until the doctor told them that he had only a few days left to live.

You have to understand that people don’t act on what they understand. They act on what matters to them.

The “Story + Villain Pressure” Prompt

Act as a storytelling coach for programmers who want their content to make people feel seen and take action.
I'm about to create a piece of content.
Here's my idea (earn this before proceeding):
Fill this in:
People think ___, but in reality ___
Based on:
• A real situation where this shows up
• What do you realise that changed your thinking
Why this matters:
• What are they losing if they ignore this?
• What changes if they get this right?

⸻

Step 1: Lock the audience + situation
• Who exactly is this for? (be specific)
• What are they trying to achieve right now?
• What have they already tried?
Then place them inside a specific moment:
• What are they doing?
• What's not working?
• What are they thinking in that moment?
Make this feel like a real scene, not a summary.

⸻

Step 2: Expose the villain inside the moment
Find the belief or pattern they are actively defending in that situation.
Define:
• What they believe
• Why it feels right to them
• How they justify it
• What it is quietly costing them
Write this like you're calling them out, not analyzing them.
The villain should feel uncomfortable and specific.

⸻

Step 3: Build tension → break it → deliver output
Create the story flow:
• Show their effort
• Show where things feel off
• Let the tension build (no explanation yet)
Then introduce the shift:
The moment their belief breaks
Frame it like:
• "The problem isn't what you think…"
• "The thing you trusted is the reason this isn't working…"

⸻

Final Output:
1. A sharp, story-based hook
2. The villain in one brutal sentence
3. The shift (clear, not over-explained)
4. 3 content angles:
• emotional
• contrarian
• practical

⸻

Rules (strict)
• No generic advice
• No "educational tone"
• No explaining before tension is built
• Make the audience feel slightly uncomfortable (that's where attention comes from)

Testing the prompt with my business

This was my input.

Programmers think that since they know how to write code, they should start directly with SaaS, but after my failure with SaaS and building a writing-based business, I think they should start with content creation and move to SaaS later in the journey.

If they don’t start with a digital content creation business, they risk investing 5–6 months building a SaaS and still never grow a real business.

Even after that, since they don’t know how to promote it, they will struggle. If they build an audience, they will understand marketing better and then build a SaaS business more easily in the future.

Chatgpt Output Part 1

Refined Idea Block (Stronger Version)
People think… but in reality…
People think learning to code is enough to start a SaaS, 
but in reality, building first is why their business never works.
⸻

Based on (real situation)
It's late at night.
They're adding another feature to their SaaS.
Everything is working better than yesterday.
They open their dashboard.
Still:
• no users
• no signups
• no revenue
They tell themselves:
"I just need to finish this… then I'll start promoting it."
But that moment never comes.

⸻

Realisation
After shutting down your SaaS, you realise:
"I didn't fail because my product was bad…
I failed because I built something no one was waiting for."
And deeper:
"I was trying to build a business without knowing how to get attention."

⸻

Why this matters
If they ignore this:
• They'll spend months building in isolation
• They'll mistake progress (coding) for traction
• They'll end up with a finished product no one cares about
If they get this right:
• They build an audience first
• They understand distribution
• When they build later → people are already waiting

⸻

Now your input is sharp enough.
Let's run your full prompt.

My Observation: First Part

I failed to describe the idea in enough detail.

It’s not like I never thought about this in the first place, but I wasn’t able to describe things clearly.

It’s good that ChatGPT described everything like this because now I can clearly see it.

Especially the visualisation part.

ChatGpt Output Part 2

Final Output (From Your Prompt)
1. Hook
You spent 6 months building your SaaS.
Clean code.
Great features.
Everything works.
But when you launch…
No one shows up.

⸻

2. Villain (one brutal sentence)
You think building is progress, 
but it's actually how you avoid learning how to get people to care.

⸻

3. Shift
The problem isn't your SaaS.
It's that you started building before anyone was paying attention.
Build attention first.
Then build what people are already waiting for.

⸻

4. Content Angles
Emotional:
"The hardest part of building a SaaS is realising no one was waiting for it"
Contrarian:
"Don't build a SaaS as your first business (you're doing it backwards)"
Practical:
"What to do before writing a single line of code for your startup"
⸻
Honest Feedback (Important)
Your prompt worked.
But notice:
The quality jump didn't come from the steps
It came from fixing your idea block

My observation for the second part

The hook helped me realise the core mistake most programmers make when they launch their product.

Because they had no audience. No one is excited when they launch their product.

In the age of AI, writing code is not progress. But building an audience is.

Distribution is what you have to crack, not the product.

If I want, I can easily write stories from an emotional angle, and this will make people realise that what really matters is having an audience when you launch your product.

Contrarian pieces are also good for my business. If I include my backstory in it, the content will become very valuable for people who want to build SaaS as their first business.

Overall, the above reply is good and really forces me to think about stories that will make people care about what I am building.

More Content:

• I Wish I Knew This Before Starting My Online Business As A Programmer

• This Habit Will Change How Programmers Build Online Businesses Forever (Do This Before You Quit)

• The Only Way Programmers Can Build Something That Stands Out (Before You Even Begin)

If you’re a programmer trying to build something online, there’s one mistake you’re probably making right now.

I made it too.

And it cost me months of effort.

I was building, writing, and improving, but nothing stood out.

Not because the ideas were bad.

But because I misunderstood something very basic.

And it took me a long time to even realise what that was.

The Part I Couldn’t Understand

For a long time, I felt like nothing I built and wrote actually stood out.

I would put in the effort.

Build something.

Write and share it.

And then wait, but very few people either used my product or read my blogs. There were almost no users or real responses.

Complete silence. I observed that most people misjudge this silence.

First, let me tell you a small incident from my day-to-day life a few months ago.

I Thought He Was Ignoring Me

The fan spins above my head, but it does nothing. The air is warm. Even the floor under my feet feels hot.

I walk to the window. This I’ve been doing for quite a few weeks now.

When I reach the window every day, I have just one hope: clouds.

Every day I open the curtain like I’m scratching a lottery ticket. Every day I lose. And every day, I close the curtain with a sad face.

But today, it’s a little different.

I pull the curtain, and this time I see grey clouds moving fast.

I feel this urge to share the joy with someone. I step out of my house. The rain begins to fall. That’s when I see my neighbour on his balcony, on the first floor of his house. He’s on the phone.

I haven’t spoken to him in a while. But now feels like the perfect time. I look up and smile, waiting for a pause in his call.

I’m waiting for the moment he sees me and waves back. I’m ready to chat. But it doesn’t come. He stays on the call. I stand there awkwardly, still smiling at him. But now the smile stretches too long. My neck starts aching a little from looking up. I wait, but he doesn’t glance down once.

Standing there, I’m thinking, ‘Is he ignoring me?’ Did he not see me?

After a while, I give up and turn away.

But just when I was about to go back inside, he called out my name. “Hey! You saw the rain coming, too, right?”

For a moment, I was confused. I wanted to ask him: “Wait…you saw me the whole time?”

He wasn’t ignoring me. He just didn’t notice me in that moment.

This Is Exactly What Happens Online

All that time, I thought silence meant rejection. But it didn’t.

It meant something else. And this is exactly what happens when you start something of your own as a programmer.

At first, it doesn’t feel like anything is wrong when you start an online business.

Because from your side, everything makes sense. You build something by looking at what already exists. You improve a few things and add your own touch.

And when you explain it, you use familiar language so people can understand it easily. It feels safe.

But when you get zero users and zero engagement, then it starts to get difficult.

And that’s where it starts to get confusing. According to you, you did everything ‘right’.

So naturally, the doubts will show up. You will think, “Am I not good enough?” “Am I missing something?”

So you respond in the only way that feels logical. You improve the product. You work harder.

But the results don’t change. Because the problem isn’t that people are rejecting you. The problem is that they don’t notice you.

It is quite similar to my situation with my neighbour that day.

He wasn’t ignoring me. I was just not visible enough in that moment. And that’s what happens with most products and content.

People don’t say no to it. They just don’t see it clearly enough to care.

That’s the real lesson here. Silence isn’t rejection; it’s actually confusion.

If people don’t understand what it is, who it is for, and why it matters. They won’t react. Not because it’s bad. It’s because it doesn’t stand out.

And that’s where everything changes. The problem isn’t what you are actually building or creating.

The problem is how you’re positioning yourself as the creator of your product.

