The value of live feedback on product development

Lately, I have been running several meetings with real users to try out the latest version of Amaru Invest, the value investing intelligence for all.

I could not be happier with the iterative process of understanding how the platform feels for real humans (besides my inner circle and I) and which flows, items, and features can be rewritten or changed.

I am more convinced than ever that the open-source movement in software has been key for the sector's development in the last decade. There is a special beauty in how different backgrounds, points of view, and experiences converge into perceived sensations and values, and how those end up influencing the final output.

Of course, there is also some difficulty when the founder's vision, mission, and initial purpose is challenged by the very people who want to improve the product. This is something that I thought about several times during this process and, to be honest, it was a persistent worry in my mind before creating anything.

Quick example: last Sunday on a live demo, a user, who had never invested money before, provided feedback about how he perceives formulas, abstract financial concepts, and graphs that appear on the platform. He felt the platform lacked guidance for users like him. From my point of view, I built the platform and all its features to adapt to the experience of each user, but especially beginners. This challenged what I perceived as a "beginner" format and forced me to think again about the quality of my onboarding process. This situation reconnected me with the humility necessary to deeply understand what the customer needs, and it reinforced the reason I built it all: to help beginners learn how to invest independently.

Building Amaru Invest is juggling different (and sometimes very distant) ideas at the same time, without losing sight of the genuine reason why everything started. I think this framework is transferable for any project, company, institution, product or idea someone deliberately wants to launch.

It is our basic responsibility to protect the core and be open to contrarian ideas from time to time, for the sake of building something of value for others. This duality is true by nature, as the Nobel Prize-winning biologist François Jacob once said, "Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer", meaning someone who creates novelty by opportunistically rearranging and recombining materials already at hand.

At the beginning, the beautiful iterative process will dominate. It must be your friend, not your enemy. Some initial plans could change but isn't that the whole point? I am optimistic that there will be great things on the other side of uncertainty. If we, as humans, are the output of this framework, who are we to not accept it and enjoy it?

If you are interested to try out Amaru: click here.

Update: Amaru is now available in Spanish!

See you next week.