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Product & Management Stage

How we almost killed our no-code startup – and what we learned to actually succeed

September 17, 2025 2:55 PM
Power Talk
🇬🇧 English
Bratysława 1

About

Startups love to talk about success, but here’s the truth—we almost killed our own no-code product. We built fast, launched fast… and ignored everything else. No real validation, no analytics, no clear monetization. The result? A product nobody really needed. This talk is about how we flipped everything upside down—rebuilding from scratch, learning from real users, and turning failure into $2M+ raised. If you’re building a no-code startup, learn from our mistakes before they cost you time, money, and momentum.

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Talk by

Photo of Patryk Pijanowski, Founder at mysite.ai
Patryk Pijanowski
Founder at mysite.ai

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Talk in brief

In this WaysConf 2025 presentation, Patryk Pijanowski, founder of mysite.ai, shares the critical lessons learned from nearly destroying his startup before pivoting to achieve $2 million in funding and 30% month-over-month growth. Using a nautical murder mystery metaphor, Pijanowski identifies the key "suspects" behind early startup failure: lack of validation, absent analytics, zero monetization, and chasing polite praise from the wrong audience. To prevent these fatal errors, he outlines a practical 10-tool "detective kit" for founders. This framework includes tactics like the "$100 million question" to uncover genuine customer pain points, the "Mom Test" to bypass polite but misleading feedback, manual service delivery before writing code, and using targeted ad spend as a market research tool. Pijanowski emphasizes that validating demand through upfront monetization and direct behavioral observation is essential for building a resilient product.

Key takeaways

  1. 01

    Beware of Polite Praise

    Polite praise from people who do not experience the actual pain point can mislead founders into building unwanted features. True validation only occurs when customers are willing to pull out their wallets and pay.

    Watch from 3:24
  2. 02

    Uncover Pain with the $100 Million Question

    Asking potential customers how they would spend $100 million to solve a single problem cuts through the noise and reveals their highest-priority needs. If five out of seven interviewees name the same problem, it indicates a strong market current to target.

    Watch from 8:50
  3. 03

    Deliver Services Manually Before Coding

    Founders should act as the software themselves by manually performing the service for early clients before building an automated MVP. This hands-on approach provides deep industry insights and secures early adopters who value the solution enough to pay.

    Watch from 14:36
  4. 04

    Use Ads for Market Research

    Running small, targeted ad campaigns with a minimal budget across different customer segments helps identify where true demand lives. Measuring click-through rates on these segments provides priceless clarity on the cheapest and most receptive audience to acquire.

    Watch from 19:39
  5. 05

    Validate Willingness to Pay on Day One

    Setting up a landing page with a pricing table and a checkout button is the ultimate test of demand, even if the product is not yet built. If users are willing to enter their credit card details, it proves the viability of the business model.

    Watch from 12:37
Read edited transcript highlights

These concise notes were edited from automatic captions and checked against the talk structure. They are not a verbatim transcript.

The Four Suspects Behind Startup Failure

When analyzing why our startup was on the verge of sinking, we identified four major culprits. First, we skipped validation, building a product for a destination that nobody actually cared about. Second, we operated without analytics, steering our ship in a fog with no way to measure user retention or churn. Third, we failed to monetize, assuming that user love would naturally translate to revenue, which left us with zero income. Finally, we focused on the wrong audience, pitching to people who did not experience the pain point. They offered polite praise but never paid, which is one of the most dangerous traps for any founder.

Watch from 1:45

Bypassing Polite Praise with the Mom Test

Polite praise is deadly because it mimics validation. To bypass this, founders should study 'The Mom Test' and focus on past behaviors rather than future promises. For example, if you ask a mother if she would use a recipe app, she will likely say yes to support you. However, if you ask how she actually found recipes for her recent meals and she reveals she has used the same physical cookbook for ten years, you quickly realize her willingness to adopt a new digital solution is extremely low. Always ask about concrete past behaviors and how they currently solve their problems.

Watch from 9:57

Being the Software Before Writing Code

Before investing time and money into building software, founders should try to deliver the service manually. In our case, we wrote and published social media posts for restaurants by hand. While this manual process was painful and unscalable, it gave us two invaluable assets: a group of highly engaged early adopters and a deep, practical understanding of the industry's workflows. If customers are willing to pay for your manual, unautomated service, you can be confident that the automated version will scale successfully once it is built.

Watch from 14:17

The Wizard of Oz Prototyping Approach

Customers do not care about the underlying technology; they only care that their problem gets solved. Founders can leverage this by using a 'Wizard of Oz' approach, where the product appears fully automated to the user but is actually operated manually behind the scenes. A classic example is Zappos, whose founder originally photographed shoes in local stores and posted them online, manually purchasing and shipping them when orders came in. Mimicking an automated system allows you to test market demand and refine the user experience before writing a single line of backend code.

Watch from 17:01

Silent Validation Through Customer Shadowing

Sometimes the most accurate data is silent. Instead of just listening to what customers say, founders should request a 'shadow day' to observe how they actually work in their natural environment. By spending time in restaurants, I was able to see firsthand how owners juggled Facebook, what software they used, and how they behaved under pressure. This observational research reveals the real friction points and tool integrations that customers might forget to mention in a standard interview, providing crucial context for your product roadmap.

Watch from 18:27

Sequencing Validation Tools During a Pivot

When asked how to sequence these validation tools, I recommend starting with the $100 million question to identify the core problem, followed by the Mom Test to understand current user behaviors. Once the pain point is clear, you can build a landing page to test the solution and run small ad campaigns to see which segments click. If you find yourself in a position where your existing startup is struggling with high churn, you may need to pivot. Having gone through three pivots myself, I learned that if your retention is poor, the best path forward is often to go back to the drawing board and rebuild from scratch using these validation methods.

Watch from 21:07
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