David Mansaray

Product & distribution

Sharing the messy process of building products people need, want, and actually notice.

Left-facing portrait of David Mansaray constructed from ink, graph lines, code, and torn paper

const work = {
  problem,
  evidence,
  constraints,
  tradeoffs,
  product,
  distribution,
  nextMove
};

See how I work ↓

How I work / 01—04

Every product starts
as a question.

What are people quietly working around? What’s the smallest thing that would genuinely help? Where would the right people notice it? And what does real use ask for next?

Listen / look closer

Separate what people say from what their behaviour reveals.

What people said / what I noticed

“Submissions arrive wherever people happen to send them.”

Repeated patternThe work is happening, but the record is fragmented.

“I remember the regulars. Everyone else is harder to track.”

ContradictionMore activity creates less visibility.

What this points toThe problem wasn’t participation. It was seeing and recognising the work.

Make / question

Make it real enough to use, question, and improve.

Feature graveyard

Leaderboards Automation Advanced reports

Core workflow / enough to learn

Challenge→Submission→Review→Recognition

The decisionTest the uncertain part. Don’t imitate the final product.

Ship / help it travel

Put it in the world and give the right people a chance to notice.

Audience × message × place

WhoCommunity managerFeels the admin pain now.

WhatStop losing track of good creator work.Pain language, not product language.

WhereOperator communitiesThe problem is already discussed.

The decisionStart with the words people already use, in the places they already gather.

Learn / go around again

Keep what worked. Change what didn’t. Name what’s still unknown.

Keep / change / question

KeepOne clear challengeHuman review

ChangeShow submission statusClose the loop

Learning is a decision,
not a collection of feedback.

QuestionWhat makes someone want to contribute again?

What people said / what I noticed

“Submissions arrive wherever people happen to send them.”

Paraphrased conversation note

“I remember the regulars. Everyone else is harder to track.”

Paraphrased conversation note

“By reward time, the evidence is spread across tabs.”

Paraphrased conversation note

Repeated pattern

The work is happening, but the record is fragmented.

Contradiction

More creator activity creates less operational visibility.

Repeated pattern

Memory becomes the system until it stops scaling.

What this points to

The problem wasn’t participation. It was seeing and recognising the work already happening.

Open questionCould one shared record make every contribution easier to review and reward?

Feature graveyard Good ideas. Not for now.

Leaderboards

Interesting later. Not needed to test the core loop.

Automation rules

Powerful, but early automation would hide what we still need to learn.

Points system

Motivation matters, but it isn’t the first uncertainty.

Advanced reports

Useful after the workflow produces something worth measuring.

Core workflow / enough to learn

Challenge→Submission→Review→Recognition

The decision

Test the uncertain part.
Don’t imitate the final product.

Still unknownWill one complete manual loop be valuable before automation?

Audience × message × place

Who feels this first? Community manager

Runs creator programmes and feels the admin pain now.

Urgent problem
Reachable audience

What could we say?

Manage ambassadors in one place.Product language

Stop losing track of good creator work.Pain language

Make every contribution visible.Outcome language

Where are they already?

Ecommerce newslettersBroad, slower feedback

Operator communitiesTrusted, conversational

Cold outreachDirect, little context

Start with the words people already use, in the places they already gather.

Outreach fragment“How are you tracking the creator work that arrives between campaigns?”

Next testListen for the words people use before introducing the product.

Keep / change / question

Keep

What real use validated

One clear challenge
Submissions in one place
Human review

Change

The sharpest confusing edge

Contributors couldn’t tell what happened after submitting.

Show status. Confirm receipt. Close the loop.

Learning is a decision,
not a collection of feedback.

Question

What remains genuinely unknown

What makes someone contribute again?
When should recognition become a reward?

v1 → v1.1Clarify the next step after every submission.

Prior belief~~More feedback creates better decisions.~~

back to the problem ↩

Scroll to advance

Current work / 01—03

What I’m
working on.

Project Live / WooCommerce

Your store can be online while checkout is quietly losing orders.

Checkout Watch follows the complete WooCommerce buying journey, alerts you when it breaks, and shows where the failure began.

See Checkout Watch ↗

Project Building / early access

Your customers can be your most credible marketers—but without a programme, their enthusiasm rarely becomes consistent content, reach, or revenue.

Perquio helps smaller ecommerce brands turn loyal customers into active ambassadors by rewarding them for creating UGC and promoting the brand. Every challenge creates more authentic content, expands the brand’s reach, and gives fans another reason to stay engaged and bring in new customers.

Explore Perquio ↗

Project In development

A good product cannot grow if it only appears on its own website and social accounts.

Distrow helps businesses show up across Reddit, LinkedIn, X, search-visible conversations, and other discovery channels—building the visibility and trust that lead more potential customers back to the product.

Not public yet

Selected work 01 / 03

Current product / checkout monitor

Problem behind the product Stores often find out after a customer complains—or quietly leaves. Make a silent failure visible.

Stop silent failures from becoming lost sales

Current product / ambassador workflow

Growth loop Reward the customers already helping the brand grow. UGC builds reach, trust, and loyalty.

Turn loyal customers into a growth channel

Working prototype / distribution system

Distribution principle Every useful contribution creates another path back to the product. Visibility compounds across channels.

Build visibility by being useful

Keep scrolling — the work is still moving ↓

A bit about me

I like the work
before the answer
is obvious.

I’m David — from the UK, now in Brazil. Freelancing and working in agencies dropped me into a different business every few months: new customers, new constraints, new ways for a product to live or die. I never could stay in one lane — I’d follow a problem from the research into the design, through the code, and out to the question of who needs to notice it.

That range used to be hard to label. In the age of AI it’s the advantage: the tools finally match the curiosity, and one person can run the whole loop. These days I run it for my own ideas and the problems I want to solve. This site is where I think out loud about the decisions, false starts and small discoveries behind them.

A product no one finds is just a prototype.

Any stage is a good stage

Working on something
interesting? Let’s talk.

Whether it’s an early idea, a product taking shape, or a problem that won’t leave you alone, I’d be glad to hear about it.

Start a conversation →

David Mansaray

Every product startsas a question.

Separate what people say from what their behaviour reveals.

Make it real enough to use, question, and improve.

Put it in the world and give the right people a chance to notice.

Keep what worked. Change what didn’t. Name what’s still unknown.

What I’mworking on.

I like the workbefore the answeris obvious.

Working on somethinginteresting? Let’s talk.

Every product starts
as a question.

What I’m
working on.

I like the work
before the answer
is obvious.

Working on something
interesting? Let’s talk.