"Marketing has humbled me"
20 years of enterprise backend vs shouting into an empty stadium
"Solopreneurship is brutal, I stopped coding to sell my app"
Cold DMs, empty inboxes, and the urge to hide in code
"No body cares about your app, My wife proved it in 4 seonds"
207,000+ views, 248+ comments, and the death of developer ego
"No body cares about your app, My wife proved it in 4 seonds"
207,000+ views, 248+ comments, and the death of developer ego
"That 4-second kitchen test was the best product feedback I've received in 20 years, because it forced me to kill my developer ego before launch."
I handed my phone to my wife with proud developer confidence. She looked for 4 seconds, tapped nothing, locked the screen, and asked if I took the garbage bins out. That 4-second rejection was the brutal wake-up call I needed about customer attention in an era saturated with AI noise.
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Breakthrough: The 'Wife Test' kills developer ego: if value isn't obvious in 4 seconds, clean code is irrelevant.
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Guys you need to keep them short.
Maybe she just wanted you to take out the fucking trash without being asked.
This is the whole point of the UX profession. Have you considered you're just not a designer who can create engaging software? Plenty of b2b apps have stolen the market simply because they have engaging UX. Linear from Jira, Figma from Adobe, Slack from Skype/Email, Airtable from Microsoft. I have made many b2b apps grossing many millions and I have never had this problem in a user interview. That 5 second window you described absolutely matters and it's called User Experience.
She’s thinking this man got time to create apps but can’t take out trash
Because Opus can’t keep it short. This is a LLM generated post.
Sounds like a bad wife not a bad app
Your architecture isn't the product. Your code quality isn't the product. Your feature list isn't the product. Even your UI isn't fundamentally the product. The customer's desired outcome is the product.
Next time your wife tells you a story, walk away. If she does not care about you, why would you?
This comment is literally the premise TLDR hahahahahaha
Did you take out the garbage bins out?
This post is the epitome of LinkedIn slop
This is what happens when you get your app in-front of somebody who is NOT your audience. If you built an app that has an audience, it is your responsibility to market your app to your audience. Stop harassing friends and family and then declaring failure. Your friends and family did not sign up to be your co-workers. If your app isn't ready to market, then you need feedback from your team. If you don't have a team, then you are solo. Your wife doesn't want to be your co-worker.
If you know anything about UX you’d know that asking your wife who wants the trash taken out isn’t remotely the same as a user interview. It’s not a meaningless interaction, but close to it. Whether someone is interested in presumably the first screen in 4 seconds or not doesn’t define whether or not it’s a useful product. That said, people have a tendency to forget that people don’t actually want what you’ve made - they just want whatever problem it’s solving even less.
Read book called The Mom Test. Don't build anything until you talk to 100 potential customers with that framework from the book. You don't pitch your app idea. You understand the pain so deeply you can fix it magically.
Give your woman an app she doesn’t need and ask her what she thinks about it. She doesn’t understand the task, nor does she have the pain a real consumer maybe has that is searching for your tool. You just need to understand that targeting is important. Maybe you have the right skills to build, but lack skills to sell?
My favorite is when a user signs up and it’s like: yay. Then they do the free thing, then never return. I have a graveyard of emails where:Last login date === signup date.
Then don't fucking read it? How have you made it this far in life.
The irony is great here. Dude found out B2C users need simplicity + idiot proofing vs B2B users having no choice but to accept software as-is. Writes all of this in long ass post, instead of a short post.
hahahahahahhahah
OP problem wasn't a UX interface. He could have used the best UX in the world that it wouldn't have changed anything. He tried to sell something to somebody that was not interested in the real thing. Because UX is only secondary. The first thing is to solve a real problem people have, want to be solved and to show it to them at the right moment. All these software with bad UX sell because they solve real problems. All the alternative that take a bit of market share with better UX also solve a problem: do the same in a better way that is helping users.
What do you think is solution for this “problem”?
This doesn't make any sense. Did you tell your wife you built it? And what is this about?
As a SaaS? So someone is supposed to pay a subscription for this?
Even here, no one is getting your pain. These are zombies who care for karma, upvotes and hate to anyone in front of them. Opposing 100% AI and using less than 100 words from their vocabulary …
But what did it teach you about B2B sales?
