- Hacker News2.2k↑
Bootstrapped to a $200M exit
VWO’s founder credits early user feedback for finding fit
- @pierreeliottlal267k views
0 → 2,200 paying customers in a year
“Talk to users every single day. The roadmap is in their heads.”
- a16z speedrunClay
Five flat years → $100M ARR
The unlock was noticing who was actually using it, and why
- r/SaaS83 comments
44 of 47 founders talked before they built
Interviews with everyone who crossed $10k MRR in a year
- Hacker News277↑
Cancellations down 90%
One change: leaving meant saying it to a real person
- @aytekintank1.3M views
35M users, 20 years in
Jotform’s founder on the two lessons that were about listening
- Hacker News207↑
10–20 user DMs a day, before building anything
Not whether to ask. How often.
- r/SaaS1.3k↑
$2k MRR, and the winner was an afternoon’s work
“Half the features I spent weeks on, nobody uses.”
Your path to successis in your users' heads
You just need a way to talk to them.
Founders who talked to their users
A looping demo of the chat widget at work on this very page. Will's assistant catches a visitor mid-read and asks what brought them here; they say they never get around to talking to their own users. Two turns in, the widget says Will is online, steps aside, and the two of them carry on the conversation directly.
Users sit on a gold mine of insights, but they only talk under conditions
01 It has to be you
Customer service gets complaints and fixes. The insight that would shape your product never goes there.
To founders, users prefer opening up — personal, trusted, and someone who can act on it.
02 While they're still in it
An email three days later asks them to recall a feeling that's gone.
Ask when the moment is still fresh — the thought is whole and specific.
03 You have to ask first
Only your biggest fans and angriest users click your feedback button or fill your form — everyone else stays silent.
When you ask first, the quiet middle answers — that's where your product lives.
FounderPing builds trust, and listen to the truth that users only tell you.
See who's online — then reach out.
Two scenes of a founder talking to a visitor himself. In the first he sees somebody land on his marketing page, opens a chat from his dashboard and greets them; the visitor's widget pops up with his message and they talk about what brought them there. In the second his AI stand-in has already started asking a cancelling customer why, Slack tells him it is happening, and he steps into the same thread as himself to ask what pricing would have kept them.
Valuable things to learn from users
Turn a visitor into a user
Somebody is on your page right now, deciding. Ask what brought them, and walk them into the product yourself.
Ask about what you just shipped
The people who used the new thing this week are the only ones who can tell you whether it landed. Catch them while it is fresh.
See how they actually use it
Ask a regular user to walk you through a real day — the task before yours, the workaround after, the step they always skip. That life around the product is research no dashboard gives you.
Find out why they're leaving
A cancellation is the most honest a user will ever be. Ask on the spot, and hear the reason instead of guessing at it.
Take the bug report yourself
They tell you where it broke, and the page, the steps and their setup come with it — instead of a one-line ticket days later.
Turn a happy user into a review
When somebody tells you they love it, that is the moment to ask for the review, the quote, or the introduction.
Talk · Summarize · Analyze
Every conversation comes back summarized, tagged with priorities, and ready to analyze — in your dashboard or your agent.
Add one script tag — FounderPing lives inside your app, voice or text, right where your users are.
- Build trust — talk as yourself/brand. Your avatar, color, and voice — users talk to you, not a generic widget.
- Opens the conversation when the moment is right. Listen for the analytics signals — then trigger at the right moment.
- Conversational, with your mindset. Brief at once. It talks like you, with your question and context.
- Direct Chat. You can step in yourself and talk directly with a user.
One dashboard.Every conversation gets summarized.
Every conversation comes back summarized, tagged and searchable — so you know what to fix first.
- From raw feedback to clear signal. FounderPing distills each chat into tagged, prioritized Points — not a wall of transcripts.
- Read the room at a glance. Filter by tag, sentiment, or attention flag — flagged issues rise to the top, with a daily digest in your inbox.
Reached 320 users and brought back 42 conversations this week. 🎧
Filed 18 High · 24 Medium points. Top tags:#pricing#onboarding#mobile⚠️ 3 need your attention
Let your agent drive
Prefer to stay in your terminal? Hand feedback to the agent you already use — through the founderping CLI and API.
- Your agent handles it all. Summarize, extract, and browse conversations — just ask in plain words.
- Same depth as the dashboard. Tags, trends, flagged issues — without leaving your terminal.
claude codeTry for yourself
Say you've just built ✅ Tasky, a to-do list app. Pick a scenario, play the user, and watch FounderPing capture feedback at the right moment.
Tasky's a fictional app — just a stage for FounderPing.
Leave the old feedback behind
Retire your old ways of feedback — the emails into the void, the buttons no one opens. FounderPing reaches users in the moment, and actually hears back.
Ask in the moment, not after the fact.
Emails and passive “leave feedback” buttons wait for users to come to you — so almost no one does.
FounderPing captures user's thought right when it matters — roughly 10× the responses.
Proactive but never pushy. Per-topic cooldowns, quiet periods, and a global pop-up pace you set — reach users in the moment without nagging.
Deep conversation, not a lonely box.
A star rating or text box takes one line and stops. FounderPing listens, then asks the right follow-up — already briefed on exactly what you're trying to learn, so every reply comes back with the story behind it.
Every scenario gets its own Topic.
Checkout, onboarding, churn — each moment gets a Topic of its own. You tell FounderPing what you want to learn and how to ask it; it carries that goal into a focused conversation at the right moment — never a generic “got any feedback?”.
What almost stopped you from buying today?
Which step slowed you down?
What would've made you stay?