This Is Why Most Messaging Doesn’t Work

Let me explain this with the help of an example.

Suppose you, as a programmer, launch a product in the customer engagement space.

The headline says:

Be unstoppable in customer engagement.

When you first look at this, it sounds strong and professional. But there’s a problem. When you write something like this, you’re assuming that the customer sees the world the same way you do.

When you, as a programmer, have been in research mode for so long, you will definitely understand the terms like

• customer engagement

• personalization

• orchestration

• analytics

So naturally, you try to compress all that knowledge into one line. But your audience doesn’t live in that world.

A real buyer who is facing such a problem, the customer your product is meant to help, is not thinking:

How do I become unstoppable in customer engagement?

Instead, they are thinking: customers are not replying, messages aren’t working, and we’re sending things, but nothing sticks.

So when they land on this kind of page, they don’t feel any clarity. They feel distance.

And this is exactly what happened in that small incident I told you earlier.

That day, I thought my neighbour was ignoring me. I was right there. But he didn’t respond.

So naturally, I assumed:

“Maybe he doesn’t want to talk,” but that wasn’t true. He wasn’t rejecting me. He just didn’t notice me in that moment.

And this is exactly what’s happening here. When someone lands on your homepage and doesn’t react, it’s easy to think, “Maybe he doesn’t care” or “maybe the product isn’t good enough.”

But most of the time, that’s not the problem.

“Just like my neighbour, your audience isn’t rejecting you.” They just don’t see themselves in what you’re saying.

And that’s why your product or content doesn’t stand out. Not because you did something wrong, but because it’s not clear enough to be noticed.

Your messaging is coming from your reality, not from their reality.

If they don’t see themselves in it, they won’t stop for it.

The problem isn’t what you’re building or writing; it’s how you’re positioning it.

Do you feel like the only “real” way to start a business is by building a SaaS?

I thought the same.

I spent months building products no one used before I realised what was actually going wrong.

I jumped straight into it. Started building features. Tried to make it look like a real product from day one.

Because it feels serious.

It feels like you’re actually doing something meaningful.

And this is where most programmers go wrong.

They do the same thing.

They start with the final form of the business instead of earning their way into it.

The Situation

When I started learning to code a few years back, I used to watch a lot of YouTube videos on how to start and run a startup.

I was very inspired by all those people who had built successful companies.

Every one of those entrepreneurs used to talk about different things.

Stuff like:

• How to find the next billion-dollar ideas

• How to grow the company by following weird growth techniques

• How to find the right talent to join your company

By listening to those podcasts, watching videos, and reading books, I felt like I should also start a startup.

But there was a problem. Nobody in those podcasts discussed what kind of businesses you should start as your first business.

I thought that since everyone starts with SaaS, I should also get started with SaaS. This was the reason I started to learn to code in the first place.

I decided that I want to build something of my own and not just write code for others. I have to do real business. I knew it would be a SaaS business.

So I jumped straight into it.

I researched for the perfect idea I wanted to build. But months after trying to find the right idea, I failed to find one. But later, I started building something one of my friends suggested, and I liked his idea.

I started by building features. Designing the entire app. Setting up proper UI and backend.

At that time, it felt right. It felt like I was doing something real. Not just learning and experimenting. I was building a product.

Most programmers start their business the same way. They decide they want to build something of their own, not just write code for others.

And in their head, one thing is clear:

If I’m serious about building something, I should start with a SaaS.

So they start building their dream product, designing dashboards and doing various other product things. It feels right.

And they invest months building the product. But slowly, something starts to feel off.

They launch, or at least they try to. And then nothing happens. No users. No traction. No one really cares.

At first, they don’t panic. They think maybe it just needs time. So they wait. For months. Still, nothing changes.

And that’s when the confusion begins.

Because now, two things are happening at the same time:

They are building something that looks like a real business. But in reality, nothing is actually moving forward.

Let me explain what's going wrong with a small incident.

A small incident

I wake up with this feeling that something’s not going the way it should.

No, my health isn’t bad.

It’s because I haven’t written for a week.

And when I don’t write, it feels like life has stopped for me. I feel like I have stopped existing.

When I don’t let my thoughts out somewhere, it feels like those thoughts keep piling up inside my head.

They build up, circling faster and faster until I can’t think straight. Writing is the only way I can quiet my mind.

And then I start thinking if I stopped writing one day altogether, I would lose all my writing skills, and I would never be able to write a single word in my life.

That’s when my eyes land on a chair. That chair was supposed to fix this.

Earlier, when I was not writing, I thought the environment was the problem. This is why I bought a chair.

I had this belief in my head:

“Once I have the right setup. I’ll finally start writing properly.” So I bought an expensive chair and set it up perfectly. Placed it near my desk like it meant something.

And a day after buying it, I went back to the same routine. Even after having this new setup, I was still not writing, and nothing was moving forward.

Days passed. Then weeks. That chair just sat there. Empty. Every time I looked at it, I felt this strange mix of guilt and confusion, because in my head, I had already solved the problem. I had the right setup and the right environment.

But I wasn’t using it to write anything.

That’s when it hit me. The chair was never the problem. I just didn’t want to write anything and was delaying the work.

And that feeling stayed with me. Not the chair. But how easy it is to convince yourself that you’re fixing the problem.

When you’re actually avoiding the only thing that would fix it.

This is exactly what happens when programmers try to build something of their own.

If you look at it externally, everything looks right. They are building. Writing code. Adding features.

And months go by. The product starts to look real. But when they finally put it out into the world, nothing happens. No users and zero traction.

It is just like that chair; the product exists, but it doesn’t change anything.

From the inside, it feels confusing because you haven’t avoided the work. You are doing the work every single day. So your mind tells you, ‘I’m doing the right thing.’

And when nothing happens, the only conclusion they reach is: “I need to build more.” So we keep going. Adding more features.

But deep down, something feels off. Just like how I knew that chair wasn’t the real issue. Programmers know this isn’t working. But they continue.

Because stopping would mean accepting something uncomfortable: “Maybe I’ve been focusing on the wrong things.“

And if you look closely, this is happening because of the belief we programmers have, which is “If I build something serious enough, it will work.”

That’s the real trap.

Because just like I thought, the chair would make me write, they think building a full project makes it a real business.

But it doesn’t.

What Changed Everything

But here’s something interesting.

When Marc Benioff started building Salesforce, it didn’t look like a “real business” at all.

There was no proper office. No polished product.

In fact, they were working out of a small one-bedroom apartment. No fancy setup.

Just folding chairs and card tables. The kind of setup most people would look at and think doesn’t look serious.

The “server room” was literally a bedroom closet. One of the early team members used to sleep under the desk.

If you looked from the outside, it didn’t look impressive. It didn’t look like a company that would become a $250 billion business.

But something important was happening there.

They weren’t trying to look like a business. They were trying to build something that works. Instead of starting with a finished product, they started with something small, a team and a simple setup.

They did one very interesting thing. They were constantly trying to interact with customers.

I feel like the problem with us as founders is that we don’t have a way to interact with customers. In fact, we don’t even know a single customer of our product.

Marc and the team were close to the problem, and since they were interacting with customers, they were closer to reality.

They were figuring it out in real time. They talked to customers and made small improvements to the product.

And that’s the part that changes everything. Because what I was doing and what most programmers do is quite the opposite.

We try to start with something that looks complete. Something that feels like a real business from day one.

But Marc didn’t do that. He didn’t start with scale. He grew into it.

The New Way to Think

Look at the way they were building the company.

They didn’t start by trying to look like a real business. They started by staying close to reality.

They were talking to people. Understanding the problem and making small improvements.

And because of that, they didn’t have to guess. That’s what I was missing at the start of my journey.

I was building in isolation. Trying to make something perfect without knowing if it even mattered.

But after shutting down that business, I realised one thing: I have to be close to customers if I want to build something real.

This is why this time, as I build a business for programmers turning entrepreneurs, I am doing things a little differently.

Instead of directly building SaaS tools for this kind of audience, I am starting with people.

This is why I started writing particularly for you guys, because I want to understand your problems, and only then can I build something meaningful.

This time, instead of building silently, I am showing up daily. I write and share what I’m learning. I talk about the exact problems I’m going through.

At first, when I started building the SaaS product, nothing happened. But this time, I didn’t stop, and slowly, people started responding. Some related. Some even shared their own struggles.

