Two Minutes on Tech | Issue #74
There’s a pattern that shows up in almost every failed product, and it’s almost never the one founders suspect.
It’s not a lack of effort. It’s not bad code. It’s not even bad timing. It’s that the product was designed, at every small decision point, to satisfy the founder’s own intuition about what the market should want, rather than what it actually does.
Why It Happens
Your personal relationship with the problem creates conviction early on. But the moment building starts, that same closeness becomes a filter, and every decision gets made through your experience, not the user’s.
Signs You’re Building for Yourself
- You are the clearest example of your own target customer
- You find yourself saying “I know users will want this” without evidence
- Feedback that contradicts your vision feels like the user missing the point
- Features you use most are the ones you’ve built out most
- You’ve delayed talking to users because you feel confident in the direction
- The problem you’re solving is one you’ve felt personally, and deeply
This Is What Venture Forge Fixes First
Before a single line of code, before a prototype, Venture Forge separates what you know from what you’re assuming, and gets clear on who the system is actually for. That one shift changes every decision that follows.
Art+Logic has been building software since 1991. Each Venture Forge cohort takes three founders. Not thirty. Three, because this kind of thinking only works with real attention on each one.
If any of those signs landed, that’s exactly where to start.
Talk to us: no sales pitch, no pressure →
What’s New in Tech
- Asian tech stocks fell sharply after the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI publicly called for a slowdown in AI development, citing fears the industry is moving faster than safety practices can keep up with.
- Larry Ellison quietly canceled a plan to sell 50 million Oracle shares worth around $7.5 billion, with no explanation from the company. Oracle stock is down about 22% since the start of the year, and the company has been spending heavily on AI data centers, while Ellison has also been backing his son’s acquisition of Warner Bros.
- Both Palantir and Nvidia have reportedly started restricting which AI models can be used internally, driven by concerns over sensitive data being exposed to external model providers.
- TechCrunch’s Equity podcast dug into what’s really behind the AI industry’s latest wave of doom warnings, asking whether the public statements from researchers and CEOs about existential risk reflect genuine concern, a form of capability signaling ahead of upcoming IPOs, or both at once.
At Art+Logic, we help founders build for the market they’re entering, not just the one they imagined. That’s what Venture Forge is for.