“We focused too much on what we wanted to bring to the world. We needed to pay attention to what the world wanted from us.”, Ivan said. And people were just not interested in a no-code programming application.

That’s a really important takeaway — you  need  a wedge into your market. A  specific problem  and use case that is real

Trap 1: You are stuck on the idea of what you intended to build, and you don’t realize that your product has become something else.

Unfortunately, because customers don’t really know what they want, it’s easy for these entrepreneurs to delude themselves that they are on the right path.

She immediately diagnosed what had been impeding the sales team: a lack of clear, repeatable messages that communicated the product's value, not just features. Along with that, the sales team needed a better understanding of which prospective customers were most likely to buy, rather than just relying on their Rolodexes. She also recognized the pro

I often have to explain to companies that there is never a perfect way to structure a team—

But as any experienced founder knows, this process is fractal.

The deeper you get into asking questions about a person’s day, the more detail there is to observe. And true needs or jobs—the ones that are burning or unfulfilled—get lost in the process of mapping the infinite contours of an individual life.

What actually works? Drop the objectivity. In

This can be a challenging aspect of the job for young VCs: pushing back on the founders’ ideas about which customer segments to target. A surprising number of early stage startups are not sure (yet) which market they should go after. In fact, this can be the source of great conflict. Agreeing on which markets to pursue can be an important part of t