And over time, that turned into something real. Today, I have around 2k people on my email list and an audience of 8k+ programmers trying to build something of their own.

And this is the biggest difference this time:

• I’m not guessing anymore. I know who I’m talking to and what they’re struggling with

I am not building this from a place of assumptions. I’m building from a place of reality.

That’s the shift you also need to make.

You need to go from “Let me build the SaaS” to “Let me earn the right to build the SaaS.”

What ‘earning the right’ actually looks like:

It’s not about writing. It’s about building the foundation before building the product.

First, you have to try to build an audience. When you try to build an audience, you will learn various things.

Things like how to think about content marketing and how to speak in a way that persuades people. How to be your authentic self.

Earlier, when I built my first product, I was isolated. No one knew what I was doing.

Now I show up and share consistently. That’s how I built a 2000-person email list and an audience of almost 10k people.

So the next time you try to build something, you won’t start from zero.

You will understand people’s real problems. Earlier, I used to rely only on my ideas, and now I think about other people’s struggles and listen to those who could become my customers later in the journey.

When you go on this journey, you will realise how much overthinking you actually do. Sometimes you will put out content, and some will work, but others will flop.

So you will take things less personally.

A few days ago, I put out one piece of content, which got only 28 views and 4 reads. And earlier, when this used to happen, I used to think, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ but now I just think it’s part of the process.

Nothing to worry about.

This is why I believe that before you try to build a SaaS, you must try to build an audience of any kind. It will be better if your audience is based on your expertise. This way, you will be able to monetise the audience before even building the product.

So you have to realise that building an audience will not only prepare you for SaaS but also enable you to monetise it faster compared to SaaS.

Have you ever worked on something for months and still felt like nothing was getting noticed?

As a programmer, you start to do things like:

• Building a SaaS

• creating content

At first, it feels fine. You’re doing what you love.

Then things don’t go the way you expected. There is almost zero traction. Or worse, comments are pointing out what’s wrong.

And that stays with you.

You think:

Maybe I’m not built for this.

So you start thinking about changing direction or just quitting.

It may feel like you’re making a good decision. But this is where most programmers starting online businesses go wrong.

Here, I’ll show you the habit that changes this.

The Reality Most Programmers Face

It’s been months since I started going to the gym.

I go to the gym even when I don’t feel like it. I push myself in every gym session.

After each session, when I wipe off the sweat, I feel like I made the right decision to go to the gym.

But there is one thing that is eating me from the inside.

Every time I look in the mirror, nothing really looks different.

My body may have gained some muscle, but it still looks the same as when I started. I am still in almost the same shape as when I started.

And every day while looking at my body in the mirror, there is doubt in my mind. I keep telling myself, “Maybe I am not built for the gym.”

Because it’s not just me noticing it. My neighbours notice it too. They say stuff like “You’ve been going to the gym for a long time, right?”

There’s always something behind that question that irritates me.

It is this “If you’re putting in this much effort, why doesn’t it show?”

I laugh it off. But it stays in the back of my mind. The next day, when I start my workout, it feels heavier. Not physically, but mentally, because I keep thinking about that comment during my sets.

There is this question I carry with me for the next few days:

Is this even working?

And this cycle keeps repeating. And that’s the dangerous part. Because once this question starts to stay in your mind for a few days, quitting starts to feel like a reasonable option.

And that’s what stayed with me. Not the workouts and effort.

But that feeling that I’m doing everything right, and still it doesn’t look like it’s working.

This is exactly what happens when programmers try to build something of their own. They start building a SaaS, or they start creating content.

They show up and put in the work. They follow what they believe is the right approach. Initially, they enjoy it because they’re working in the right direction and taking action.

But even after being on that path for months, nothing is working. They get almost zero traction or users. No one is really engaging with their posts, which becomes quite frustrating.

And slowly, the same question starts to show up in their life as well:

Is this even working?

Just like in the gym, from the outside, it looks like I was doing everything right.

But from the inside, it felt like nothing was changing for me. And that’s where things start to break.

Because once that doubt enters, quitting starts to feel like a natural solution.

What’s Actually Going Wrong

When I started building my first SaaS, I thought that once I launched this product, people would just hop onto it and start using the product.

Because I believed my product was better than other competitors, and it addressed an immediate pain point for my audience.

But when I actually launched the product, nothing happened, and no one used it.

Initially, I thought, let’s just wait for a month or so, and word of mouth will start on its own.

But nothing happened for a long time. I was frustrated because nothing was happening, and in that frustration, I just shut down the product.

The next time, I decided that I won’t start a SaaS this time, and instead, I would start a digital writing business. I looked at my backstory and thought that I have come a long way in my self-taught programming journey.

I started sharing my programming journey. What I had learned, what kind of mistakes I made as a beginner,

But this time something strange happened: people were reading it, but all they were telling me was how big a loser I am. They were pointing out all sorts of mistakes in my approach.

Even though I was sharing my experience, people were just crushing my opinions and telling me how much of a bad developer I am for not following the best practices.

When you show up and put in the effort, you try to do things the right way.

And all you get from people is silence or negative comments, you feel like you are losing yourself every single day.

In my case, when I shared my SaaS with the world, there was zero traction, and when I shared developer content, there were negative comments.

It was very hard for me as a beginner.

The feedback makes you question everything. And slowly, the same thought starts to come back: “If I am getting only negative comments, is this even working?”

You begin to think stuff like this:

Maybe this idea isn’t good.

Maybe I should try something else.

Maybe I should focus only on my day-to-day work.

And this is where the real problem begins.

Not with the idea, but with how you react to these moments.

Because now, just like in the gym, you stop trusting the process. You start changing things too early.

And every time you do this, you reset back to zero.

This is what I call the First-Pushback collapse.

The moment you face some kind of resistance, you assume you are doing something wrong.

At the core of your belief:

If this were good, it would already be working.

So this cycle keeps on repeating. You first face pushback, then comes the doubt. This kind of doubt forces you to change direction, and then you reset the direction. And again this cycle repeats.

The Moment of Realisation

But then I came across the story of Marc Benioff that completely changed how I saw this.

Marc Benioff is the CEO and cofounder of Salesforce.

Currently, Salesforce is valued at more than $250 billion.

But when he was about to start Salesforce, he wasn’t getting any validation.

He was just getting resistance.

In one of his early meetings, he sat down with a group of developers to explain what he wanted to build.

Before anything even started, those developers just tore his idea apart.

They called his idea of selling software via cloud a “crackpot idea.” They told him that this kind of software business wouldn’t work, and the current model of delivering software via CD-ROMs would flourish.

Those developers said that customers won’t trust this model. They said enterprise software doesn’t work like this.

And to break Marc down, they also told him that Siebel software, a competitor, was already dominating the market.

He was being told that the idea shouldn’t work. He won’t get any users. There was no proof this would work and no reason to believe it would succeed.

Now this is exactly the kind of moment we just talked about. The moment where doubt starts to take over.

It’s the place where most people would think:

Maybe the other person is right.

Maybe I should rethink this.

Maybe this isn’t the right idea to work on.

As I told you, this happened to me. When I launched my first SaaS, no traction meant this isn’t the right idea. And in the case of developer content, people were only criticising me, so I thought maybe I shouldn’t share what I have learned.

But Marc didn’t do anything like that. He didn’t get defensive or start panicking. Most programmers would start to panic in this situation because someone is criticising your idea, so the natural thing to do is to defend your idea. But instead, he stayed calm and collected.

And he kept reinforcing the same belief that software, as people knew it, was going to change.

That the internet would replace the traditional systems. That companies would always move away from installing software on their devices and would use the internet to deliver software to them.

And the most important thing he did:

He didn’t expect people to agree immediately. He expected some resistance.

That’s the part most people miss. Because what looks like failure in the beginning is often just the stage where people don’t understand or accept it yet.

That’s the same shift you need to make to build something of your own. You have to accept that resistance, whether it’s in the form of silence or bad comments, is not a signal to stop; it’s a normal part of building something new.

What This Reveals

Earlier, every time something didn’t work, I used to think:

Is this working right now?

And based on that, I kept changing direction.

But as I spent more time in the content creation game, I started to look at things a little differently. I changed the question I ask.

Have I stayed with this long enough for it to work?

Because I’ve realised something simple. In the beginning, nothing looks like it’s working.

Just like going to the gym, you show up, you do the work, but you don’t see the result immediately.

