---
schema: 1
type: term
title: Soul
description: >-
  A product's genuine point of view — a quality you can recognize when it's
  present and when scaling strips it away, and one you can't arrive at through
  focus groups. Reacting to user feedback without your own opinion leaves a
  product empty.
canonical: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/soul-6b6dd06bec07'
markdown: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/soul-6b6dd06bec07.md'
llms: null
parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt'
channel: everyinc
updated: '2026-10-23T22:12:35.346Z'
language: null
children: []
---


# Soul

Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/soul-6b6dd06bec07

Parent: [Channel index](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt)

## Definition

A product's genuine point of view — a quality you can recognize when it's present and when scaling strips it away, and one you can't arrive at through focus groups. Reacting to user feedback without your own opinion leaves a product empty.

**Soul** is the term Chris Pedregal (founder of Granola) uses for a product that has a genuine point of view. In this channel's material, it appears in the conversation about building sticky AI products, where Chris admits it's simply the best word he's found for the quality he means: you can tell when a product has it, and you can tell when companies scale and lose it [^e780a42f-b16e-5a92-b18c-685de50ce822@0]. His worked example is **Snapchat around 2015**: while studying teenagers for his previous startup Socratic, he found the app was deeply thoughtful underneath its unfamiliar interface — the fastest way to take and share a photo, the fastest way to go through many photos. Older users found it confusing; teenagers found it native. The lesson: you don't focus group your way to a product with soul [^e780a42f-b16e-5a92-b18c-685de50ce822@0]. In practice, soul connects to how Chris makes product decisions — decide by your own intuition, give it as much relevant context as possible, and react to user feedback without ever having an empty opinion. A product without a perspective ends up kind of empty, chasing whatever the last person said [^e780a42f-b16e-5a92-b18c-685de50ce822@0].