Es una constante o variable?
You dont say what the app does. What problem are you solving. Did you do research initially to discover whether this was actually an issue.
Look, people start paying attention when they enter the market to buy something. Asking them to care before that usually doesn’t work. Think about buying a car. Your current car starts getting old, so you begin considering a replacement. Suddenly, you notice different makes and models. You pay attention to what other people are driving. Car ads on TV, social media, and billboards that you previously ignored suddenly stand out. Then you start researching, narrow down your options, visit dealerships, test-drive a few cars, and eventually make a decision. Your wife’s story simply shows that she wasn’t in the market to buy at the time. So her lack of interest doesn’t really tell us anything about how people behave once they actually become buyers.
Tbh I’m not sure this proves anything. Maybe it proves your wife has different priorities but that’s just how most wives are. Does the app actually solve a real problem?
You didn't make a mistake. Your doing the same thing as the masses. I don't know where people are getting this entitlement or expectation that their app is deserving of that fairytale attention 0.001% of success stores stems from. You don't expect the lottery ticket you bought to win and when it doesn't you don't go on reddit and shit your pants all over the place. Odds are you built your app for free. The lottery ticket cost money and yet... here we are. Why is your app any different than anything else? I'm an insurance broker by profession. 20 years. I'm not going to fucking try and sell it on reddit. I have two dev projects. One is just recreational but I know the customer and how to sell them on it... The other is an enormous gap in my particular insurance market. I'm cold calling and pounding the pavement just like how you would sell anything. Trust isn't just earned... its god damn grinding. I had an audience and customers and I am still debugging but I established a market somewhere I am familiar. To the people, not you in this instance, that upload their app to whatever store and expect to profit while they go rub one out ...then brick their pants all over this place when nothing happens...they get exactly what they deserve. The build isn't even half the project. It's a hard-core, balls out, bare knuckles, fuck your competitor fight. If you aren't willing to do that. Then you just had some fun learning and building. But that is it. I should be a god damn sales couch....
Sounds like you need couples counseling brother.
Wrong target market?
Not reading that marketing ai slop
Jesus Christ this cannot be a real post
get a different wife?
My wife told me my little app was awesome, then proceeded to ask me to bring the trash out 😂
Next time tell tour AI to keep it concise
Is this a copy paste?
Another thing that nobody cares about: AI generated slop reddit posts
just 1 opinion.
Cool story but the issue isn't the app. The issue is your relationship with your wife.
This is LinkedIn, right?
Why u left out how did the launch went? Go back to linkedin with fake stories.
Ai slop
Isn't that very obvious? If your wife has no use case for your app, why would she use it?
You're still in defense mode. Just because people don't care about your app doesn't mean they don't care about any app. It's not that they are daily drowning in apps, it's just that yours doesn't provide shit. Good luck ahead.
I'm both of you. ERP dev. Tired. I had a facebook account ages ago. No twitter, no instagram, no tiktok, no nothing since. I barely bring myself to read my private emails nowadays. Only building my little home automation for me (like a hobby and having a blast) and only exposing my family to the minimum of it.
This is a long winded way of saying “build something that solves a painful problem” This is why a lot of successful entrepreneurs don’t care that ai can spin up a reverse engineered version of their app. The moat and edge was almost always non-technical.
Yea, it's not your app she doesn't care about, it's you.
Can people stop fucking writing like this? What is with this new shit trend of double spacing single lines? Fuck you abd your shit writing
chore tracking is just another chore too yk
Ok, idea is clear. It can be written in one sentence - talk to public before building anything, not after.
I liked the comparison of Enterprise vs DTC
Yeah man, Ive experienced this with family and friends, except its one of those subtle smiles/laughs where they just think you're crazy.
Classic B2B software developer
Exactly. That is why SAM and SOM are equally important analyses after TAM. Also, OPs drawing a conclusion after 1 conversation. Complete sales problem.
Thank you. I will review if there is a way to open up the sweet spot 💚💚
if you could see my basement you'd know how i actually need this app
But I am being forced to read it. He's got the barrel pressed against my forehead. I'm so scared that if I stop reading, he'll make another post about his wife.
Haha. Tough crowd.
