How to Avoid Building Features Your Users Don't Want

I recently had a chat with a friend who's currently building his first startup. We landed on a crucial topic: how to not waste valuable time building features your users simply don't care about.

The conversation was also recorded for his youtube here.

I've been running Bricksite, a SaaS business, for nearly 6 years now. Early on, we made the classic mistake of investing tons of time into features we were certain would make us millionaires overnight.

Spoiler alert: they didn't.

Here's the thing:

Most startups fail not because they build bad software, but because they build software nobody actually asked for.

In the early days at Bricksite, we spent a year and a half building an entire platform packed with what we thought were amazing features.

When we finally launched, reality hit hard… users didn't care. They didn’t understand or appreciate these 'awesome' features. To put it bluntly, the launch completely flopped.

It was devastating. Months of excitement turned into immediate frustration.

The lesson? Build nothing until you KNOW your users want it.

Here's exactly how we changed our strategy at Bricksite to never repeat the same mistake again:

Instead of building the functionality for new elements directly into our website builder, we started adding dummy placeholders.

So when you went to add a new element to your website, you might see two or three elements, that we haven’t even built yet.

This could be a "YouTube Video" or "Google Maps" integration button. When a user clicked these placeholders, they'd get a popup saying, "Thanks for your excitement! This feature is coming soon."

Behind the scenes, we tracked each click. Only if a significant number of users showed interest did we begin developing the feature.

Guess what?

We instantly stopped wasting thousands of dollars and months of unnecessary development.

Why validating business ideas matters:

Validation is essential because it minimizes the risk of failure by confirming market demand. It ensures your time, money, and energy, are invested into features your audience actually desires. By validating your ideas, you increase the chances of creating a successful product.

Here's how you can do this yourself, step-by-step:

Step 1: Identify Potential Features

List out potential features you believe your users might want based on customer feedback, market research, or competitor analysis.

Step 2: Create Low-Fidelity Tests

Instead of fully building out these features, create simple placeholders, mockups, or "coming soon" teasers within your existing product or website.

Step 3: Measure User Interest

Track interactions meticulously. This can include button clicks, page views, or survey responses. Use analytics tools like Mixpanel, Google Analytics, or simple click-tracking software.

Step 4: Analyze the Results

Once you have enough data, evaluate which features have generated significant interest.

Make sure you have clearly defined a thresholds for what qualifies as "significant" before running the tests.

Step 5: Decide and Develop

Only after validation do you move forward with developing the features. Prioritize based on clear evidence rather than assumptions.

People often say, "Don’t waste time, only build an MVP." But what's better than building a quick MVP? Building nothing at all… until you're certain it's worth your resources.

If I could give one piece of advice to startup founders in the early stages, it's this:

Ship incredibly fast, but also invest as little emotional attachment as possible. Falling deeply in love with your product or a feature can blind you from reality. If it fails, the disappointment can crush you.

Instead, rapidly test, iterate, and focus on validating interest BEFORE you commit real resources.

Your startup's runway and your sanity will thank you.

See you next week 🚀