And if you keep reacting to the invisible zone, you will keep resetting your progress.

Now, when I face silence or when people criticise me for what I’m doing.

I don’t take it as a signal to stop working on my business. I take it as a part of the process.

A few years ago, when I read about Marc Benioff and how he handles critics, I learned this thing from him. However bad the situation was, he kept repeating what he believed, and then the world started trusting him.

He never changed his direction; even when no one was giving him attention, he stayed on his path.

So this time, as I build this business for programmers turning entrepreneurs, I focus on showing up consistently. I focus on giving things time to compound.

It’s not like I write one post and immediately expect it to go viral. I know it takes time. You have to let the process play out.

And by building this business, I want to help programmers stop quitting and stay long enough to see results.

So before you decide to quit anything, ask yourself this:

Am I reacting, or am I building what I always wanted to build?

Today, I have around 2k subscribers on my email list and a 10k niche audience because I have now understood that nothing works instantly, but everything works if you don’t quit early.

Are you trying to build SaaS or start creating content, but already feel like it won’t stand out?

I used to feel the same when I was building my first SaaS.

So I studied existing tools, how they were priced, positioned, and built.

Then I tried to create something similar, just slightly better.

But when I launched, nothing stood out.

Everything felt like a variation of what already existed.

That’s when I realised:

The problem wasn’t my execution.

I started from what already existed, without questioning whether it should exist that way.

The Programmer Who Wants to Stand Out

A few months ago, I remember sitting in my room and staring at a blank screen.

I hadn’t written a single word.

But I was still under pressure. Because in my head, writing only counted if it was at least 1,000 words.

Anything less felt like a failure.

So every time I sat down to write, I didn’t start with a blank page.

I started with pressure.

Pressure to do it properly. Pressure to write something that actually matters and has at least 1,000 words.

And because of that, I would sit there and not start writing at all.

A few days ago, while thinking about a new piece of content, I realised something.

I wasn’t just doing this in writing. I was doing this everywhere.

When I wanted to build something, I didn’t start from scratch. I started by looking at what already existed.

I looked at how the other products were built. What was their pricing? What features did they have?

And then I tried to do the same thing but better.

It felt like the right way to do things. It felt safe. It felt like I was following what works. But every time I tried to build something, I felt like I had just created a clone of the other app, and why would anybody be interested in this product?

Nothing stood out.

Now, when I think about my approach, this question comes up:

“If I’m doing what works…why does nothing stand out?”

Most programmers fall into the same pattern without realising it.

They don’t start by questioning what should exist.

They start by studying what already exists. They analyse successful products, popular creators and proven formats, and try to do something similar just slightly better.

It feels like the correct thing to do. Whether it’s a SaaS product, a piece of writing, or a YouTube video, the approach stays the same: follow what works.

And over time, this creates a frustration loop.

They build or create something that works but doesn’t stand out. Something functional but totally forgettable. And then wonder why it’s so hard to get attention, users, or traction.

They are failing not because they lack skill, but because they started from what already exists instead of questioning whether it should exist that way.

The problem

At that time, I genuinely believed I was doing the right thing.

In my head, writing only counted if it was 1,000 words, not like 300 words or 500 words.

It had to be complete. Proper.

So every time I sat down, I wasn’t thinking about writing.

I was thinking about hitting that standard. And because I kept thinking about reaching my 1,000-word goal, I didn’t write at all.

A few days ago, I realised the real problem wasn’t coming up with words.

It was the rule I had created around it.

The same pattern showed up when programmers try to build or create something.

They don’t think:

What should I make?

They think:

“What is something that already works?” So they study everything. Products, features, and pricing.

If they are trying to create content, they will study what content works, what hook to use, and what kind of format works.

And then they try to create or do the same thing, but just add a minor modification.

When you’re doing this, it looks like progress. You are learning. You are analysing.

But while you’re doing this, the same thing is happening.

Just like my 1,000-word rule stopped me from writing. This “what works” rule stops you from creating anything original.

Instead of starting from your own thinking and questioning what works. You’re starting from what already exists.

And that’s why, even when you try to build. It feels like you’re just copying.

The villain

When I built my first SaaS, I didn’t realise why I created the product like this.

But now, when I look back, I realise the belief was:

“If something works, it must be right.”

So instead of questioning things, I followed them.

I looked at what already existed, copied the structure, improved it slightly, and tried to fit into the same system.

It felt logical. But that’s where the problem begins. The moment you accept the system, you also accept its rules.

Rules you didn’t create. And those rules come with consequences. You will be compared with better products, bigger creators and people who started earlier.

Now you’re not building something new. You’re competing inside an existing game.

If you don’t create your own game, you will look like a variation. Just slightly better, but never truly distinct.

That’s the trap. The moment you accept what exists as “right”, you limit yourself to improving it, not changing it.

And that’s why nothing stands out.

The turning point

Around the year 1999, everyone had already accepted how CRM software worked.

If a company wanted to manage its sales, there was only one way to do it.

You bought expensive software licenses.

You had to invest heavily in infrastructure. You hired teams to install, customise and maintain it.

It could take months, sometimes years, just to get the system running properly.

And even after all that, a large part of the software often went unused.

But none of this felt like a problem. Because everything worked. If it improved sales even slightly, companies were willing to tolerate this much of the headache and cost.

So the system stayed the same, and no one questioned it.

Marc Benioff did.

Not because he wanted to build a startup. But because he couldn’t ignore how inefficient the system actually worked.

Remember this if you are thinking about building something that you want to stand out. You don’t follow the traditional model; you try to see problems in the system at a fundamental level.

That is when you will actually build something totally different.

Marc asked these questions:

• Why should software be this hard to use?

• Why should it take years to implement?

• Why should companies pay millions upfront for something they might not even fully use?

This is what led to a $250B empire.

He didn’t ask:

“How do I build a better CRM?”

He asked, “Why does it have to work this way?”

That single shift changed everything. He believed no infrastructure would be required. No long setup cycles. No massive upfront cost.

Just simple, on-demand software.

He didn’t try to improve the system. He actually questioned it.

And if you are a programmer who wants to build something that truly stands out, you have to look at the product through a different lens

You have to be willing to ask this question: ‘Why does this exist this way at all?’

The moment you question the system, you stop competing with existing players.

You start redefining the game itself. This way, you will be able to stand out before you even begin.

The insight

This is the shift most programmers never make.

They look at something that stands out, which comes from a different question:

“How do I build this better?”

But that question keeps you inside the same system.

What actually creates something that stands out is a different question:

“Why does this exist this way at all?”

“Is this feature even needed?”

“What problem is this actually solving?”

“Why is everyone using the same format?”

“Do I really need this hook — or am I copying it?”

“What would I say if I weren’t trying to sound like others?”

These questions do one thing:

They break the assumptions you inherited.

That’s the real shift you need.

A Prompt That Stops You From Wasting Years On the Wrong Idea

Act as a practical startup advisor who helps programmers turn ideas into something that actually stands out — whether it’s a SaaS product, writing, or a YouTube channel.
I have an idea (it may be rough or unclear), and I don’t want to build something generic.
Here’s my idea:
[Write your idea]
— -
First, ask me these questions ONE BY ONE (wait for my answers):
1. What are you trying to build or create?
2. Why does this idea matter to you personally?
3. What already exists that is similar?
4. What feels frustrating, repetitive, or unnecessary in those?
5. How would you want to do this differently, even if it feels small?
— -
After I answer, guide me with:
1. What part of my idea feels generic (gently, not harshly)
2. What part of my thinking has the potential to stand out
3. What assumptions should I question
4. A clearer direction I can take that is different from what already exists
— -
Then help me translate that direction into action:
If it’s SaaS:
- What is a small, different version I can build?
If it’s content (writing/YouTube):
- What is a simple angle or idea I can create that stands out?
— -
Finally:
Give me one specific first step I can take today to start moving in that direction.
— -
Rules:
- Don’t just critique — guide me forward
- Keep things simple and practical
- Focus on helping me stand out, not just improve

Testing the prompt

Let’s test this prompt for what I’m trying to do with my newsletter, codertoentrepreneurs.

This was my reply to all those questions.

Answer 1. I am building a newsletter for programmers turning into entrepreneurs or those who have already built a business. It is for coders who either want to build a SaaS business or a creator business through creating content on different platforms.