Haha no, the app isn’t called "Take Out The Trash" though honestly that would be an elite name! The app is finoo.app: snap a photo of a storage bin or shelf, and visual AI indexes the items inside so you can search 'where did I put the drill bits' later.
Well it's a catchy name for an app, I'm sure someone will appreciate it
And yet, here you are commenting. 😂 TL;DR: Take out the trash
Fair question! It solves the 'garage void' problem: losing tools and rebuying things you already own because finding them in 15 unlabeled rubbermaid totes takes 45 minutes.
It would be nice if the sliders were easier to use on mobile. I found it a little difficult to change values.
right, people are always polite and agreeable to your face. Since you're a UX designer, I'd honestly love your blunt feedback on the demo flow: does the camera-to-search interaction make immediate sense?
I’m a UX designer. U cant ask them that question Directly. They will always be agreeable to avoid conflict.
Haha, glad to know I'm not the only one getting that exact look from my wife! 😂 Labels work fine for organized people, but for the rest of us, photo-search is a life saver.
LMAO. I did see somewhere that wife gave no shits about the app. Same thing happens in my situation.
You're completely right: pitching someone who isn't actively 'in the market' for that solution is shouting at a brick wall. Hard lesson learned.
Did you do any research around whether people want this? I think simple labels might do the trick. Don't overcomplicate a physical problem with AI.
The app is called finoo.app: You snap a photo of a storage bin or shelf, and visual AI indexes the items inside so you can search your physical stuff in seconds.
Well with this mindset nobody would create anything. OP didn’t say it was to escape the grind, more like a realization that code alone doesn't build a business.
valuable problem → clear value proposition → fast time-to-value → low-friction UX → polish/delight.
*sales. He pitch-slapped someone without knowing if they were even open to a conversation
You were talking with users. He didn't. You were talking with people using it, or searching for a product like that. He talked to his wife who didn't need the product, didn't use it, didn't care about it. That's nothing to do with the UX.
😂😂
🤣
TBF she's just thinking of the next time her gym instructor is going to sort her out. Her husband is too obsessed with app details in his free time, but Fabio really knows what inputs to make and which UI to tweak.
Brilliant Fabio. Goes straight to the point. 3 minute sales pitch. User satisfaction guaranteed.
The customer's data you swiped and surreptitiously sold off to a FAANG company is the product.
also I think creating your own app does not let you escape 9-to-5 grind,quite opposite it makes you think about it all the time if it becomes your main source of income. It's a trap.
Maybe she rolled her eyes about what a waste of time it was in her mind, then immediately went back to Instagram, where he watched her 3,000th video that day with morons online trying to be clever with their little skit videos.
Uf, that was dark but I agree
I am trying to find a small group of people who have the exact, burning headache that I had when I started working on the app. It's hard now more than ever, nonody has patience, their attention is taken by thousands other things
Choose the right moment to discuss or present something. Show your product to people that can benefit from it. Explain to people what problem your product solve than showing it to them without any context.
i typically dont read books filled with trite dogshit
Are you one of those who can't recognise the signs that a post was written with AI alone? Jesus christ. I thought this sub might have people who can read an AI post a mile off but I suppose gullible people are why these type of posts still exist and get engagement. Do you realise that u/meshifthenelse was telling the writers of these bot posts to make them shorter for believability and that it wasn't a reflection on people with short attention spans? No, of course you didn't and you bit back with emotion instead of logic haha
Acting like you’re forced to read it…
Yeah the meat proxies cannot understand how valuable the readers time is, because they took much less time "writing" it.
Everybody is a writer now ffs
Wife no like app. Me sad.
Starts with my wife proved it in 4 seconds, then writes a book thats longer than I have read in the last 4 years
The leash for the wife in the kitchen you mean?
A sales couch.... You want people to sit all over you?
Tldr ?
She didn't read this either, nor did anyone else. Tldr
lol @ javascript diss
what are the signs that this is AI generated like people are saying in the comments? (honest question)
This is such a relatable gut-check. The "clean architecture nobody sees" trap is real, it feels productive but it's often just avoiding the scarier work, making the value obvious to someone with zero context and zero patience. My version of this was showing something to a friend outside tech and watching them scroll past the headline entirely, straight to "so what does it actually do for me," which made me realize I'd been writing for people who already understood the problem, not for someone encountering it cold. The 4-second test is brutal but honestly the cheapest, fastest feedback loop there is, way better than months of assuming.
