Robin Bonduelle on Building Products that Solve Real Problems

When you speak with Robin Bonduelle, Co founder and CEO of Claap, you quickly realize he thinks about product building in a very precise way. Nothing is accidental. Nothing is added just because it looks good in a pitch deck. His entire philosophy comes back to a single idea. “Every extra feature carries a hidden cost.”

In a world where SaaS founders race to add more, Robin’s instinct is to strip things away until only the essentials remain.

From Product Manager to Founder

Robin spent more than a decade in product management before starting Claap. He describes himself as someone who always preferred the craft over the title. “What excites me is the before and after. Before there is nothing. After there is something people can use,” he says.

He never imagined himself as a classic entrepreneur chasing funding rounds. What pushed him to build Claap was a frustration he had seen for years. Teams were drowning in meetings and drowning even more in the recordings left behind. Everyone had data. No one had clarity.

Why Product Teams Fail

Robin is blunt about the mistakes he sees founders make. They obsess over the interface, the onboarding flow, the animations, the micro interactions. All valid. All important. But not the core.

“You are not building an artwork. You are building a tool. And tools must create value instantly,” he says.

According to him, many product managers hide behind design details because they are afraid to face the harder question. Does the thing actually solve a painful problem for a real buyer. If the answer is no, adding more features only makes the failure more elegant.

The Discipline of Simplicity

One of Robin’s strongest principles is that simplicity is not minimalism. Simplicity is the result of deep understanding. Claap looks clean not because the team prefers minimal UI but because Robin forces every decision through a filter.

Does this make the user faster. Does this make the insight clearer. Does this cut noise instead of adding to it.

“If a feature makes the product heavier, even if it is beautiful, we kill it,” he says without hesitation.

He believes founders often forget that complexity scales faster than growth. Every extra capability multiplies support load, onboarding friction, and narrative confusion. Message becomes blurry. Product identity weakens. Teams lose focus.

Rethinking Meetings Through Data

The turning point for Claap came when they realized they were not building a meeting recorder at all. They were building a decision engine.

Robin explains it this way.

“Companies capture hours of conversations but use maybe five percent of the value hiding in them.”

This insight shifted the entire roadmap. Claap became a conversation data system, not just a video tool. Now the product helps teams search, categorize, and extract insights that guide product, sales, and strategy decisions. The goal is not to store meetings. The goal is to transform them into intelligence.

The Hardest Part. Knowing When to Say No

Robin laughs when asked about feature requests. Claap users send plenty. Some are brilliant. Some are terrible. Most are tempting.

His rule is simple. If a feature does not support the core narrative, it dies. If it adds value but also adds long term cost, he pauses and reassesses. If it fits tactically but confuses strategically, it goes to the backlog graveyard.

“Founders need the courage to protect the product from their own optimism,”

he says.

Remote Culture Without the Chaos

Claap has been remote from day one. Not because it was trendy but because the product itself was built for remote teams. Robin learned quickly that remote only works when communication is intentional. You cannot rely on hallway chats. You cannot rely on passive alignment.

Everything is documented. Everything is clear. Everything is written down. It is structure, not freedom, that makes remote work succeed.

What Robin Wants Founders to Remember

When the conversation turns philosophical, Robin makes a point that feels especially relevant in the AI era. Tools are becoming smarter. Workflows are becoming automated. But clarity still wins.

In his own words.

‍“Most breakthroughs do not come from adding things. They come from removing what does not matter.”

For him, that is the heart of product building. Not speed. Not features. Not hype. Just clarity, truth, and the discipline to keep solving the same problem better than anyone else.