Answer 2. I was a programmer who once launched a SaaS, and it failed. I invested around 6 months of my time into it, but nothing useful came out of that, and hence I decided to change my approach and try writing on a different platform as a way to set up a business. Also, I really want to help people like me.

Answer 3. There aren’t many people guiding this group. A few people guide others on Twitter, but they are focused on indie hacking. I am not focused only on this indie hacking community. My goal is to help people who want to raise money or are comfortable raising it.

Answer 4. People guiding others only talk about their experience and not the real details. They are giving very surface-level advice

Answer 5. Everyone who has built a company moves on to build a bigger one, but I am trying to share everything I’ve learned. I haven’t built a successful SaaS business, but I have built a following of around 10k people.

Chatgpt reply
1. What feels generic (gently, but clearly)
The format + audience you’ve chosen is still generic:
• “Newsletter for programmers → entrepreneurs”
• “Help people like me”
• “SaaS or creator business”
• “Not just indie hackers”
This is broad positioning.
Even if your intention is honest, the way it’s framed right now:
→ it blends in with 1000 others
The risk:
People won’t say “this is for me”
They’ll say “This sounds like everything else”

⸻
2. What actually has potential to stand out
This is the important part — and you do have something strong:
“I spent 6 months building something that went nowhere”
And this:
“Most advice is surface-level and doesn’t show real details”
That combination is powerful.
Because you’re not coming from:
• success porn
• fake authority
You’re coming from:
• confusion
• wasted effort
• trying to figure it out honestly
That’s rare if you go deep enough.

⸻
3. Assumptions you should question
These are quietly limiting you:
❌ “There are not many people guiding this”
There are MANY.
Your edge is not:
→ “lack of competition”
Your edge must be:
→ “different depth or perspective”

⸻
❌ “I will help programmers build SaaS or content”
This is too wide.
You’re mixing:
• SaaS builders
• content creators
• funded founders
These are different games.
You’ll lose clarity if you try to speak to all.

⸻
❌ “People need guidance”
They don’t need more advice.
They need:
→ better thinking before action
That’s where you’re naturally leaning already.

⸻
4. A clearer direction (this is where it gets interesting)
Don’t build:
“A newsletter for programmers becoming entrepreneurs”
Instead, shift to something like:
“Why programmers spend months building things that never go anywhere — and how to think before you build”
That’s sharper.
Still simple.
But now:
• it attacks a real pain
• it filters the right audience
• it creates curiosity

⸻
Your actual angle becomes:
• Not “how to succeed”
• Not “build a startup”
But:
👉 “Why your current approach will likely fail (before you waste 6 months)”
That stands out.

⸻
5. Translate into action (content)
Let’s make this practical.
Your content should NOT be:
• “5 SaaS ideas”
• “How to start a newsletter”
• “Build in public tips”
That’s noise.

⸻
Your content SHOULD be like:
• “I spent 6 months building X — here’s the exact moment it was doomed (I just didn’t see it)”
• “The real reason programmers pick bad ideas (it’s not lack of skill)”
• “This is how I would kill my own idea in 10 minutes today”
• “Why ‘just start building’ wasted my time”
Simple.
Personal.
Specific.
Opinionated.

⸻
6. One specific first step (do this today)
Don’t start a newsletter yet.
Do this instead:
👉 Write one piece with this title:
“I spent 6 months building a SaaS that went nowhere — here’s what I missed in week 1”
Structure it like this:
• What you built (quick context)
• What you believed at the start
• The exact wrong assumption
• The moment it failed (or should have been obvious)
• What you would do differently now

Analysing the response

1. Yes, I know I am going with a very broad positioning. Initially, when I started, I wanted this community to exist for these kinds of people. I know there is a risk that it may sound generic, but I want it to be like that. But it’s good that you pointed it out.

2. It’s a good thing that this prompt isn’t just criticising my business but also telling me the unique strength of my business and how I can stand out.

3. Yes, I know I am wrong with this because there are probably many people I don’t know about who are writing on the same topic. But since I am writing from my experience and telling my day-to-day stories, I’m not just creating random content or promoting generic guru advice.

4. I know I am mixing things because SaaS builders have a different kind of mindset compared to content creators. But many programmers want to jump directly into SaaS without ever building an audience. So definitely I have to tell them about how to build an audience.

In 1999, Marc Benioff started Salesforce.

Today, it’s worth over $250B.

But before that, he was like any other programmer at Oracle: well-paid, successful, and constantly busy.

Though he was in a senior role,

From the outside, it looked like he had already made it.

But internally, he was confused about what to do next.

This is the trap most programmers fall into. They build more, learn more, and stay productive.

But deep down, they know they want to start something of their own.

And yet, they never make the switch.

The Trap I Didn’t See

Just a few months ago, I was fully focused on learning how SaaS businesses grow.

Things like:

• positioning

• finding the right market

• understanding customer workflows

I was investing all my free time into it.

Reading. Watching videos. Writing. Trying to get better.

From the outside, it looked like progress.

I was publishing content daily on that topic. Learning deeply and staying productive.

But I felt like something wasn’t right while I was doing all this.

I wanted to help programmers become entrepreneurs.

I wanted to talk about things like:

• how to build an audience

• how to stand out

• how to start something from scratch

• how to grow SaaS

But instead of doing all that, I kept doing only one thing, which was studying SaaS positioning.

I wasn’t stuck. I was actually moving.

But I wasn’t getting closer to what I actually wanted.

And that’s exactly where most programmers who want to start something of their own get stuck.

They aren’t lazy or confused. In fact, they are doing everything that should work.

They are:

• learning new skills

• building projects

• staying consistent

• putting in the hours

It looks like they are actually making progress.

But if you look closely, nothing is actually changing for them.

They are still:

• switching between ideas

• starting new things

• going deeper into execution

But they never move towards building something that actually matters to them.

After some time of continuous execution, they start to feel like this:

I’m doing so much…so why am I still here?

They are stuck in this situation because of their belief:

I just need to keep building projects.

Where Things Go Wrong

At first, when this happens with any programmer, it doesn’t look like anything is wrong.

You are doing what you love.

You are building things. You are learning new concepts.

And you are consistent with your approach.

It feels like things will eventually work out. But they don’t.

As I told I was stuck in a similar kind of situation. I was learning how to position SaaS correctly.

I was feeling productive.

But nothing was actually compounding.

I was publishing one article after another.

I was learning new concepts inside that niche.

But the effort was totally isolated.

People were viewing my offer, but they weren’t making any buying decision. This made me very frustrated.

For most programmers, this shows up in different ways.

If a programmer is trying to build and grow a SaaS.

These things will happen:

• Multiple projects started, not a single paying customer,

• constant iteration, but no clear direction.

• building features without a strong reason

Now, if the programmer is trying to grow a content business.

These things will happen:

• posting consistently, but no one joins the email list

• changing topics without a clear focus

• The effort is increasing, but no one is buying the offers

When you are in execution mode, it feels like you are doing everything right.

But internally, something will always feel off.

You feel productive but unclear.

You are moving but not getting close to any meaningful results.

When my saas positioning offer didn’t even get a single customer. I got irritated.

I was saying stuff like this, “If I’m doing so much…why am I going nowhere?” I was just publishing and publishing new content and never tried to stop.

The reason most programmers keep building more is simple:

They believe that action creates direction.

So they think:

If I just keep building, things will eventually make sense.

But that’s not how it actually works.

Quick question for you:

If you picked A, B, or C — just reply “stuck” and tell me what you’re trying to figure out.

The Hidden Trap

Action creates direction

It’s not like I don’t agree with the above statement. But there’s some nuance to this.

For a beginner who has never done anything, there is a high chance that action will create some kind of direction.

But for someone who has been executing ideas and nothing has worked out, it’s time to see things a little differently.

These programmers are moving without having a direction.

This is what I call:

The continuous execution trap.

The belief that if you keep executing, clarity will come.

So you keep building projects or shipping content.

I was doing the same thing. I was so involved in writing content about SaaS positioning that I forgot what I actually wanted to do.

Instead of doing this, I should have stopped and asked:

“What should I actually be working on?”

And this is exactly where Marc Benioff was.

He was already successful at Oracle, well paid, respected, and constantly executing new things.

From the outside, everything looked perfect. But internally, he had no idea what he actually wanted to do next.

He wasn’t stuck. He was actually advancing. But he couldn’t answer a simple question:

“What am I actually moving toward?”

So instead of doing more, he did something most programmers never do.

