After Resending 400 Mole License Emails

Today I finally took a day to do something I had been putting off for a long time. I went through Mole orders from its launch in May through the end of September that had not been activated, and resent the license keys, one email at a time, a little over 400 emails in all. The process gave me a lot to think about, and led to a fun little bit of magic in the product.

I used AI to write a simple local script that listed the email addresses and keys, then worked through the emails by purchase month, country, and language. These were not promotional emails or a push to activate. It was more like sending someone a quick message to say, don't forget you have this, and it's fine if you don't need it yet.

The replies were more interesting than I expected

Replies gradually came in from users around the world, and they meant much more to me than I had expected.

One person said they bought it just to support my development and preferred the Terminal version. Another had completely forgotten about the GUI and had been using the CLI all along.

Someone had bought two licenses, one for themselves and another for a family member as a Christmas present. That was why it had not been activated yet; the key was already saved in their password manager. Reading that made the world feel like a lovely place.

Another person had initially been able to use Mole on their work computer, but their company later banned unauthorized software. They were waiting for their own new Mac. Someone else had bought it during a discount and did not have a MacBook yet, but planned to activate as soon as the new machine arrived.

Some people had mistyped their email address at checkout, perhaps because they were typing too quickly: gmai.com, gmail.con, cloud.com, things like that. They had not contacted me. Others never received the first email and bought it again because they wanted to start using it sooner.

One reply was just Prefect! Another, during China's National Day holiday, joked that it was time to have a good mole, playing on the Chinese phrase for taking it easy. These replies made me happy.

Buying does not mean using it straight away

The people who had not received their activation key were only a very small share of all buyers, and I had already helped quite a few through my daily support emails. Some companies selling apps may think the relationship ends when the money arrives. With Mole, I feel it is just beginning, and there are many interesting things to build with users over time.

People do not necessarily use software as soon as they buy it. The journey is not always the one developers imagine: see it, buy it, use it immediately. Sometimes someone buys on impulse, the key lands in their inbox, and they come back to it when they remember. Or they pay and never receive the key. There is a gap between buying and actually using the software, sitting between the developer and the user. Many people take a step forward and ask where their key is, but some never do. In those cases, the developer should take another step toward them.

People making products, especially those who come from engineering, can get very absorbed in features and keep building more. It is easy to overlook what the purchase process reveals about actual use and experience, or the improvements that sit outside the feature list. This is also a good occasion and a good channel for talking with users. Real conversations matter, and they can make the work feel more rewarding too.

Do a few more things that don't scale

Programmers naturally like things that scale. We look for ways to turn everything into tools, automation, or AI so we can save ourselves work. But now that code itself is less of a barrier, I think there is room to do more things that don't scale. Only by going through the process ourselves do we discover how to improve the experience; thinking about it alone often does not get us there.

In Startups in 13 Sentences, published in 2009, Paul Graham wrote that offering customer service so good it cannot scale is a way to learn about early users. Later he devoted Do Things that Don't Scale to the idea, with examples such as Wufoo sending handwritten thank-you notes and Stripe taking a user's laptop to set things up on the spot. Resending these emails one at a time gave me a more concrete sense of what he meant.

Going through it myself showed me people who simply wanted to support development, people waiting for a new computer, and people held up by a missing email. The label unactivated cannot tell me any of that on its own.

For a product maker, the distinction matters. Someone supporting development, saving a gift or waiting for a new Mac does not need an activation reminder. A mistyped address or missing email means delivery is unfinished. Both appear as unactivated in the dashboard. Sending everyone the same reminder can start from the wrong assumption. First find out why, then decide whether to resend a key, improve checkout or simply say thank you.

A little bit of magic along the way

So I followed this up by improving what happens after a purchase. When payment completes, the buyer is taken to a page on Mole's website where the activation key appears directly. The payment platform still sends an email too, but even if the address was mistyped or the email was blocked, the buyer can see and copy the key right after buying.

The next version of Mole will add another small feature. Clicking activate on the webpage will bring the installed Mole app to the front and fill the key into its license activation screen. No copying and pasting, just press the activation button to confirm.

The small trick works by giving macOS a link that Mole can handle, which the system passes to the installed app. Mole fills the field but does not confirm activation for you; the usual license validation still happens after your click. An already activated Mac does not switch to another key. It saves the copying and pasting while leaving the final decision with the user.

Engineers who have worked on desktop apps and the web may think opening an app and filling a field is technically simple. But for many users, it feels surprising, almost like magic: that was easy, this product did a little more for me.

Perhaps that is one of the things I most enjoy pursuing in a product, making small, interesting features that give people that feeling of magic. It is also the kind of engineer I have always wanted to be, somewhere between a hacker and a painter.