The v1 rule that carried DayDeskr was “no accounts to start, then make the account worth it”. The v2 rule turned out to be about the opposite problem: not adding, but cutting. This journal is the record of what I removed and why — the honest half of the case study.
The estimate that was off by three weeks made the first cut inevitable: v2 had to be smaller, or it wasn’t shipping at all. What surprised me was that the cuts made the product better, not thinner.
I shipped a feature, watched people not use it, and killed it. That’s the journal entry this one is really about.
What went
- The feature I killed after shipping it. Adoption said what the roadmap wouldn’t — the journal entry has the numbers.
- A settings surface that existed to reassure me. The default was right 90% of the time; the 10% could wait for the account.
- Half of the onboarding copy. Every word I cut was one less thing between a new user and a planned day.
The full case study — decisions, trade-offs and the outcome — is in Work. This is the raw version, wrong estimates and all.