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The Power User Loop: How Great AI Products Start Small and Scale Smart
Why your first 10 users should feel like co-founders, not customers
👋 Hey friends,
A few months ago, I was on a call with a founder who said something that really stuck with me:
“Our first 10 users weren’t customers. They were co-founders we didn’t pay.”
That line captures one of the most overlooked truths about building AI products right now.
Most builders start too broad. They dream of creating a “copilot for everyone” — flexible, intelligent, universal. But if you look closely, the products that actually make it? They start painfully narrow.
They don’t build for everyone.
They build for one person — so deeply that it feels like magic.
And that’s the foundation of what I call The Power User Loop — a repeatable process used by top AI builders to learn faster, design smarter, and scale without losing focus.

TL;DR
The best AI products don’t start with scale.
They start with clarity — one archetype, one workflow, and one tight feedback loop that compounds learning over time.
In this edition, we’ll explore:
Why building for everyone breaks most AI products — and how narrowing your focus creates better outcomes
How small, obsessed user groups evolve into entire markets — the quiet path from niche to adoption
The Power User Loop Framework — a step-by-step model for turning feedback into product momentum
The One-Workflow Rule — how focusing on a single repeatable task accelerates clarity and retention
The Weekly Power User Playbook — a tactical way to apply these ideas starting today
— Naseema Perveen
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