I Love Feedback. No, Really — Give Me More.

I absolutely love feedback. From coworkers, relatives, friends, and especially from Lopaka users 🙂 I’m incredibly grateful for any feedback I get.

It’s such a rare thing that people aren’t used to giving it. They worry they might offend someone. They fear being misunderstood.

But giving feedback means sharing and caring. Don’t be shy!

• Button broken on the site? Drop it in the chat. Maybe no one knows about that bug or edge case where everything breaks. Human error happens.
• Got a survey from a brand you love? Honestly go fill it out. You use the product, so it’s in your best interest to make it better.
• Time for 360 reviews at work? Go ahead and tell people where they’re consistently dropping the ball.

Everyone benefits from knowing their blind spots. I’m forced to pay a therapist to tell me where I’m constantly messing up. I could’ve gotten that for free from friends.

I believe one of the most important functions of the people we surround ourselves with is to give feedback. To provide another perspective on reality. This same principle is at the core of the scientific method: mandatory peer review and ruthless criticism. That’s the only way progress happens.

For example, how would you know if you’ve lost your mind? Could you catch that moment yourself? What if you smell bad? What if you’re giving people advice that actually harms them? What if you’ve unintentionally offended someone? Would you want to know about all of this?

Unfortunately, that’s how the world works: most of the time you’ll remain in the dark. And only in extreme situations, when you cross the boundaries of morality or public safety, will feedback likely arrive in the form of a beating.

I really need feedback. Any product in the prototype stage, searching for product-market fit, is basically just trying to learn about users’ pain and suffering. To find the most important scenarios people need solved. The entire product backlog at this stage is built on reviews.

Back in June (four months ago) I added a beta signup form on lopaka.app to collect at least some leads. There I also mention that I’d love to chat. Over that time, 49 people signed up! When it hit 25, I started emailing everyone with an invitation to talk and a Calendly link. And then I waited…

Then I repeated the mailing every 10 people, slightly tweaking the subject and copy, checking SendGrid stats — it showed 90% of people received and opened the emails. Recently I sent a fresh email to EVERYONE in case someone missed it. But over all this time, only TWO people booked an interview 🤬 No one replied to the emails.

Now I immediately message everyone who fills out the form: “Hey, thanks, let’s chat.” While they’re still interested. And out of ten people, I found ONE more who actually responded. We had a great conversation, and as usual I learned a ton. Plus got a lot of gratitude for a cool and convenient project that 100% solved their problem.

Final conversion to interview: 7.5% 😔

Any advice on what to do?