Dogfood First
Be our own first customer. Prove value by using our products to build our products.
The Policy
Before selling to external customers:
- Use the product ourselves in production
- Find the friction points through actual use
- Validate that it solves real problems (our problems)
- Build features we actually need
Why We Think This Works
- Credibility: “We use this every day” beats “We think you’ll like it”
- Faster feedback: We get signal on what works without waiting for user research
- Better prioritisation: We build what matters, not what sounds good in a pitch deck
- Higher quality: We feel the pain of our own bugs
Constraints It Navigates
- No audience? - We don’t need users to validate the core proposition
- Single founder? - Using our own tools makes us more productive, not less
- Limited capital? - Dogfooding is free and provides higher-fidelity signal than paid research
The Risk
We might build for our own edge cases rather than the broader market. That’s why dogfooding is necessary but not sufficient.