I spent 4 months building features nobody wanted. Here's how I fixed my process.

This might be obvious to experienced founders, but it wasn't to me.

I'm a developer. When I started my company, I did what developers do: I built things. I looked at competitors, saw features they had, and built similar features. Logic, right?

Wrong.

After 4 months, I had a product with 23 features. Users were signing up, clicking around, and leaving. Activation rate was garbage.

The problem: I never asked anyone what they actually needed. I assumed I knew because I'd experienced the problem myself.

The fix was embarrassingly simple:

1. I stopped building for 2 weeks
2. I did 30 calls with people in my target market
3. I asked one question: "Walk me through your last frustrating day at work"
4. I wrote down what they said, not what I thought they meant

What I learned:

• The problem I was solving was real, but I was solving it wrong
• People didn't want more features, they wanted fewer tools
• The "nice to have" features I loved were invisible to users
• The "boring" feature I almost cut was actually the main value prop

Now I do 5 customer calls per week minimum before writing any code. It's slow but the last 3 features shipped had 80%+ activation.

Anyone else have a similar wake-up call?