How a Single User Question Redirected a $5M Product

The Insight

Adam Fard built a Figma plugin that helped designers run UX workshops and discovery frameworks using AI. It worked. People used it. But it had a problem he couldn't see yet: it was a tool people used occasionally, not daily. There was no clear path to recurring revenue.

Then during a usability session, a user asked a simple question: "I have these things on my canvas, but can I now turn them into something visual? Can I create a wireframe out of this?"

That question changed everything. Adam went and tested every competitor doing anything close to wireframe generation. He found they were all faking it. They were just swapping existing content and personalizing the copy. Nobody was actually generating wireframes from scratch.

The lesson: your users will tell you what to build next. But only if you're close enough to hear them.

How He Did It

1. Ran discovery sessions with early users. Adam offered free plans and credits in exchange for usability interviews. He didn't just watch them use the product. He listened to what they wished it could do.

1. Tested every competitor immediately. After hearing the wireframe question, he searched for existing tools and joined a Slack group for design content creators. Other members pasted three or four links to similar products. He tested each one and found the gap was real.

1. Validated the technical feasibility before committing. He talked to AI researchers, hired contractors, and explored fine-tuning LLMs. The process took four to five months of constant iteration. He didn't just build. He figured out if it was even possible first.

1. Shipped a partial solution and iterated. The first working version was a mix of multiple techniques combined with faster LLMs. It wasn't perfect. Some use cases broke. But it was good enough that people could type what they wanted and get a wireframe tailored to their needs.

Result: six to seven months from that user question to roughly $10K MRR. Today UX Pilot is at $5.3M ARR with 15,000 active paying subscribers. Bootstrapped.

What Trips Up Founders

Dismissing small sample sizes. One user asked for wireframes. Adam could have ignored it. Instead he treated it as a signal worth investigating. You don't need a survey of 500 people. You need one question that makes you curious enough to dig deeper.

Getting attached to the original MVP. The Figma plugin was working. It had users. But it wasn't a business. Too many founders keep polishing something that works instead of following the signal to something that could be bigger.

Waiting for certainty before exploring. Adam didn't know if wireframe generation was technically possible. He spent months figuring it out. Most founders would have either jumped in without research or waited until someone else proved it could be done.

When This Doesn't Work

If users are asking for features that only solve their edge case and not a broader market need, chasing one question can lead you down a dead end. Adam validated his signal by testing competitors and finding a real gap. If the competitors had already solved it well, the answer would have been different.

The Question

Before you dismiss that unexpected feature request, ask yourself: is this a random wish, or is this user showing me a problem that nobody is solving well?

Go test the existing solutions yourself. If they're all faking it, you just found your opportunity.