Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a side project that grew from a frustration I carried with me during my years as a metallurgist: the painful reliance on outdated Excel sheets for plant calculations.
Like many of you working in mineral processing, I’ve spent countless hours dealing with spreadsheets during surveys, mass balances, and performance checks. I remember the stress of trying to double-check equations during fieldwork, or emailing the “latest” version of a sheet — only to realize three versions were floating around. Worse still, none of that data ever persisted — once the calculation was done, it was lost to time and siloed hard drives.
So I built a solution: a web app that hosted calculators for common plant problems — mill charge estimation, grinding media wear, hydrocyclone split analysis, and more. I was excited. I had taught myself full-stack development, and with my background in plant operations and my current role as a product manager in the mining equipment space, I believed I was close to the problem and could finally build something useful.
But I fell short — and in the best way possible.
❌ The Wake-Up Call: No Traction
Despite the engineering behind the calculators and the clean interface, the app didn’t gain traction. There were no returning users, no organic shares, and no community forming around it. I had built something that solved my problem — not necessarily one the industry was asking to be solved in this way.
This hit me hard, but it also reminded me of something I knew deep down as a product manager: product-market fit is everything. Without it, features don’t matter. Interfaces don’t matter. Even solving a real problem doesn’t matter — unless it’s solved in a way that people find valuable, necessary, and usable.
🔄 Reframing as a Learning Moment
In my day job, I spend time thinking about the pain points customers face with mineral processing equipment. I work with teams to improve reliability, throughput, and efficiency. But this side project reminded me that even in industrial B2B contexts, you can’t build a good product in isolation.
- You need feedback.
- You need iteration.
- You need to validate assumptions in the field.
It also reminded me that even though I was solving a known pain (Excel chaos and lack of data persistence), the value delivery might have been wrong — perhaps what’s needed isn’t calculators, but insights. Not tools, but workflows. Or maybe the tools are right, but the packaging, timing, or onboarding is off.
🌱 What Comes Next: Building With the Community
So I’m hitting reset — but not abandoning the mission.
Going forward, I’m committing to:
Re-engaging with metallurgists, process engineers, and field teams to understand their day-to-day frustrations
Sharing my learnings publicly — not as an expert, but as someone figuring it out alongside others
Logging the journey of rebuilding this product — not for hype, but for feedback, validation, and clarity
I’ll still be building calculators. I’ll still be exploring how to close the gap between “what’s on the plant floor” and “what lives in a spreadsheet.” But now I’m doing it with the people I want to serve, not for them in isolation.
If you’ve ever felt that frustration in the plant, or if you’ve had ideas of your own but didn’t know how to start — let’s talk. My inbox is open, and I’m documenting the full process.
Here’s the current state of things: 🔗 https://metallurgai.com
It’s a work in progress — just like the best tools always are
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