After having founded two startups and shipped over half a dozen products, I learned one thing over and over and over:

It is immensely difficult to get any feedback from your users.

That’s why I am vigorous about giving feedback to the products I use—it’s what I wish people would do for my products!

In fact, almost every day you will find me hunting down a founder’s email or phone number to send them feedback about my experience with their product.

Fast responses signal a higher chance of success

Interestingly, over the course of doing this for almost a decade, I have noticed that the founders who respond to my feedback quickly and thoughtfully are generally the ones who have the highest chance of success.

Why is that? Fast responses to feedback cause two virtuous cycles with the users giving the feedback:

1. It builds trust and thus retains users

2. It makes users give more feedback

I adopted this behavior a long time ago, and from the other perspective, I can confirm that being unreasonably responsive has made my projects more successful.