People often ask for my opinion on their product as if I’m the target user. I always ask them the same question: What do your users think? Your users’ opinions are data. Mine is a distraction.

Once a founder tells me what their users think, I ask to see the product. Then we run a simulation. A simulation means walking through the product as if I were the user. Every pause. Every scroll. Every silent moment where someone wonders what to do next. You can see the cursor hover, unsure where to land. It’s a mirror held to your work in the right light. It might feel like testing the features. But the goal is to reveal how the product teaches, guides, and confuses. You start to see how clarity breaks, where friction builds, and how small decisions stack into frustration. Forget collecting advice. Run a simulation instead. Open the product. Narrate your clicks out loud. Record everything. Then watch it back, frame by frame, until you see what your users see. That’s the practice. That’s how real learning starts. That’s how products get better. Every team improves the instant they face their own product without excuses.

The best part comes after the simulation. Something shifts. Founders stop looking for someone to tell them what to do. They start seeing what needs to be done. The simulation gives them contact with reality. They no longer chase advice. They chase understanding. Once they see the product the way their users do, they stop asking if it’s good enough. They start fixing what’s in front of them. That clarity is what most people spend months trying to buy. All it takes is one honest simulation.