He stopped. He took a sabbatical and removed himself from the system he had been operating in for years.

No deadlines. No pressure to stay productive. For the first time, he wasn’t executing.

This gave him space to think.

And that’s where everything changed. Not while working and building.

But while he stepped back.

During that time, he started reflecting.

He was trying to understand what was actually happening in the world.

He spent time thinking deeply about the future. Talking to people who had strong perspectives. Exposing himself to different ways of thinking.

And slowly, a pattern started to emerge. The internet was transforming consumer behaviour.

Companies like Amazon weren’t just selling online; they were changing how people experienced buying itself. Everything was shifting.

He started asking:

If this is changing how individuals interact with products, what happens when this reaches businesses?

Those kinds of questions changed everything because they weren’t coming from constant execution. They were coming from exploration and thinking from different perspectives.

That’s when the idea behind Salesforce began to take shape. Not as a product iteration, but as a direction.

A belief about how the future of software would work.

And that’s the part most programmers miss. Salesforce didn’t come from doing more work at Oracle. It came from stepping away long enough to see what was actually worth building.

The Real Shift

What Marc’s story reveals is simple but uncomfortable for most programmers.

Most of us believe that progress comes from doing more.

But when you’re not a beginner, that’s exactly what keeps you stuck.

Even programmers who have built certain things and got a few users, or started a content business that gets views, think:

If I keep building more or posting more, the direction will come.

But this is not entirely true.

What happened to me was that I kept posting content about SaaS positioning. One post flopped. I posted the second one.

Then the next one and then the next one.

But when nothing helped me convert my offer, just like Marc, I took a step back.

I didn’t take a sabbatical or anything major, but I stopped producing content altogether on that topic.

It was because nothing was converting, even though I had been trying hard for the last year.

So the “keep building” or “keep posting” approach didn’t work for me.

When I took a step back and started thinking about what kind of business I really wanted to build, everything became clear.

I realised I never wanted to build a SaaS positioning consulting business. I want to help those people, but my entire business shouldn’t be dedicated to them.

When I started, I wanted to help programmers become entrepreneurs, but while building this business, I lost sight of them.

This is why I stopped writing my newsletter, but then I realised this, and the first thing I did was start posting again.

That’s the shift I made. More execution doesn’t create progress. Clear direction does.

So the real question is:

Why don’t most programmers ever find that direction?

The reason is pretty simple: they never step out of execution long enough to see what actually matters.

If you’re always building more, you’re always inside the work.

You don’t have the distance required to ask:

“What is actually worth building?”

“What do I really want to move toward?”

That’s why the solution isn’t to build more. It’s to pause.

Take some time off.

Step away from:

• constant coding

• constant learning

• constant output

And give yourself some time to think on the matter.

Reflect on:

• What you actually want to build

• What kind of problem do you care about

• What direction makes sense to you

Because clarity doesn’t come while you’re busy.

And once you have that clarity, then you execute.

You don’t become a founder by building more.

You become one by deciding what’s worth building and then committing to it.

The Execution Trap Audit PROMPT

Act as a brutally honest founder who understands how programmers get stuck in “constant execution without direction.”

I am a programmer trying to start something of my own (SaaS, content, or any business), but I feel like I am doing a lot without getting closer to anything meaningful.

Here is my current situation:

1. What I’ve been doing repeatedly:
[Describe what you’ve been building, learning, or working on]

2. What I say I want:
[Describe what you want long-term — startup, income, freedom, audience, etc.]

3. My current results:
[Traction, users, revenue, or lack of it]

4. Where I feel stuck:
[Confusion, switching ideas, lack of clarity, etc.]

---

Now analyze this specifically through the lens of the “Continuous Execution Trap” and respond in this structure:

---

1. Am I stuck in execution?
Based on what I shared, am I just staying busy instead of moving toward a clear direction?
Explain clearly.

---

2. Where is this path leading?
If I continue doing exactly this for the next 6–12 months, what will realistically happen?
Be direct. No motivation, just truth.

---

3. What am I avoiding?
What important decision or clarity am I postponing by staying in execution?

---

4. What is missing?
Is my real problem:
- lack of direction
- unclear problem to solve
- wrong focus
- or something deeper?

---

5. What should I stop doing immediately?
List the exact activities that are keeping me stuck (based on my situation).

---

6. What should I step back and figure out?
Give me 2–3 specific questions I need to answer before I continue building anything.

---

7. What would a founder do differently here?
How would someone who thinks like a founder approach this situation instead of a programmer?

---

8. A direct recommendation
If you had to guide me in one direction right now, what would you tell me to focus on next?

---

Important:
- Be brutally honest
- No generic advice
- No “just keep going”
- Prioritize clarity over motivation

Testing the prompt for a SaaS positioning channel

Act as a brutally honest founder who understands how programmers get stuck in “constant execution without direction.”

I am a programmer trying to start something of my own (SaaS, content, or any business), but I feel like I am doing a lot without getting closer to anything meaningful.

Here is my current situation:

1. What I’ve been doing repeatedly:

For the last 8–9 months, I have been trying to build and grow a YouTube channel based on How to properly position your SaaS. I have been creating the content based on what I’ve learned through my first startup and by studying other companies.

2. What I say I want:

With this channel, my goal is to get at least a few customers for my SaaS positioning service. So that I can sell them a deep positioning audit for their sass and help them grow their SaaS.

3. My current results:

In the last 6 months of doing this, I haven’t been able to generate many views on YouTube. Very few people have watched the content, but I am gaining confidence in my skills. In around 8 months of running the channel, In around 8 months, I’ve gotten about 500 views and 20 hours of watch time, and only two or three people visited my sales page from YouTube.

4. Where I feel stuck:

I feel like I definitely want to help people grow their SaaS and help them with SaaS positioning, but I also want to help programmers build digital businesses like SaaS and write based on their expertise. That’s why I’m confused. I already have an email list of 2,000 people. And I feel like I am ignoring them.

ChatGPT Response

Here’s the ChatGPT response for this kind of channel, which I had been building. I wish I had this prompt earlier.

1. Am I stuck in execution?
Yes. Completely.
You've been producing content for 8–9 months without validating whether it actually converts into anything meaningful.
You're optimising for:
• "creating content"
• "learning positioning"
• "feeling more confident"
But your stated goal is:
→ get SaaS clients for positioning audits
Those two are not the same.
Right now, you're behaving like:
a programmer shipping features
Not like:
a founder trying to create demand and close customers
Execution isn't your problem.
Direction + feedback loops are missing.
⸻


2. Where is this path leading?
If you continue like this for the next 6–12 months:
• You might reach:
• 2k–5k views total
• Slightly better content quality
• More confidence
• But realistically:
• Still no consistent leads
• Still no paying customers
• Still guessing what works
Why?
Because nothing in your current system is designed to:
• attract buyers
• qualify them
• convert them
You're essentially hoping:
"If I keep posting, something will click."
That's not a strategy. That's drift.
⸻


3. What am I avoiding?
You're avoiding one uncomfortable thing:
Direct interaction with real potential customers.
Specifically:
• Talking to SaaS founders
• Asking about their positioning problems
• Charging them (even small amounts)
• Getting rejected
• Hearing "this isn't useful"
Content is your shield.
It lets you feel productive without facing:
• market reality
• rejection
• unclear value
⸻


4. What is missing?
Your core problem is:
Unclear target + unclear problem + split focus
Let's break it:
1. Unclear target
You're trying to serve:
• SaaS founders (positioning help)
• Programmers (build online business)
These are completely different markets.
2. Unclear problem
"SaaS positioning" is:
• too abstract
• too intellectual
• not urgent enough
Founders don't wake up thinking:
"I need positioning."
They think:
• "Why am I not getting users?"
• "Why are conversions low?"
• "Why is churn high?"
You're selling a concept, not a painful outcome.
3. Wrong feedback loop
You're using:
• YouTube views
Instead of:
• conversations
• replies
• sales calls
• paid validation
⸻


5. What should I stop doing immediately?
Stop these:
1. Stop posting YouTube blindly
• Your current content is not validated
• You're just compounding ineffective messaging
2. Stop serving two audiences
• "SaaS founders" AND "programmers"
• This is killing clarity
3. Stop refining ideas in isolation
• No more "I think this is valuable"
• That's irrelevant
4. Stop treating content as the primary engine
• Content is distribution
• You don't even have a validated core offer yet
⸻


