Every company has a graveyard of internal tools: the dashboard from 2023, the admin panel with one user, the wiki nobody trusts. The pattern is consistent — tools built around what data exists, not around what decisions people make.
Three rules we build by
- Start from a decision, not a dataset: what will someone do differently after opening this?
- One screen, one job. Tools that do everything get used for nothing.
- Put it where people already work — Slack, the CRM, the editor — instead of one more browser tab.
A tool nobody opens is a backlog item that shipped.
The week after launch
The build is the easy half. The hard half is the week after launch: watching real usage, deleting what nobody touches, and doubling down on the one feature that stuck.
