They Said They Loved It. But Would They Pay?

1. The Trap of 100 Signups

Don't get drunk on numbers. "100 signups" only matters when you convert it to "12 people who completed a core action."

The central question of Stage 2 is simple: "Can these people live without this service, or did they just look around?"

2. User Interviews — Five People Is Enough

Surveys lie a lot. 80% of people who check "this seems useful" never actually use the product. A 30-minute 1:1 conversation is far more powerful.

Design your interviews around past behavior, not hypotheticals. Don't ask "Would you use this?" Ask "How did you manage your appointment notebook last week?"

Other option: Five-second usability test — if interviews feel heavy, show your screen for five seconds and ask "What is this and where would you click?" to get quick directional signal.

3. Reading Signals — Good vs Bad

4. The Courage to Kill — Knowing When to Stop

If bad signals outnumber good ones, you need the courage to kill the project. It's hard because of sunk cost. But killing well is a skill.

Most projects should die at this stage. That's not failure — it's learning. The real value of vibe coding is that you can build cheap and kill cheap.

5. The Stage 2 Mindset

J called five salon owners for 30 minutes each. Three said "appointment notebooks are a pain." One said "I already use another app." One said "we're fine with pen and paper."

When J asked "What would you do without this?" three of them said "I'd just write it in my notebook." That's the answer. The notebook is inconvenient, but not inconvenient enough to force a switch. J decided to add a "2-week advance reminder" feature — something no notebook can do.

Stage 2 is a war against self-comfort. Drop the feeling that "people like what I built" and focus only on "do people actually use this?" Pass that test, and you can move forward.