# Startup sites need specific, user-centered product explanations

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/startup-sites-need-specific-user-centered-product/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Aaron Epstein](https://realalpha.app/people/aaron-epstein/) (Host) · General partner, Y Combinator · Co-founded Creative Market, a design marketplace later sold to Autodesk; hosts YC's Design Review.
- Show: Lightcone
- Episode: [How To Stand Out In A World Of AI Designs](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/), Oct 22, 2026
- Moment: 31:51 to 37:02 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/startup-sites-need-specific-user-centered-product/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=1911

## Quote

> “You should be talking about your product who should use it why why it's valuable **what problem it solves** for them”
> — [Aaron Epstein](https://realalpha.app/people/aaron-epstein/) at [34:49](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=2089) · Lightcone

## Takeaways

1. Say specifically what the product does and who should use it.
2. Focus on the user's problem, not a pitch about the company.
3. Ask real users whether the website makes sense to them.

## About this segment

The review shows how vague positioning and investor-facing copy leave buyers unsure what a product does. They recommend concrete user problems, examples, and testing the site with real users.

From “How To Stand Out In A World Of AI Designs”, Oct 22, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[32:00](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=1920) i don't really know what that means but uh sarah novus is your ai operating partner it reads every record your company produces finds the operational inefficiencies nobody's tracking and warns you while problems are still small okay um i don't know this is i think the copy could be improved here it's very generalized it's very vague i'm kind of like is this something i need i'm not really sure it does everything that my company wants and finds inefficiencies um it's a decision infrastructure i don't know what that means so i think something that would be helpful is just getting to more specifics or more specific language around who should use this and why because right now i think it's it's too unclear it's interesting i mean like the there's so much padding right like there's just a lot of white space where this is this is what they call above

[32:45](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=1965) the fold right before i scroll it's such an important section the hero section of the landing page and yet immediately my eyes i'm like looking at white space right now right um unfortunately this is also kind of like a classic vibe coding smell uh this small all caps exactly yeah um and again it's like okay is there anything inherently wrong with small all caps not necessarily but when i read it every claim cited years of history live from day one nothing installed no interviews but i still don't even know what the product does yeah yeah exactly i didn't even know it was going to be something that was installed that was not my assumption to begin with so yeah yeah yeah exactly like nothing installed where like am i dealing with hardware um oversight over the operations it finds the inefficiencies foresight with receipts yeah i just need specific examples

[33:39](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=2019) like as we're scrolling do they give specific examples start with the problem on your desk enterprise middle market private equity yeah it's this is like who they go after and which is this is not helpful because it's about them it's not about the user right the user doesn't care who they go after the user cares about they have a problem that they want solved and can saranovas help solve this problem for me right it's almost like right now i have to think through am i enterprise middle mark like who am i yeah let's pretend i'm secondaries or i'm continuation vehicles i have to look at this but i had to like click to decide who i am you're making me think you know too much work and again to your point what i really want to see are the solutions yeah you know this is um a trend that i see with vibe coded sites and especially we see

[34:32](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=2072) a lot in YC applications. One of the things that we see is, um, it's, it's almost like it makes a slide deck for the company that's kind of pitching the company, um, almost to investors a lot of times, or like the, the models think that is the intended audience for a startup or a startup website. And sometimes it is like investors will look at the thing, but, um, that's not who you should be speaking to and who you should be targeting. You should be talking about your product who should use it why why it's valuable what problem it solves for them social proof of you know other people that use this that are like those users and how much it's helped them these are the things that i think real users want to find rather than a pitch deck about who they target and yeah here's the four guarantees and it's like i don't even know i still can't even

[35:20](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=2120) figure out what you do uh one thing that's interesting i noticed because we just talked about this there's a link at the top that says trust and security and that's not something that you normally see in a main navigation of a site. And, you know, coming off the discussion we just had around maybe companies should put more emphasis on this. It's actually interesting to see them doing that and putting it up there and having an FAQ.

[35:45](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=2145) What data do we collect? Where does the data live? I would not be surprised to see this become a more common pattern that we're going to see across AI sites trying to talk about the product and get people to entrust them with with lots of sensitive information. Totally. Well, overall, I feel like the style is very clean. It's very fresh. It's very modern. So from a visual perspective, I think it looks very nice from a copy and, you know, overall description. And are you communicating what the product does into your users? I'm still very confused on what it actually does and who should use it and why. And so I think there's a lot of room for improvement on that.

[36:24](https://realalpha.app/v/2tZT2-pS_pI/?t=2184) totally and what i would encourage all kind of founders to do something that we did in the early days is you should go to your users and ask them what do you think of this website try not to make it clear that it's your website because they're going to be too nice to you and not tell you the truth um but you know you need users to tell you if it's resonating with them that's the ultimate test that is absolutely the ultimate test we're just two people that are here behind some cameras you know talk to your users all right let's do another one here slashy your intelligent inbox