Sure - an example for me is RunwayML. It is a neat product that is very accessible to anyone, so I signed up and played with it a bit. Every once in a while I hop on and show someone a little demo of it as a cool GenAI/ML thing, but video isn’t a medium I work with or intend to work with. I am never going to become a paying customer.

The low barrier to entry (both in sign-up and usage) helps amp up user counts and usage which makes you think you have some sort of market fit, but the interest is not real.

The startups I worked with that experienced explosive growth were ones where their initial UX was mediocre or even hostile, but the demand for the thing was so high they had customers anyways. Improving the UX unlocked more growth.

I have a skewed perspective since people came to us for UX issues, so this isn’t an iron law or anything, but I think about it a lot when I see very shiny, polished launches.

A counter to this may be something like Linear, where the UX is the value.

> The startups I worked with that experienced explosive growth were ones where their initial UX was mediocre or even hostile, but the demand for the thing was so high they had customers anyways. Improving the UX unlocked more growth.

Thank you for this comment. I've been stressing over UI elements a bit and this was the kick I needed to just go and get it out there.

Glad it was helpful for you, good luck!

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.