Loopnote: 1 logged week, $4.2k peak MRR, one honest ending.
Oct 7, 2024 — Aug 10, 2026 · Voice memos → structured meeting notes. · by Dana Whitfield
“I spent eleven months building for podcasters because they were loud on Twitter. My paying users were all sales teams. I found this in my own week-30 update — I just didn't want to read it.”
The whole arc — verified MRR, start to sunset
What worked
Transcription quality beat every incumbent in blind tests. The week-14 pricing experiment (usage-based → flat) doubled conversion overnight and never regressed. Distribution through the build log itself: 40% of paying customers cited a specific weekly update as the reason they trusted a solo product with their meeting audio.
What killed it
Wrong ICP for a year, then Zoom shipped native summaries. For sales teams, "good enough inside the tool they already use" beat "better in a separate tab" within one quarter — churn went from 4% to 19%.
What I'd do differently
Interview the people who pay, not the people who reply. Set a kill metric on day one — mine would have fired at week 34 and saved eight months. Treat a platform dependency as a countdown, not a channel.