What Startup Audits Actually Reveal

I've audited a lot of startup products — diving into every corner of their product.

The problems are almost never what founders think they are:

• "Our design looks outdated."
• "We need a rebrand."
• "The homepage doesn't convert."

Then we check the data.

What the data actually shows

The homepage is fine. But 67% of users drop off on the second screen of onboarding.

Users abandon after the trial or go quiet right after onboarding? Turns out they never hit the aha moment. They signed up and still don't know what your product actually does.

The brand isn't the problem. The communication is. Users check it, scroll for 45 seconds, leave and forget.

The pattern

Founders feel the symptom ("something's off") and guess at the cause ("must be the visuals").

But design problems worth solving are almost always in the user journey.

What an audit actually does

An audit isn't about telling you your design is bad.

It's about finding the exact moment users give up — and why.

That's the difference between "make it look better" and "here's why you're losing 40% of signups at step 3."

One is a guess. The other is strategic design.