6. What should I step back and figure out?
You need to answer these - clearly, in writing:
Question 1:
WHO exactly am I helping?
Pick ONE:
• early-stage SaaS founders (0–$1k MRR)?
• stuck SaaS founders ($1k–$10k MRR)?
• indie hackers?
No blending.
⸻
Question 2:
What painful, specific problem do they already feel?
Not "positioning".
Something like:
• "I'm getting traffic but no conversions"
• "People don't understand my product"
• "My landing page isn't working"
If it's not painful, it won't sell.
⸻
Question 3:
What is my smallest sellable outcome?
Not:
• "positioning audit"
But:
• "I'll rewrite your homepage so conversion improves"
• "I'll identify why users don't understand your product"
Concrete. Tangible. Outcome-driven.
⸻


7. What would a founder do differently here?
A real founder would:
1. Start with people, not content
• DM 20 SaaS founders
• Talk to them
• Ask about their struggles
2. Sell before scaling
• Try to close 3–5 paid audits manually
• Even at low price
3. Use content AFTER validation
• Once messaging works in conversations
• Then turn that into content
4. Focus on one market
No split identity.
⸻


8. A direct recommendation
If I had to force you into one direction:
Pause YouTube for 2–3 weeks.
And do ONLY this:
Step 1:
Reach out to:
• 30–50 SaaS founders (Twitter, LinkedIn, indie communities)
Say:
"I help SaaS founders figure out why users don't convert or understand their product. Can I take a look at yours and give feedback?"
⸻
Step 2:
Do 5–10 calls or deep audits (free or cheap)
Your goal:
• Identify patterns
• Extract the exact language they use
⸻
Step 3:
Turn THAT into:
• your offer
• your messaging
• your content later
⸻
Step 4:
Then restart content with:
• validated insights
• real problems
• real language
⸻
Final truth
You don't have a content problem.
You don't even have a skill problem.
You have this problem:
You're trying to scale something that hasn't been proven to work at a small scale.
Until you fix that, more execution will just dig the hole deeper.

How helpful is this response?

I never validated the offer I was providing

I was interested in SaaS positioning, and I started creating content around the topic.

I thought once I got enough eyeballs on my content, my offer would get attention and start selling.

Was it my mistake? Yes, it was one of them.

Creating content, learning positioning, and getting better on camera would not lead to selling positioning audits.

I was definitely behaving like a programmer shipping features blindly.

Even if I had continued this way for the next 6–12 months, it would not have led to selling my positioning audits.

I might have reached 2k-5k views, slightly better content quality, but it would not have guaranteed consistent leads or paying customers, and I would still be guessing what worked.

I wish I had this kind of clarity at the start of my business.

Was I avoiding talking to potential customers? It wasn’t like that because I didn’t have a way to reach potential customers.

This is why I took the alternative route of creating the content in the first place. But was this a significant issue for my business?

Yes, it was a major issue because I hadn’t validated the offer. I just created the offer and hoped for the best.

This is why all the business gurus teach you to start with the offer validation; you will never make a single dollar, even if you get hundreds of thousands of views.

My target audience was unclear. And I never made it clear that my ICP is someone who wants help with SaaS setup or growth through positioning.

I was having an ICP problem also. It’s hard to say these things but I now understand what are the things that went wrong with my business.

This is why this kind of prompt is a lifesaver.

I was using YouTube videos to validate my content, and I would have used conversations, replies, and sales calls to validate my offer.

If you’re actively trying to figure this out…

I’m working with a few programmers to help them go from confusion → clear direction → something they can start building.

If you want help, just reply:

“help”

Are you constantly thinking about starting something of your own but never actually taking the first step?

I used to think I just needed the right idea.

Something that already worked. Something that made sense in the market.

So I looked at existing products. Tried to build something similar. Tried to explain it the “right” way.

And when opportunities came, I tried to be the person who fit the situation.

It felt like the right approach.

But nothing actually worked. It was not because I lacked skills.

But it was because I was trying to fit into what already existed.

In this article, I’ll show you why this mindset keeps most programmers stuck.

Before we move ahead, I want to ask you something:

If someone could help you go from:

not knowing what to build → a clear idea → knowing who to help → a simple way to make money → and content that attracts the right people

in the next 4–6 weeks…

If you picked A or B, just reply “interested”. I’m talking to a few programmers before building this.

Where I Was

When I first got started with coding, I wanted to build something of my own fast.

I spent a lot of time learning and writing code.

But I wanted more than just coding every day. I had a few ideas and spent my time thinking about what I could create.

But I never started.

At the time, it didn’t feel like a problem. I was thinking. Planning. Exploring.

I would look at existing products and think,

I can build something like this.

I would imagine slightly better versions of different products.

And when I thought about getting users, I did the same thing.

I would describe the idea in ways that already made sense.

I used familiar language. I positioned it like something people already understood. From the outside, it looked reasonable.

But a pattern was forming.

I wasn’t trying to build new tools or what I wanted to exist in the world.

I was trying to build a product that fits into what people already understood.

What Was Actually Happening

This isn’t unique to me.

This pattern repeats in the lives of programmers who want to build something of their own.

When it comes to building, they don’t want to start something from scratch.

They look at what already exists and try to create a better version of it.

When it comes to explaining their idea, they don’t want to confuse people with some new kind of messaging.

They try to use familiar language.

And because it sounds familiar, people see it as just another version of something they already use.

Even in conversations and opportunities, the same pattern shows up.

You try to say the right things. Act the right way. Fit the situation.

At every step, it feels like you’re doing the smart thing. But the results are different. From the outside, nothing stands out.

Your product feels like a variation of something else.

People compare you to existing tools. You become “another option” instead of a clear choice.

And over time, it creates a deeper problem.

Because you never defined something on your own, your thinking stays dependent on what already exists.

So when there’s no clear reference, you don’t move.

You keep looking for examples. You keep comparing different approaches. You keep trying to figure out the “right” way before starting.

And because of that, you never commit to anything.

The Root Cause

So what’s the reason behind this kind of mindset that programmers have?

It comes down to a simple belief:

You think that even as a founder, your job is to find where you fit and align yourself with it.

You assume:

• The market already exists

• The role is already defined

• The expectations are already set

And your job as a founder is to understand them and match them.

So you ask:

What works here?

What do people expect?

How do I position myself correctly?

How do I position my product in an existing category?

It feels like you’re doing the right thing.

Like you’re reducing risk.

Like you’re doing things the “right” way.

But there’s a hidden cost. At every stage, you’re operating inside someone else’s frame.

You are building within their categories. Explaining in their language. Behaving within their expectations.

And inside that frame, you are always compared. And if you are compared, you are replaceable.

Example

Imagine you’re building a project management tool.

You position it as:

A simpler alternative to Notion.

You use the same language. The same categories. Now, the user doesn’t ask, “Is this useful?”

They ask:

How is this different from Notion?

And unless you’re clearly better, they go back to what they already use.

The Story That Changed Everything

To understand how this actually works, look at what happened with Biz Stone.

He was one of the co-founders of Twitter.

Before he got a chance to interview at Google, his situation didn’t look impressive.

He had no clear position.

No strong credentials. No structured path into a company like Google.

What he did have was something very different.

He had already spent time thinking about the future of the web. He had been writing, sharing, and exploring ideas in public.

So by the time he got an opportunity to interview at Google, he wasn’t trying to figure out who he was.

He already had a point of view.

When he got the chance to go to Google, everything was unclear.

There was no clear role for him. No defined job description. Even the people interviewing him didn’t fully understand what they were hiring him for.

In some interviews, they didn’t even know what question to ask.

From a programmer’s perspective, this is the worst possible situation.

No requirements. No expectations. Nothing to fit in.

This is where most people struggle. They wait for clarity. They try to decode what is being expected from them.

They adjust themselves to match the situation.

But Biz didn’t do that. He thought as a founder would in that situation.

Even before arriving at Google, he had already imagined what he would do there. He saw himself shaping Blogger not just as a product, but as something with personality.

He wanted to give it a voice. To make it more human. To communicate what it really was.

So when he showed up, he wasn’t trying to discover a role. He was carrying a role with him.

In conversations, he didn’t position himself as someone trying to fit.

He spoke from his perspective. He shared how he saw the product. What he believed it could become.

He wasn’t asking “What do you want from me?”

He was operating from:

Here’s how I would contribute.

And that changed everything.

