I heard a story in this interview recently that stuck with me.
Someone asked a room full of bank executives when the last time they had actually used their own bank’s consumer app was.
Nobody raised their hand.
“I asked them to raise their hand if they used their bank’s app in the last week… and no hands go up.”
That tells you almost everything you need to know.
If the people running the product are not using it, they are not really seeing it. They are seeing dashboards, reports, roadmaps, and meeting notes. That is not the same thing.
Using your own app is one of the simplest ways to find problems. It sounds obvious, but a lot of founders stop doing it once the company gets a little traction. They move into strategy mode. They talk about growth, funnels, pricing, and retention. Meanwhile the signup flow is annoying, the onboarding is confusing, and one broken setting has been frustrating users for weeks.
You do not find that stuff in a slide deck.
You find it by opening the app and using it like a normal person.
Use your app like a customer
One of the best habits a founder can build is mystery shopping their own business.
- Sign up with a fresh account.
- Reset your password.
- Try the mobile flow.
- Cancel a subscription.
- Contact support.
- Use the product on bad wifi.
Try it late at night when you are tired and impatient, which is how a lot of users are using it anyway.
Do not use your admin account. Do not skip steps because you know where things are. Do not tell yourself, “Well users should understand that.”
They do not.
If your product makes people stop and think too much, that is a product problem.
A lot of founders think bugs are the main thing they are looking for when they test their app. Bugs matter, but friction is usually the bigger issue. Small moments of friction kill conversion. One extra click. A weird label. A form that asks for too much. A button that technically works but does not feel trustworthy.
That is the stuff that quietly hurts growth.
Dashboards are useful, but they are not enough
I like analytics. I use them all the time. But analytics are downstream.
They tell you what happened.
They do not always tell you why it happened.
If your conversion rate drops, your dashboard will show the drop. It will not always show that your form feels sketchy on mobile, or that the CTA is below the fold on a smaller laptop, or that the loading state makes people think the app froze.
“The most powerful analytics you have as a leader: your two eyes and your two ears.”
Watching one real person use your app can be more useful than staring at charts for an hour.
This is true for founders, but it is especially true once a team grows. The bigger the company gets, the easier it is for everyone to get farther away from the actual product. You end up discussing users instead of watching them. That is dangerous.
The fastest way back to reality is to use the thing yourself.
Most teams are too close to the app
There is another problem here.
When you build the app, everything feels obvious because you already know how it works.
You know what every button does.
You know which steps matter.
You know what the error message meant to say.
Your users do not know any of that.
That is why I think founders should do two things regularly:
- use the app themselves from a fresh account
- watch someone else use it without helping
That second one is brutal, but it works.
“Follow me home.”
Sit next to someone and say nothing.
Watch where they hesitate.
Watch what they skip.
Watch what they think is clickable that is not.
Watch the moment where they stop trusting the flow.
Those are the spots that need work.
A lot of product decisions get easier when you do this. Features you thought were important suddenly look irrelevant. Tiny issues you ignored start looking expensive. You stop debating abstractly and start fixing what is right in front of you.
Founders should be the first QA team
I do not mean founders should replace QA or support or product managers.
I mean they should be close enough to the product that obvious problems feel embarrassing.
If a founder has not gone through onboarding in six months, there is a good chance the onboarding is worse than they think.
If a founder has never tried using the app on mobile, there is a good chance the mobile experience is worse than they think.
If a founder has never contacted their own support team, there is a good chance the support experience is worse than they think.
That gap matters.
The best founders I know stay close to the product longer than most people expect. They do not outsource reality. They still click around. They still notice weird things. They still care about rough edges.
That habit compounds.
A simple rule
If you are building an app, use it every week like a customer, not like the founder. Go through the flows that make you money, the ones that create support tickets, and the ones new users hit on day one. Then watch a few real people do the same thing. You will find bugs, friction, confusing copy, and places where the product feels harder than it should. That is where the good work is. A lot of founders are looking for some complicated growth strategy when the better move is much simpler: open the app, use it, and pay attention.