Eat Your Own Dog Food

Last year, before starting GrowthX, we faced a choice. Should we build for someone else? Or should we build for ourselves?

The decision matters more than you think.

In some cases, you build for others — researching their needs, gathering requirements, testing concepts. In other cases, you build for yourself — eating your own dog food, scratching your own itch, solving your own problems. But the most interesting approach is when you can do both.

When you build for someone else, you're working through proxies. Always.

Need clarity on a feature? Ask the audience.

Think something's ready? Get the audience to test it first.

Want to run a beta? Find partners because you have no fucking clue what "good enough" means.

Each step adds friction. Each question creates delay. Each decision requires validation from someone who isn't you.

Building for yourself eliminates the middle layer. The feedback loop tightens to a perfect circle.

You make all the judgment calls. You possess the internal knowledge. You feel the pain points directly.

The product grows organically because you're both creator and user. No translation required.

But there's a catch. Two, actually.

First, you must be your own harshest critic. When you're both chef and customer, you need the discipline to send back your own undercooked meals.

Second, your personal itch must scratch enough backs to build a business. What solves your problem must solve problems for others — enough others to matter.

When you use your own product, you don't need user interviews to know what's broken.

You feel it. You experience it. You live it. And fixing it becomes personal — not just a ticket in a backlog. This is why self-directed product development, when possible, will always have an edge.

The gap between problem and solution collapses to almost nothing. Sure, not every product can be built this way. But when you have the choice? Build for yourself first. Then expand outward.

But knowing it and doing it are different things.

We Built GrowthX Services-First. Then Started Slipping Anyway.

At GrowthX, we built services-first from the ground up with the goal of dogfooding from day one. The logic: AI moves too fast for businesses to keep up. We have our team absorb the complexity and deliver an output first, then later control it themselves.

But we started falling into the old trap anyway.

Engineers building for editors. Editors creating for clients. Three degrees of separation, again.

We caught it and fixed it.

Dogfooding is now required for our release cycles and expected day-to-day work for engineers. Everyone must write content with what they build. Not as a test. As their actual job.

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