A client was convinced one feature needed to be in the first release. After launch, hardly anyone used it.

It wasn’t a random idea either. The feature made sense, people involved in the project liked it and enough time went into discussing exactly how it should work.

So it became part of the build. After real users started coming in, something unexpected happened.

The feature that had received so much attention wasn’t getting much usage. Meanwhile, a much simpler part of the product was being used constantly.

Nothing was technically wrong with the feature. People simply didn’t care about it as much as everyone expected.

That’s probably one of the harder parts of product development: a feature can sound valuable in meetings and still not matter much in real life.

Since then, feature priority feels less like “Does this sound useful?” and more like “What evidence suggests people will actually use this?”

For founders and product teams: what’s a feature you were convinced users would love but they mostly ignored?