Why the diet tracking that wins will look nothing like the one we have

Last week I had an interaction with a founder looking for advice/feedback on the product he was building, that just threw me.

He was building a new diet/food tracking app and the tagline was “The food tracker for food lovers”

I pushed him on its meaning and how with so many existing competitors he could stand out. I literally had no idea what his product did, what it would do for me and why it is better than the current situation.

He appreciated my candor and said the best we he could articulate it would be:

“I’m aiming to have [redacted] be best in class in terms of design and integration into the Apple ecosystem. I had been using other apps for years and fed up with their lack of innovation and user-hostile design. I found many others felt the same, so I got started.”

I came away frustrated from the interaction as throughout my life I have tried tracking my diet several times, whether I’m going Keto or training to cycle across England, planning and tracking my macronutrients was a task I invested heavily in.

Here was this founder investing a serious amount of time to improve the existing way of doing this.