Lessons from a Failed Launch

Let me tell you about a friend of mine, let’s call him Raj.

We’ve known each other for years. Raj is one of those guys who can code with one hand and pitch an investor with the other.

Super sharp, too.

A couple of years back, he launched what seemed like the next big thing in B2B CRMs.

Sleek software. Loaded with features. He’d raised a tidy sum, hired a solid team, and honestly, from the outside, it looked like he was on the fast track.

But you know where this is going.

We used to meet up for chai and vent about founder life. Raj was always pitching, always in demo mode, rattling off features like he was reading a phone book.

"We’ve got auto-sync, deep analytics, workflow automation, customizable dashboards, the lot," he’d say, eyes bright.

I’d nod, but something always felt off.

One afternoon, about a year into his epic climb, he looked at me during a mid-night hang and asked, “Bro, why aren’t they converting? We’re burning through leads. Our sales cycle’s stuck. What the hell am I missing?”

Here is something that he was not aware of back then.

He was solving problems he thought buyers should have, not the ones they were actually battling every day.

Whenever I’d ask about what his customers hated, what really pissed them off about existing CRMs he’d wave his hand. “Price and features, that’s it. We’re better and cheaper.”

But that wasn’t it.

I’d hear people complain about onboarding hell, integration nightmares, the feeling of being lost in an endless setup maze.

But Raj and his team were too busy building “the next cool thing.” The support tickets piled up, and so did the churn.

He started doubling down on more features. Fancier reports, deeper AI, another round of dashboards.

But what did his customers really want? Someone to talk to. A step-by-step guide. A product that made them feel smart, not dumb.

I tried to spell it out, hard truth and all: “Man, you’re building for your ego, not their pain. Step into their shoes. Fix what sucks don’t show off what’s shiny.”

He laughed it off. “Customers will catch up once they see what we’ve built. Vision, bro.”

I still remember those iconic words, “Vision, bro”.

You probably know how this story ends.

Six months later, the cash was gone. So were the customers. Even the investors had moved on. When Raj finally shut it down, he called me for coffee, this time, the energy was gone. He just said, “I should’ve listened, huh?”

Yep.

Here’s the thing: nobody cares how slick your copy is or how loaded your product pitch sounds. Customers care about what keeps them up at night. If you’re not naming their pain, if you aren’t showing up every damn day and fixing that pain you’ll end up exactly where Raj did.

So, here’s my ask for you today.

Take the most uncomfortable complaint you’ve heard from a customer this month the one you usually ignore and write it down.

Then write up, in plain English, how you’re going to fix it. Make that your next email, your next headline, your rallying cry.

Don’t fall in love with your own features. Fall in love with your buyers’ problems.

Because let’s be honest: the market doesn’t care about your vision if it doesn’t make their life easier.

You’re not building for applause, you’re building to solve the ugly, tedious, real stuff.

Start there. Stay there.

And maybe, just maybe, you won’t be calling a friend for coffee with a story that ends like Raj’s.

Catch you next week,
— Shashank

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