If you stay in product management long enough, you catch a specific virus: "Change the World Syndrome."
We preach disruptive innovation in our slides, justify billion-dollar TAMs in our weekly syncs, and sit in coffee shops scoffing at small tools for having "no competitive moat." We are trained to think high-level, to seek "underlying logic," to "empower industries."
This grand narrative is intoxicating. It feels like the confident declarations made after one too many drinks at 2 AM.
But the reality? Most of us are crushed by the Sunday grocery run long before we ever make a dent in the universe.
The Trap of Grand Narratives
We've been lied to.
The entire tech industry sells a specific value system: Only platforms, ecosystems, and Large Language Models are "real work." If you're building an app to organize a grocery list, you're "thinking small." You lack vision.
But this is exactly why indie hackers make their first dollar while senior PMs at big tech companies are still polishing their roadmaps.
Cooking starts long before the pan heats up. It starts in those small, chaotic moments—scribbling ingredients on scraps of paper, wondering what to make, wandering the store trying to remember which aisle held the tahini.
These moments are tiny, but they are real. And they are exhausting.
When I code, I often think of that feather in Forrest Gump. It has no grand destination, no complex navigation system. It just drifts with the wind and lands gently. It exists in the moment.
The Power of Tiny Pain Points
I've noticed something funny. My friends' phones are full of "life-changing" apps—the same ones I used to aspire to build.
- Apps to hack your sleep (that make you anxious about not sleeping perfectly);
- Apps to manage your time (that take an hour just to configure);
- Apps to achieve financial freedom (while you're stressed about grocery prices).
But the apps they actually open? The ones that make them feel lighter? They are often the "boring" ones.
In a world full of grand narratives and corporate gaslighting, we are exhausted. The mental load of "the list" is heavier than we admit. We don't need a tool to manage our health big data; we need a tool that tells us, "Get the milk, it's in Aisle 3."
This is the antidote. We don't need more tools to make us "better." We need quiet helpers to make us "lighter."
Not a Chef, But a Quiet Helper
This is why I built DishPal.
DishPal won't teach you to cook. It doesn't want to be a social network for foodies. It simply wanted those chaotic in-between moments to feel lighter.
You just tell it what you want to cook—type a meal name or paste a messy recipe—and its AI quietly parses it. It organizes every ingredient by aisle-like categories.
"No more juggling notes, no more mental math. Just describe what you want, and let a quiet helper turn that into a clear, organized list. It sorts by aisle so you flow through the store, rather than zigzagging like a lost tourist."
And in an age of data hungry corporations, it stays quiet in another way: it's privacy-first. Your API keys stay on your device; your data is yours. It respects you enough to leave you alone.
I don't expect DishPal to change the world. But if it saves you 10 minutes of hunting for spices, or stops you from forgetting the one thing you actually went to the store for... that is enough.
That is a tiny happiness. And in this era, tiny is the new grand.
Final Words
A suggestion for every Product Manager and Indie Dev still anxious about their legacy:
Come down from the clouds. Look at the ignored, real, concrete, even "stupid" needs around you. That is where your opportunity hides.
Don't try to reinvent the future of food. Just help someone buy dinner.