The classic case of over-engineering
Hey guys! Non-technical founder here who has fallen into the trap of over-engineering a product (lol). My co-founder and I are now figuring out what exact problem we solve, when we address too many use cases.
How did this start out?
We originally set out to build a privacy-first copilot.
Our heaviest users ended up being marketers, and we had to dig out why (we literally called and went to their offices):
- They had to figure out different tools
- They had scattered data across dashboards, sheets, reports etc.
- They had no time to analyse and dig deep into channels, they're busy executing
So we built a growth marketing agent: OpenSeal, a growth marketing agent that lives in your browser- and learns and grows with you and your business. Privacy-first, local-first.
I was excited, like "Ooh my 10 years of growth marketing is coming to life"
We made it context-aware, gave it deep-research capabilities, etc. Even made it able to open your browser tabs to hunt for specific datapoints.
And then the entrepreneurs came- "Oh this is super useful for my small business!"
In the usual spirit of over-engineering, we went to integrate with everything. (because the entrepreneurs used all sorts of random tools we never heard of)
And now we're in that spot of:
"Can you do a website audit and give me opportunities to address gaps the competitors don't?"
"Yes."
"Can you give me a product roadmap?"
"Yes."
"Can you optimize my ads?"
"Yes."
"Can you change this blog post to something tailored for my Canadian audience on Twitter?"
"Also yes."
So because we're privacy-first, we have no idea what people are using us for, unless they tell us.
We would really like to find a niche or specific problem we solve- all feedback is extremely welcome, with 1.5 months free to use this monster.
[We'll launch on PH in the near future!]
Replies
@aliaksandr_huretski Thanks! Competitive intelligence actually tops what they tend to try to use it for at first, but an extension is limited in how it can show that data. We're looking to build a webapp just for that as a separate product