"your platform sucks."

Someone DM'd me that 7 months into building my startup SuperX.

I'd just launched the web app properly. I was making basically nothing. And I'd moved through Rio, Guatemala City and Medellín with a backpack, spending most of my savings, and at one point ended up in a Medellín hospital for a few days with neck spasms triggered by stress and food poisoning.

But still, I posted a video every day documenting the journey.

Even from a hospital bed.

"the AI generation is crap."

"yeah, I tried it. Didn't want to say anything publicly. But it's not good. I stopped using it."

I remember sitting with those messages still heavily dosed up on Naproxen (which I was taking to ease the cramps in my neck).

7 months of my life. Everything I had. And strangers were telling me that the thing I'd built was bad.

It's hard to describe how that feels.

You've bled into something, skipped meals, missed flights, said no to your friends, stayed in on weekends. And someone types "it sucks" in a DM and goes about their day.

I spent a few days genuinely considering quitting.

But the thing is, I had no choice but to keep going.

I’d already publicly committed to making a video every single day, documenting the journey of building SuperX to $10k/month.

(if you scroll back to day 36 on my Instagram you’ll notice that I was not speaking normally given my neck muscles were so locked up… so take this as a sign to check your posture right now!)

Still, I called my parents and messaged friends back home who had no idea what SuperX even was.

Not because I was looking for advice.

I think I was just looking for someone to tell me it was okay to stop.

Instead I started asking different questions. Instead of "why do you think it sucks" with the defensive tone of someone who wants to argue, I started asking "why does it suck" and actually listening to the answer.

And the answers were literal gold dust.

The AI wasn't good enough because I hadn't tuned the prompts for real use cases.

The onboarding was confusing because I'd built it for me, not for a first-time user.

The dashboard was overwhelming because again, I’d built it from the perspective of an engineer wanting 300 tools and 500 fancy buttons, not from the perspective of a first-time user who’d only been on the platform for 5 minutes.

None of this was subjective.

It was specific and fixable.

I just hadn't been able to hear it because I was too busy defending my work (and my ego!).

Once I started listening to it, things started changing.

SuperX went from $1,200/month to $14k to $22k to $30k/month.

And it wasn’t because I got smarter, got luckier, or worked harder. I was already working as hard as humanly possible.

Every piece of critical feedback is someone spending their time telling you exactly what's wrong. They could just churn and say nothing. (that’s even worse)

Instead they're handing you a map. And most of the time that map is pointing at the 20% of problems causing 80% of your churn.

Every founder I know who made it has been through some version of this. Your product is in front of real users and they're telling you it's not good enough.

You either:

or

Most people don't even realise that they're choosing between these 2 paths.

They just quietly stop replying to feedback.

Stop shipping.

And one day…

their product is dead.

If you're in that moment right now where the feedback coming in is the kind you don't want to hear, I promise it's worth listening to.

In fact, that's usually the exact moment right before things start working.

And if you’re not there yet, keep at it, and save this as a reminder for when you are.

Quick update: founder breakdowns are coming. Interviews are in progress.

Question for you: what do you actually want more of in this newsletter? More stories from my journey? More lessons? Copyable workflows from other AI founders? Something else entirely? Hit reply and let me know, I read all of them.

This is still early days and I'd love to shape it around what's actually useful to you.

See you next Tuesday.

You've got this.

Rob