The Problem with Everything
And Why We Need to Talk About It
Ever notice how tech products seem to get worse the more enterprise-ready they become?
It usually goes something like this: A small team builds something genuinely useful. People love it. Then the "growth phase" kicks in. Suddenly there's a 20-person committee deciding if the "Share" button should be blue or slightly-less-blue. The product roadmap looks like someone dropped a bowl of alphabet soup. And somewhere, a team is building a microservice just to handle the hover state of a tooltip.
This isn't just tech nostalgia talking. Remember when Instagram had 30 million users and a team small enough to fit in a minivan? When Craigslist served entire cities with fewer people than most companies have in their daily standup? These weren't flukes. They were proof that small, focused teams can do remarkable things when they're not busy overcomplicating everything.
But somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that success means:
Building complex systems because "that's how the big companies do it"
Adding features nobody asked for because the roadmap needs filling
Tracking every user interaction because... actually, why are we doing this?
Turning simple tools into "enterprise platforms" (whatever that means)
The real victims? The doers. The people who just want to get things done. Instead, they're stuck wrestling with tools that feel like they were designed by a committee of corporate buzzword enthusiasts:
"Leverage our AI-powered content optimization platform to synergize your multi-channel engagement strategy!"
(Translation: "Here's a button that posts things.")
What if we just... stopped doing that?
What if we built tools that:
Solve real problems without needing a training course
Use good technology because it helps, not because it looks good in pitch decks
Actually respect user privacy (no, really - not the "we take your privacy seriously" kind)
Stay focused on making content better instead of making feature lists longer
That's not just wishful thinking. It's entirely possible. The tech industry just forgot how to do it somewhere between Series B and their first corporate values offsite.
Next up: What we're actually building at Castuner, and why we won't put "AI-POWERED!" in flashing letters on our homepage (even though, yes, we use AI).
Want to follow along as we try to build something genuinely useful without the usual tech industry bloat? That's what this newsletter is for. No growth hacking. No corporate speak. Just honest updates about building tools that actually help people get things done.
And maybe occasional rants about why every button needs its own data lake.