In today's world, Marketing and Selling is the difficult part. Building is simple. We built Podsubs.com for our podcasts, it is the best tool we use to get, keep and communicate with our podcast listeners. We have used it internally for about 2 years now. We decided 3 months ago to take it public so other podcasters can benefit from it too. Marketing it has been a nightmare. We have succeeded to get only about 550+ free customers, no paid yet. That's to tell you that even if the product is perfect and solves an absolutely valid pain in the industry, Marketing and selling it will still be a nightmare. But, we will continue marketing aggressively until the world knows what podsubs.com is. We will be unstoppable. I hope this helps. Peace.
Linkedin needs this not reddit
Thing is , there are still lot of unsolved issues which u can solve using apps. U just showed wrong app 😐
ChatGPT write me a dumb story for uptoots
When you build enterprise software, you’re building something highly customized that has direct dollar impact When you’re building something for a mass audience, very different ball game. Know your ICP and get it in front of them.
Ain't nobody got time for this.
Well she could have looked at it a bit sounds like a shitty wife is my take away
That's not what it is. The app isn't built for her dude. There's a reason you want to narrow down your audience. You can't make apps for everybody.
I stopped reading at taking the trash out. Dude, nobody cares about such a detailed story either. Focus
Slop post
This seems AI generated.
That sounds like a stupid test, if that stopped you then you were never cut for this.
Can we see your app? What is the website or app name or link?
You build for your wife then?
Got to the garbage part then TL;DR, what happened? Did OP find true love or is this a closeted pitch?
Make an app that reminds her to remind you to do things.
The part where you say she had zero obligation to care about what your app does is a sad statement. She should know this is your passion and show that she cares. Maybe she doesn't care. That's not a trait I'd be happy about in a partner.
Could be worse, I wrote a language learning app and handed it to my father who is actively learning a language (goes to classes and attends meetups)... And he wont even look at it. But at the end of the day I wrote the app for me, and to explore vibe coding.
Now show her some knitting patterns and see what happens
learn how to unleash claude or gpt on b2b , b2b , d2c sub reddit farm pain points, current solutions , reverse engineering leading solutions make it better ,faster ,cheaper . Learn marketing distribution > attention > interest > traffic > conversion > retention . Know its hard af to make it but still continue . Get deep deep analytics and you will win.
Ego is the enemy. Small samples are also. Your wife doesn't represent "a market". Your trusted friends don't represent a market. And, 10% take up is good. So, if out of 100 people, 90 ignore your app like your wife did, but 10 engage, that may be well be enough to make the revenue you need. So, define the market, how you are going to reach it, and what percentage take up is required to profit. Test the market with a large enough sample to matter. Get 100-200 beta users, then decide. Don't let your feelings decide.
Friend, if you ask your wife something that important to you and she dismisses it like that, you're in the wrong subreddit. First, go to r/Marriage and ask there. Let me tell you about my first experience building mobile apps (I’m 100% backend): I created a family app to track expenses the way we usually do. My wife looked at it for about 30 minutes, then gave me suggestions on things she didn't understand and pointed out some visual bugs. She told me it looked nice and that I should fix it up; she also mentioned that it was the first time she’d seen my work—even though she didn't quite understand it. Two weeks later, she asked if we should use it instead of the Excel spreadsheets we normally use. She remembered it, even though I had basically dropped the subject until I could learn more about designing attractive interfaces. My job is being a technical lead for backend service development, and I used .NET MAUI to build the UI in the most horrific way possible—with practically no regard for making it look nice or appealing.
Good job Claude / Codex. I almost couldn’t tell this was AI written until the third or fourth paragraph.
Is your wife your target customer?
I built app for my family. .. I am so proud it does everything and much better than any apps in market.. showed my wife and kids and asked them to use it.. I got same response as OP. 😀 .. so even if post is enhanced by AI it’s reality
This is hilarious and accurate and good advice. But just started going to random networking events and I’m having better luck there finding potential users
Classic promoter account, to promote an app :) cool cool. didn't need the ai gen rant though. people are numb by now
A wife should be loving and supportive of all your endeavors.
