Graham McNicoll

I spent years seeing product decisions based on gut feel. At education.com, we would spend months building a feature, ship it, and then wait to see if the numbers moved. The ideas came from industry trends, from whatever the loudest voice in the room thought was interesting, from what competitors were doing. We built a coupon app because Groupon was blowing up at the time. We sold one coupon. That's what vibe-driven development actually looks like. The turning point was running out of money. As CTO, I had a three-month runway. We had to stop building what we liked and start focusing on what the data actually supported. We turned off half the product. Revenue barely moved. What we thought was essential turned out not to be. What we thought was peripheral turned out to be where the real value lived. That forced shift is what took us from pure vibes to data. It is also why GrowthBook exists. Radical focus requires the humility to admit you have been guessing. If you cannot isolate the impact of a change, you are not developing a product. You are closing tickets and accumulating product creep. Have you ever turned off a feature you were proud of because the data finally caught up to the hype?

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