Why Founders Fail to See Their Product Like Customers Do!

Rohaan Kaul (00:17.678)
Think hopefully.

Rohaan Kaul (00:21.942)
So, have you ever spent hours creating something only to show it to someone and hear, wait. That's what this does. And suddenly you're sitting there wondering, how can they not get how they how can they not get it? It's so obvious. Here's the uncomfortable truth. The moment something feels obvious to you.

It becomes dangerous. Because what feels obvious to a founder often feels confusing to a customer. And that's exactly what psychologists call founder bias. It's a cognitive bias where creators become so close to their product that they stop seeing it the way users do.

Rohaan Kaul (01:15.734)
And today we are going to explore why some of the smartest founders in the world fall into this trap and how it quietly kills products, marketing campaigns, and even billion dollar ideas.

Yeah.

Hi, my name is Rohan Kall and I'm the founder of ZabOps and welcome to another episode of Wisdom Over Hustle.

You may have heard about something called the IKEA effect. Let me tell you about it. So people value things more when they help build themselves. That's why a simple IKEA table feels more valuable after you spent two frustrating hours assembling it. You invested effort. Your brain assigns more value to it. Now imagine being a founder.

You didn't spend two hours building.

Rohaan Kaul (02:21.282)
You didn't spend two hours building something, you spent two years, maybe three. You are obsessed over every feature, every screen, every workflow, every bug.

Every customer complaint.

And because you're so invested, so much effort, your brain starts doing something dangerous. It starts overvaluing the product. Not because it's objectively amazing, but because you built it. That's founder bias. And most founders don't even realize it's happening.

Rohaan Kaul (03:17.536)
Imagine opening a coffee shop. You spent months designing the menu.

Obsessing the cups, perfecting the logo, selecting the furniture.

By launch day, you know every detail. Then a customer walks in. Then a customer walks in and asks you a simple question. Do you sell cold coffee? You're shocked. It's right there on the menu. How could they miss it? But here's the thing: you've looked at that menu 500 times. The customer is seeing it for 15 seconds.

You're operating with months of context. They're operating with none.

That's exactly how customers experience products.

Rohaan Kaul (04:26.732)
Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge. Once we know something, it becomes incredibly difficult to imagine what it's like not knowing it. Founders suffer from this constantly.

Rohaan Kaul (04:45.356)
They know why the product exists, how it works, why features matter, what problem it's solving.

Rohaan Kaul (04:58.178)
Customers know none of that.

Your founders often communicate as if customers already understand everything. That's why startup websites are filled with lines like these: AI-powered workflow orchestration platform. Meanwhile, the customer is thinking, What does this do? What does this mean for me?

Rohaan Kaul (05:27.522)
The founder sees clarity, but the customer sees jargon. The founder sees innovation, but the customer sees confusion.

Rohaan Kaul (05:44.438)
And neither s and neither side realizes there's a gap.

Rohaan Kaul (05:59.18)
One of the most famous examples is Google Glass. Inside Google, it looked revolutionary. You could access information without touching your phone. You could take photos, navigate, interact with technology in a completely new way. Engineers loved it.

Rohaan Kaul (06:24.938)
Engineers loved it. The technology community loved it. But every day, but everyday people saw something different. They saw a camera pointed at them. They felt uncomfortable, awkward, observed. Google focused on what the technology could do. Users focused on how it made them feel. And that's the lesson.

People people don't experience product the way founders do. They experience them emotionally.

Rohaan Kaul (07:14.402)
Let's say you built a fitness app, you spent months creating advanced analytics, calories, heart rate zones, recovery zones, progress metrics.

Rohaan Kaul (07:33.89)
You're proud of them. Then you look at user data and discover most people use only one thing, the daily step counter. Founders often think they are not using the best features. Why?

Rohaan Kaul (07:54.786)
But maybe the real question is, did we did we build features people actually wanted? Customers don't care about the effort behind a feature. They care about the value they receive from it.

That's a very tough pill for swam and that's a very tough pill for founders to swallow. But it's reality.

Rohaan Kaul (08:29.302)
Founder bias actually becomes even more dangerous in marketing because founders often write messaging for themselves, not for customers.

Rohaan Kaul (08:43.854)
For example, a founder might say our platform leverages predictive intelligence to optimize operational efficiency. Sounds very impressive. But customers don't buy impressive, they buy what is useful to them. A customer

A customer wants to hear sale sales five hours every week. Same product, different person. Same product, different perspective. The founder talks about features. The customer thinks about outcomes. And that's where many marketing campaigns fail.

Not because the product is bad, because the founder is too close to it.

Rohaan Kaul (09:40.854)
Now let's get into the details of how great founders avoid this trap. The best founders eventually realize something powerful. They are not their customers.

Rohaan Kaul (09:55.308)
Even if they started as one, that's why great founders constantly see that's why great founders constantly seek feedback. They watch user is they watch user recordings, read support tickets, conduct interviews, observe behavior, because people often reveal more through actions than words.

Rohaan Kaul (10:23.352)
When users repeatedly struggle with something, that's data. When they ignore a feature, that's data. When they misunderstand your messaging, that's data.

Rohaan Kaul (10:37.164)
Your opinion isn't more valuable because you build the product, the customer's experiences.

Rohaan Kaul (10:52.782)
So here's a question. When was the last time you looked at your product through a customer's eyes instead of your own?

Rohaan Kaul (11:05.644)
Because the biggest risk isn't the users don't understand your product. The biggest risk is believing they already do. Founders bias does not happen because founders bias does not happen because founders are arrogant. It happens because they are too passionate. They are invested. They're close to the problem.

But sometimes the very thing that helps you build the product is the same thing that prevents you from seeing it clearly.

Rohaan Kaul (11:46.53)
And that's why the smartest and that's why the smartest founders don't just build, they listen, because assumptions create products, but understanding creates products that people actually want.

Rohaan Kaul (12:06.542)
So if you like this, so if you like this episode, please subscribe to our channel and let me know in the comments what's the next psychological bias that you want to hear about in business and startup world. I'd look forward to your comments and keep subscribing. Thank you.