from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why do my friends' users hate the product? Is it worth finding out?

by helicone on 10/24/25, 4:29 PM with 13 comments

Friends started a YC company -> had good early traction -> plateaued. Song as old as rhyme.

While they have lots of users still, their product struggles with usability. They asked me if I had any ideas to help; something to triage friction points and stave off churn. They want something with higher throughput than eyes on thousands of session replays from posthog and writing tickets.

I can think of a few ways to solve this problem, but it seems really hard and I'm not sure if the juice is even worth the squeeze. I worry that the seeming lack of good solutions in this space signals a lack of demand. (maybe i haven't looked hard enough)

How have y'all handled problems like this in the past? Have you had such problems?

Thank you for your time!

  • by janpio on 10/24/25, 4:35 PM

    A Product Manager would probably try talking to some of these users. Surprisingly often a bunch of conversations will already give a rough idea what might be going on - which then could be confirmed with another look at the session recordings or other existing data.

    Or is that now what you are asking?