Building Products With Personality

The best products feel like they were made by someone with opinions. Not a committee. Not a focus group. A person who cared enough to make decisions and stand behind them.

When I built Hot Girl Steps, the first question wasn't "what features do fitness apps need?" It was "what would make me actually want to open this app every day?"

That's the difference between building a product and building a personality.

Have an Opinion

Generic products serve no one well. The moment you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. Pick your audience. Speak their language. Make everyone else slightly confused.

Hot Girl Steps is a perfect example. Every fitness app on the market was built for dudes by male engineers. Clinical dashboards, aggressive language, zero personality. We went the opposite direction — fun, cute, cool girl energy. Women noticed immediately. "There's nothing like this on the market" was the most common feedback we got. That's what happens when you commit to an opinion.

Details Are the Product

Nobody remembers your feature list. They remember how it made them feel. The sparkle animation when you hit your step goal. The sassy affirmation that made you laugh. Those details are the product.

Same principle applies to WorkTrack. Time tracking is boring — everyone knows that. So we built a Chrome extension that lets you start timers and add tasks without ever leaving your current tab. You're in a meeting? Track it. Browsing the web? Log it. No context switching. The detail that matters isn't the feature — it's the fact that it stays out of your way.

Ship It Ugly

Personality doesn't require polish. Ship something real, something with voice, something that makes one person say "this was made for me." Then iterate.

Hot Girl Steps got 6,000 downloads in a few days just from posting in Facebook groups. No ads, no influencers, no polished launch campaign. The product had enough personality that women shared it themselves. And the feedback? Invaluable. Real users telling you exactly what to build next is worth more than any roadmap you could dream up alone.