I spent the last few weeks reviewing 200+ startups from a sub reddit.

Some were genuinely great.

Many will unfortunately fail.

Not because of the product.

Because of these patterns:

- Building before talking to users

- Solving a problem nobody pays for

- No distribution plan

- Spending months polishing instead of shipping

- Relying entirely on AI-generated content for growth

- Thinking Product Hunt will bring customers

The best founders I saw were boring.

They talked to users.

They shipped fast.

They sold relentlessly.

I learned this the hard way myself while building jd2cv.uk, an AI tool that tailors resumes to job descriptions. My first instinct was to keep adding features.

Users didn't care.

What moved the needle was talking to job seekers, watching them use the product, and fixing the problems they actually complained about.

The biggest lesson from reviewing 200+ startups:

Founders massively overestimate the importance of features and underestimate the importance of talking to users.

What's your startup, and what's the biggest challenge you're facing right now?

reddit.com/r/buildinpublic/s/BG9quOMfDz