The lack of structure didn’t work against him. It worked in his favour. Because there was no predefined role, it started forming around him.

This is what most programmers miss.

He didn’t win because he matched expectations. He won because he didn’t depend on them. He didn’t fit into the system.

What does this reveal?

The difference isn’t skills.

It’s something else. We programmers are trained to ask:

Where do I fit?

We look for structure. Defined roles. And clear expectations.

When you are trying to make the switch from programmer to entrepreneur, you need to operate differently.

Instead of asking, “Where do I fit?” you need to ask, “What should exist?”

As an entrepreneur, you don’t wait for things to appear in front of you. You define everything yourself, and you have to think about the value you can bring without someone asking you to do it.

When I started building this community, I didn’t know how to write blog posts. I had no clear idea about what kind of community I should start building.

One thing I never did was try to fit in.

If I tried to fit in, then I would have looked at what others were doing.

I would have copied their format. Things like “10 startup ideas you should copy” or growth tips about startups.

I would have tried to sound like someone who already “knew what they were doing.”

But that wouldn’t have worked. Because I didn’t have that level of clarity at that point. And if you try to fit without clarity, you will never be able to inspire people.

So instead, I did something completely different.

I started curating other people’s journeys, founders who had actually done it.

And while writing about their story, I used to add my thinking to it. People related to it.

Also, I told people what I had struggled with in the past, what I was struggling with now, and what I was noticing about programmers trying to become entrepreneurs.

There was no perfect structure and no proven format. But I liked the direction in which I was moving forward.

And slowly, something started to change.

The more I expressed how I saw things, the clearer my thought process became.

This is the stage where you understand something important. Clarity doesn’t come before action. Clarity comes from consistently putting out your thoughts as you move forward in this journey.

As a programmer turning into an entrepreneur, you have to stop asking, “Where do I fit?”

And you have to start asking, “What do I understand that is worth building something around?”

You don’t always have to start with software. Sometimes the answer is building a community around something you love or something you know very well.

That’s when you stop being comparable. And you start to become necessary in this world.

Are you consistently building but still not seeing any real opportunities?

You ship. You solve real problems.

Yet nothing changes. Your work stays invisible.

Meanwhile, one programmer didn’t build more.

He wrote, and it led to a $200M opportunity.

At first, this doesn’t make any sense.

Most programmers believe opportunities come from building better products.

But the reality is different.

Opportunities don’t come from what you build alone. They come from how others understand your thinking.

Stop Building More. Start Being Seen

Before building this community of coders-turned-entrepreneurs, I built a SaaS.

When I was building my first SaaS, I felt like I was doing the real work.

I was improving technically every single day. I was learning how to design better products and make code more readable.

Over time, my technical skills improved compared to where I started.

But nothing changed externally.

No one knew what I was building. No one reached out. No new opportunities appeared.

There are many programmers like me.

They are doing the real work. They build products. They ship projects. They keep improving technically.

Over time, their skills get better. The things they build become more solid and more complete.

But for them, too, nothing changes externally.

No one knows what they’re building. No one reaches out. No new opportunities appear.

They see others with less technical depth getting attention, starting conversations, and being pulled into opportunities.

That creates quite a bit of confusion for them. “If I build something good, people will notice.”

And because of that, they hold onto a simple belief:

If I build something good, will people notice?

Your Code Isn’t the Problem. Your Invisibility Is.

At first, it didn’t feel like a problem.

I was building and improving.

As a programmer, this is what matters.

From your perspective, you are moving forward.

But if you are a programmer who wants to be a founder, you need to do something very different.

You need to know how to make the outside world respond to your creation.

I had no idea how to present my ideas in a way that my creation would evoke emotions in the world.

And it created a strange gap.

On one side, I knew there was real capability.

On the other side, there are no meaningful outcomes.

The real confusion starts when you see people who are less technically strong having conversations and being pulled into opportunities where you know you belong.

It feels unfair.

So you try to fix it the only way you know:

You build more. You assume the real problem is not building better products. But the real problem is “not talking about stuff you care about.”

But that only makes the gap wider because the real issue isn’t just what you’re building.

It’s how you’re thinking about building things.

The mindset most programmers have about building is that good work will speak for itself.

But if you look at programmers who successfully built large companies, you will find that they were not only great at coding.

They were actually good at presenting their ideas. That’s why you need to get better at writing.

When my first SaaS failed, I didn’t have a clear path for building a SaaS.

But after I started building this community of programmers who are turning into entrepreneurs, I knew where programmers should start when they want to build a business.

Writing > Coding (If You Want Opportunities)

To really understand how opportunities are created, you have to look at what happened with Biz Stone.

He was a software engineer, and he was one of the co-founders of Twitter.

So before everything worked out, his situation looked nothing like success.

His first startup had failed. He was broke. In debt. Living in his mom’s basement.

It looked like he was a complete failure and would never be able to do anything good in his life.

From the outside, there was nothing that suggested opportunity was about to appear.

No big product. No major traction.

But something else was happening at the same time.

He started writing. He did not have a clear plan with his writing, and he wasn’t writing to build a company.

He was just sharing how he thought about the internet, things like blogging, how people might interact online, and where things were going.

And he didn’t even write as the person he was. He wrote as the person he believed he could become.

He called himself “Biz Stone, Genius.”

Through his writing, he was doing something most programmers ignore.

He was making his thinking visible. Over time, people started reading, following, and seeing the world his way.

One of those people was Evan Williams.

This is where things became interesting.

When you write stuff on the internet and share your thoughts, you never know who is actually reading your work. Maybe it’s just a regular guy, or maybe he is some visionary.

Biz had been following Evan’s work for a long time. But what he didn’t realise was that Evan had also been following him.

Not because of what Biz had built. But because of how he was thinking and expressing those thoughts publicly.

Then something happened that Biz could never have dreamt of.

After Blogger was acquired by Google, Biz decided to send Evan an email.

From his side, it was just a simple message. No perfect resume.

This was the message:

I’ve always thought of myself as the missing seventh member of your team. If you ever think of hiring more people, let me know.

Just a simple reach-out. But from Evan’s side, it wasn’t a cold email.

He already knew Biz. He had already seen how Biz thought about the future of the web. He understood his perspective. He had context.

So the response wasn’t:

Send your resume.

It was:

Do you want to work here?

That one opportunity changed everything.

Working with Evan Williams eventually led Biz into a team that would go on and build Twitter.

And over time, that turned into a company worth billions, and this made Biz Stone worth around $200M.

That’s the part most people miss. The opportunity didn’t start with the email. It started much earlier, when Biz made his thinking visible.

He didn’t get the opportunity because he built more. He didn’t get it because he applied harder.

He got it because he was already known before he asked. The opportunity came from how visible his thinking was.

The shift

When I was just building, I used to believe that’s the only thing that matters in the world.

But when I shut down my first SaaS, and then I started building this community, I realised that I would only get traction when I focused on writing and sharing my thoughts.

Before this community, I had zero experience with marketing. But by growing this community to a certain size, I realised the power behind making your thinking visible.

The above story reveals something most programmers miss.

Building creates capability.

But expressing your thoughts creates visibility.

As a programmer, if you want to create your own thing, you need both of these.

We, programmers, are good at building, but what we need to be good at is expressing our thoughts.

And only when both come together do opportunities appear.

If you only build, you become capable, but you will still be invisible.

If you only share, you become visible but will be very shallow.

Real leverage comes when people can see both what you can do and how you think.

And once you understand this, the way you work has to change.

Don’t just build, share what you’re building.

Don’t just code, explain how you think.

Don’t wait, think in public.

Don’t aim for perfection; share as you go.

This shift changed everything for me.

I was building in the dark, thinking that it was enough.

It wasn’t.

That’s why my first startup failed.

If I had to start again, I wouldn’t begin with code.

I’d start by sharing everything I know about the space.

My thoughts. My observations. My understanding.

Before writing a single line of code.

Because if you’re a programmer trying to build something of your own,

Writing is not optional. It’s the starting point.

Position yourself as someone who understands the space, and opportunities will follow.

Most programmers understand this… but still stay stuck because they don’t know how to apply it to their own situation.

Now I’m thinking about something:

If someone could help you go from:

idea confusion → clear direction → knowing exactly who to help → a simple offer → content that attracts the right people

in the next 4–6 weeks…

If you picked A or B, just reply “interested”. I’m talking to a few programmers before building this.