patron.ai

Ömer Taban, a backend and embedded software engineer, noticed a gap in the project management tool market. While using Asana at his day job, he realized that existing tools were primarily record-keepers—they didn't actually help manage projects or provide actionable insights. His vision was to build a smarter system that could recommend which team member was best suited for a task based on their availability and skill set.

Working with co-founder Onur Aslan over 8 months, Ömer handled backend development in Flask-Python while Onur built the frontend in VueJS. They leveraged Firebase and Google Analytics for infrastructure. The biggest challenge was the absence of clear user stories—they guessed at features based on assumptions rather than research, a decision that would haunt them later. When they launched, they had no formal strategy; they simply announced on LinkedIn and Twitter. The response surprised them: someone listed patron.ai on Product Hunt, and within days they had 600 signups.

The initial traction was exhilarating. The team got good engagement on social platforms and even expanded to Reddit campaigns with developer-focused funny content. To reduce friction, they made the product free (initially planned as freemium at $3-5/user/month after 10 users) to gather feedback. Traffic was coming, but retention was invisible.

Within 4 weeks, all users had left. When Ömer talked to them, the feedback was damaging but honest: migration costs were too high, and the value proposition wasn't compelling enough to justify the switch. The team pivoted to gamification, integrating with Jira to make the product work alongside existing tools rather than replacing them. They reactivated the site and pushed harder on Reddit and Twitter. Still, retention remained dismal. They fell into what Ömer calls the "Product Death Cycle"—chasing user feedback instead of identifying real needs, leading to feature bloat and frustration without results. The core issue wasn't execution; it was validation. They hadn't talked deeply with early signups before building, and their pivot was based on hunches, not data.

The project shut down with zero revenue and $12K in losses. Ömer later reflected that they should have invested heavily in strong user stories, funnel design, and conversion measurement from day one. The lessons stuck: the team learned that traffic without retention is meaningless, and that early user research must precede both the initial build and any pivot.