How to accelerate growth by focusing on the features you already have

Growing without product-market fit robs you of agility. Agility allows you to iterate. If you can’t iterate fast enough, you won’t get to product-market fit.Here is my suggestion to founders of tech-enabled services: don’t grow until you achieve product-market fit. Get a few customers in the door to start, then move any further demand to a waitlist... See more

Impact over refinement

When building something, focus on truly creating an impact before releasing and refining it.

Then, consider focusing on other impactful work before refining your prior releases.

Here is a simple test to see if you're building something impactful: Can you write a blog post about what you're releasing and how it will change your ... See more

One result of this past tech cycle was a view that companies needed to build hyper complex ponzi schemes of ambition in order to accumulate capital and be valued. This led to a variety of shooting stars that never realized their main goal.

Another view was an insane amount of value ascribed to hyper-narrow features masquerading as companies, leading... See more

You don’t need a better performing product to gain market share. Focus on improving a few features and start catering to an early niche. Iterate and improve as you grow.

Understand your audience. You must know who, precisely, you are building for. Understanding this early on in your company life cycle can be especially powerful, as it allows you to prioritize acquisition efforts. The hope is to build an early user base that will drive you toward your end goal.

"This is one of the most common mistakes among new product teams when I ask "How does your product grow?" The answer is typically a long list of turbo boosts. It is typically because there is no hypothesis on what the growth engine is, and as a result they are compensating by trying to cobble together a lot of little things." - Brian Balfour (Found... See more

To move the needle on the KPI is the highest leverage thing you can be doing. It always comes in the form of tasks that involve talking to users and building, and iterating your product, nothing else. This is in direct contrast with fake startup progress which is when founders focus on things that are not directly related to growing your primary KP... See more