The "80/20 principle" for founders
Traction: 80% distribution, 20% product
Growth: 80% retention, 20% acquisition
Revenue: 80% existing customers, 20% new leads
Pricing experiments: 80% positioning tweaks, 20% actual price changes
Brand building: 80% customer experience, 20% logo design
Sales: 80% listening, 20% pitching
Community building: 80% empowering users, 20% company-led initiatives
Product: 80% core features, 20% nice-to-haves
Time: 80% executing, 20% strategizing
Insights: 80% user feedback, 20% user behavior
Pricing: 80% value perception, 20% actual costs
Marketing: 80% word-of-mouth, 20% paid ads
User onboarding: 80% aha moments, 20% feature tutorials
UI/UX: 80% intuitive flow, 20% aesthetic appeal
Viral growth: 80% reducing friction, 20% incentivizing sharing
Roadmap: 80% market pull, 20% vision push
Team management: 80% context setting, 20% direct orders
Customer interviews: 80% observing, 20% asking
Market positioning: 80% owning a niche, 20% broad appeal
Founder time: 80% working on the business, 20% in the business
Prioritize the 80% that moves the needle.
The rest is just noise.
The "80/20 principle" for founders Traction: 80% distribution, 20% product Growth: 80% retention, 20% acquisition Revenue: 80% existing customers, 20% new leads Pricing experiments: 80% positioning tweaks, 20% actual price changes Brand building: 80% customer experience, 20% logo design Sales: 80% listening, 20% pitching Community building: 80% empowering users, 20% company-led initiatives Product: 80% core features, 20% nice-to-haves Time: 80% executing, 20% strategizing Insights: 80% user feedback, 20% user behavior Pricing: 80% value perception, 20% actual costs Marketing: 80% word-of-mouth, 20% paid ads User onboarding: 80% aha moments, 20% feature tutorials UI/UX: 80% intuitive flow, 20% aesthetic appeal Viral growth: 80% reducing friction, 20% incentivizing sharing Roadmap: 80% market pull, 20% vision push Team management: 80% context setting, 20% direct orders Customer interviews: 80% observing, 20% asking Market positioning: 80% owning a niche, 20% broad appeal Founder time: 80% working on the business, 20% in the business Prioritize the 80% that moves the needle. The rest is just noise.
That, as a startup, you should only do half of what you want to do (only half the options, half the tabs, half the offerings, and half the target audience) to compound your chances of true PMF.
Scott Belsky • What Is “Seeing the Matrix” for a Product Leader?
To me, the ideal life is to take the 20 percent of my time that make me feel most alive and see if I can cut everything else out until that fills everything. Then do that again, cutting the “worst” 80 percent of the best. This is the inverse of how many companies operate. There the ideal is often “growth,” which they take to mean “say yes to all op
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Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares • 1 highlight
amazon.com