Great post, needed to hear this. Thank you honestly
Is your wife the target audience, or at least someone from the targeted problem domain?
Man, AI really knows how to structure a post these days 😂
Even if what we build is perfect for those who need it. The hurdle of getting their attention long enough to learn what it can do is very hard. I deal with this a lot at work. "I'm too busy to look at the thing which will stop me from being busy!"
This is why I don’t build anything before having at least one real user who needs it. I’m currently building something for my wife who is a food influencer on Instagram (and I’m pretty sure this will be interesting to many other influencers). The amount of valuable and honest feedback she gave me along the way is just incredible. There is ZERO chance I could have thought about these by myself. And I know her feedback is honest because that is something she actually needs, so she won’t be nice with me just because I’m her husband: she really needs the thing to do the job well.
Maybe she just gave you a hint! I mean, you should create a new app based on that, and introduce it like this "See? This app only adds a few icons to the lockscreen: Trash, Dishes, etc. Whenever you want me to do something, just press the icon and you don't even have to unlock the phone!"
man, that wife story hits hard. i think the real trick is finding the few people who do care before you try to show it to everyone. there's a tool called replyhey that scans reddit for discussions where people are actually looking for what you built, so you're not shouting into the void. might be worth a look.
Your AI wife didn't like your AI app, in your AI made up story?
Imagine the trash news taking out for a while and some guy wants to show you his app.
No shit
I'm fortunate enough that every app I've been working on has a solid user base and decent growth in different markets - because I'm solving real problems - properly. It comes down to distribution if its a saturated market and if its not saturated, then just do it better than anyone else can.
of course It didn't care - the trash was overflowing with deleted files!
How any thumbed up this AI slop is beyond me
I wrote a little app that she could plink on like a piano keyboard, then pick any instrument (piano, bells, flute, etc etc) and hear how it sounds. We had a fun few moments with that. If you want engagement, know your base.
Same lol!
Same. I actually built an app for my wife because she was frustrated with available options and when it was up and working she was basically like, cool and hasn't touched it since haha.
LOLOL bros wife “just put the fries in the bag”ged him. Get mogged
You should of asked your wife if you should post this.
You wife sounds like a robot Bisssbhh
´k but what did you learn about b2b sales ?
Could have generated a SaaS app in the time it took to read this.
Tell your wife that you build an app that finds deals and savings of X% on things that she doesn't need and she will beg for the app. "Honey, I build an app that saves X% on these____, " pause go to through the garbage. lol
She has shit-tested you and failed. Literally devalued your time, efforts, pride, curiosity. She was probably the first person (non-tech) you wanted to show your app. She didn't bat an eye. That selfish bitch is probably cheating in you, and planning to divorce to get steal the house and your savings.
lol sounds more like a marriage issue
Audience first. That’s the only way
I ain’t reading all thatI’m happy for you, thoughOr sorry that happened
It just sounds that you don’t have the skin for it. You get a bad interaction and go to Reddit to cry about it. Keep pushing or keep doing 9-5 your call
No body cares what your wrote, my attention span proved it in 2 seconds.
Next time ask ChatGPT to write a shorter post
Sounds like a bitch tbh
Have you considered that your wife is just really mean? Holy shit.
yo shut the hell up man
Disagree. Wife must support you in all your beginnings. Even if you have many projects. In this situation she devalue you and your work. Software created for help people to solve their needs and problems. Others think that it just marketing, may be, but without first its zero. Develop software is an art. If you like what you doing, you get satisfaction with it, keep up. Don't listen anybody, even your wife. In this case your wife may be not heave any problems, that software can solve. Because of that she not interested. If you have an android robot, that doing laundry, kitchen and so on. She may be have another opinion. So what? You must ask person, who can solve his problems with your software. BTW. If your software is solid, without bugs and heave good intuitive UI. People will kill for it. That can be done only with good architecture.
Naaaaa just refactor your wife
this is not linkedin
a good bed time post. guaranteed sleep by the 5th sentence.
This was is written by AI…
The way the narrative goes is so freaking AI it pains my joints...