Your Users are Parasites

Listen to me. You’re at war.

You don’t think you’re in a war? Look at your burn rate. Look at your bank account. Look at the calendar on the wall.

That’s the sound of the clock ticking toward zero.

And what are you doing with your time? You’re in Slack. You’re in Discord. You’re “engaging” with your community.

You’re talking to “users.”

Fucking users.

You think “customer-centric” is a virtue. It isn’t. It’s a distraction. It’s a con you’re playing on your investors, and worse, it’s a con you’re playing on yourself.

You spend your days listening to the people who use the tool.

You build the toggles. You polish the buttons. You move the hex code three shades to the left because some guy in a “power user” forum asked for it.

You think you’re being responsive. You think you’re being agile.

You’re being a servant to the wrong master.

There is only one person that matters to your business: the person who cuts the checks.

The Desk vs. The Boardroom

In this business, there is a fundamental divide.

On one side, you have the desk. On the other, the boardroom.

The person clicking the button is the worker. The person signing the contract is the boss. They do not want the same thing. They do not speak the same language. They don’t even breathe the same air.

The worker—the “user”—wants to be comfortable.

They want the UI to be “intuitive.” They want a dark mode. They want to feel like their job is slightly less soul-crushing for eight hours a day. They want to play with the buttons.

All good and fine things. But. But the boss.

The boss wants to be profitable. The boss wants a return on investment. The boss wants to know how this tool—this “innovation” of yours—drives revenue, cuts costs, or makes the company more competitive.

The boss doesn’t care if the buttons are blue or green. The boss cares if the company exists next quarter.

If you brand for the desk, you will never reach the boardroom. And that’s where all brand wars are ultimately won.

The brand war is won in the office of the person with the budget. It is not won on the screen of the person with the mouse.

You are building a playground for people who don’t have a checkbook. You are inviting people to a party and asking them what kind of cake they want, but you’re forgetting to ask who’s paying for the flour.

You catching on yet?

You’re building for the wrong person, and it’s going to kill your company.

The Parasite Problem

Let’s talk about the user. I follow a startup right now. Seed-stage. A few thousand users. Exactly zero revenue.

They post videos of their amazing new layouts. They talk about “delighting” the user. They show off features that make the product “fun” to use. They are winning the popularity contest and losing the business.

They are being sucked dry by parasites.

The user is a parasite.

They take. They demand. They scream for features. They fill your support tickets with “nice-to-haves.”

And they will never, ever pay you.

Why? Because they can’t.

They don’t have the authority. They don’t have the budget.

They are using your product for free and your time—your most precious resource—to make their lunch break 10% more interesting.

Meanwhile, the buyer—the woman who actually has the power to write a $50,000 check—is looking for a solution to a problem you aren’t even talking about.

She doesn’t care about your “slick” interface. She cares about her business. She cares about the board meeting next Tuesday.

If your product doesn’t solve her pain, you’re already drowning. If your messaging doesn’t address her pain, she isn’t buying. And if she isn’t buying, you don’t have a company. You have a hobby. An expensive, time-consuming hobby that is going to end the moment your VC stops believing your “user growth” charts and starts asking for “unit economics.”

The AI Hype Trap

If you are an AI firm right now, you are in the loudest, most crowded room in the history of technology. Everyone has a “wrapper.” Everyone has an “agent.” Everyone is talking about “user experience.”

And everyone is making the same mistake.

They are building for the enthusiast. The “prosumer.” The person who likes to play with prompts.

But the enterprise buyer—the one with the real money—is terrified. They aren’t looking for “cool.” They are looking for “compliant.” They are looking for “secure.” They are looking for “justifiable.”

If you want to stand out, stop talking to the user about “generative magic.” Talk to the person who is wondering why they are spending $2M a year on a legacy system that doesn’t work. Talk to the person trying to figure out how to survive the next 18 months of disruption.

Build for them. Brand for them. Message for them.

Win for you.

The Architecture of the Sale

You want to win the brand war? You have to choose a side.

In every B2B SaaS deal, there is a fundamental tension. The user wants “easy.” The buyer wants “impact.” Often, these two things are at odds.

I’ve seen founders build “critical” features that users screamed for—features that actually made the product harder for buyers to justify.

• Users want “social collaboration.” Buyers see “data leakage.”

• Users want “customizable workflows.” Buyers see “unstandardized reporting.”

• Users want “fun.” Buyers see “distraction.”

Stop asking your users what they want. They don’t know what they want. They know what they like. There is a difference. A big difference.

One gets you a capex, the other gets you an exit.

Start asking what the buyer is afraid of.

• Are they afraid of losing market share?

• Are they afraid of a data breach?

• Are they afraid of an inefficient workforce that is “polishing buttons” instead of closing deals?

That is where the brand is built. You don’t sell a drill; you sell the hole. But in SaaS, you aren’t even selling the hole. You’re selling the fact that the house won’t fall down.

The Law of the Checkbook

At Win the Brand War, I talk about the “7 Pains.” I talk about the “7 Enemies.” But the most fundamental thing I talk about is the Law of the Checkbook.

The only person who matters is the person who pays the invoice.

That sounds harsh? It’s meant to be. This isn’t a social club. It’s a market.

When you sit down to write your GTM strategy, or your brand manifesto, or your landing page copy, ask yourself: Whose problem am I solving?

If the answer is “the person using the tool,” you’ve already lost. If the answer is “the person justifying the spend to the board,” you have a chance.

What is the Trade-off?

Here is your homework. Go to your product roadmap. Look at the top three features your users are “screaming” for.

Now, ask yourself:

What is the one feature my users want that my buyer would actually pay me to remove?

Find that friction. That’s where your positioning lives. That’s where the “War Story” begins.

Most founders get this backwards. They want to be liked. They want to be “responsive.” They want to be “customer-centric.”

I’m telling you to be “Buyer-Obsessed.”

It sounds backwards. It sounds cold. It sounds like something a “brand strategist” isn’t supposed to say in a world of “user delight.”

It works. And you’ll make bank off of it.

Win the War

If you’re a Seed-stage founder and you’re realizing right now that you’ve built a playground instead of a business, don’t panic. You can still pivot the brand. You can still find the buyer. But you have to stop listening to the parasites.

You need to define the category you’re in, not the tool you’ve built. You need to identify the Enemy of the Buyer, not the inconvenience of the User.

I help early-stage SaaS and AI firms find their “War Path.” I help them stop polishing buttons and start winning the boardroom. I help them move from “nice-to-have” to “must-defend.”

If you want to stop being a servant and start being a leader, let’s talk.

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