If we just maintain a spec will AI just use the same historical UX/UI tropes forever. No 'out-of-the-box' thinking by humans required.

Are all our problems solved, but with no differentiation, and no joy?

However 50% of the joy of building tools and software isn't just in achieving the desired result, but how it's achieved. All that time spent working out how to give users a great experience whilst doing a thing.

On the one hand as a non-technical founder this makes be feel optimistic about my future. That I can still be relevant and integral to product creation as specs have been my happy place for time.

the 10k specialists use.

We're only proving the concept at the moment. But would love to hear what you guys would want to see from such a service when it's ready.

PS: It's really hard to build :)

A successful page needs all these things. But we're not trained in the dark art of conversion optimisation.

So we're hoping to change all that.

We're building a report system to provide critical analysis of your landing pages with actionable feedback to improve conversions. Using the same methods

What this process has re-confirmed is my hatred of Wordpress. The absolute worst sites on the internet are still built with it.

And the sun may well have set on our project idea.

look at the end result in a browser.
- We don't care about Google any more. Our startup ideas are not seeking search rankings. No time for that. Search is broken.
- Bandwidth and storage are so cheap, we can just ship the bloat.

Why would you spend the time building something that is technically good?

- We're spinning up sites ASAP to see if we can get traction. If it doesn't work out we'll chuck it away in a few weeks.
- We're using no code editors or vibe coding these sites. We never look at the code now, we only

I've never been less impressed with the quality of work being put out.

- Minimal attempt at semantically correct markup
- Huge chunks of commented out or redundant code
- Zero optimisation of hacked together elements

But I can't blame anyone for it.

It's just the world we're living in.

You'll always be playing catchup and you'll lose your originality, your identity.

And if not careful, you can forget why you even started at all.

I hope you find this tip helpful.

Use the hashtag #startupmistakes101 to find my other posts to date.

Because if you obsess over your competition you'll feel the pressure to respond to their moves.

- They added X so we must too.
- They updated their iOS app so we must too.

And the second you start doing this you become responsive not proactive.

So if you're on your competitor's mailing lists. Or you find yourself losing afternoons browsing their websites.

Try doing something crazy and remove them from your life.

Focus on your own mission. Your own journey.

Allow it to differentiate you from them.

It turns out the important thing wasn't to know the other 6 platforms intimately so I could convince a new user we were better.

It was much more about them finding us at the right time.

Or doing the groundwork so we were the default option when they were ready.

Creating accounts on every one and checking every feature.

Instead, they have a need.

And then they find someone who will service that need.

Most of our signups hadn't come from the competitors I obsessively stalked.

They'd come from Excel or Apple Notes.

But why would we do this?

1. Because we know who and where they are.
2. Because we think we're competing with them.

And in reality?

Our potential customers probably have no idea they exist.

Because most people don't spend hours or days researching every provider.

- Did they change their pricing?

It's easy to tie ourselves in knots worrying about how to compete with them.

How to make ourselves stand out and appear better.

During a past project I had accounts with all of our direct competitors.

Using fake emails and identities so they wouldn't 'catch' me.

And we know who they are because we obsessively sought them out when planning our project.

And now we know who they are and what they offer.

And every so often we can't help having a peek to see what they're doing.

- Did they just add our key feature?
- Did they redesign their UI?