Does Slowing Down Really Speed Things Up?
One of the most common questions we get from founders is “Why do I need to invest in developing a product strategy so early on?”
This question is one that we hear from founders over and over again, especially ones who feel they are so busy that slowing down to think about strategy will prevent them from continuing to make progress. There often is some hesitancy to thinking strategically when so many books, podcasts, and bloggers preach the importance of building fast, getting a product to market, and learning from the feedback.
In fact, we totally agree with this sentiment. Building fast, gathering feedback, and iterating on that feedback is critical to early success as a company. Where we see people get this wrong is that they forget to think about the “why” behind the “what”.
The “Why”
“Why should someone pay for your product?”
“Why should I invest in your product?”
“Why does your product exist?”
Any of these sound like questions you have heard before? Founders get barraged with questions like this constantly, whether it is from investors, early users, candidates they are speaking to, or other founders. They might sound like pretty simple questions but the ability to confidently answer these questions and others like them is critical as a founder.
The “why” is what guides your product early on. It guides you hypotheses, your experiments, your team, and where you invest your time. If a founder cannot answer these questions with conviction, then it might be time to slow down and think through them a little more.
Making the most of your opportunities
As a startup, the ability to execute on opportunities is critical to longevity. Especially in today’s market where fundraising is challenging, founders only get so many opportunities to launch, learn, and pivot. Very few founders find product market fit on their first attempt. This means that one of the key factors to finding it and building a scaleable company is the ability to both learn fast and make the most of limited opportunities.
A good product strategy guides founders to make the most of their handful of opportunities.
The metaphor that we always use is that building a company without a product strategy is like throwing darts blindfolded. Even with ten attempts, you might only hit the board once if you are lucky (or extremely skilled). Some founders are extremely skilled, typically due to a plethora of past experience. For the rest of them, the goal should always be to increase your odds of hitting that dartboard. This usually happens in one of two ways:
You get more attempts
You take the blindfold off
Getting more attempts is hard. In startup land, this usually means raising more funding to get more runway, to have more attempts to capitalize on opportunies. The tricky part here is that it is already hard enough to raise funds for early startups, especially if you have missed on many of your first opportunities.
The alternative here is to take the blindfold off. You might still miss some of the darts you throw but the odds that you hit a couple go up exponentially.
We believe that a good product strategy is akin to taking off that blindfold
A good product strategy guides founders to make the most of their opportunities. It doesn’t guarantee success, rather it helps guide founders in the right direction.
A good strategy should remove barriers to entry and help founders execute. It should allow everyone, from founders to developers to salespeople to understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how we intend to learn over time. It should remove the fear of answering the “why questions” when asked in sales calls, investor meetings, or company all hands. It should make it clear to everyone at the company who the product is for, why it solves a need worth solving, and how it solves that need. It also will include your assumptions, risks, and opportunities to differentiate.
A good strategy gives you confidence
For first time founders, it can be extremely nerve racking to pitch your product and company to investors and potential customers. No early product strategy is perfect. Rather, it is thoughtful and flexible, informed from research and learnings along the way. However, what it gives founders is both a direction and a sense of confidence. It allows them to walk into any room, clearly articulate their vision and path to execute on it, and it shows that they’re ready to make the most of the opportunities that come their way.
If you find yourself reading this and thinking to yourself, “Wow, I still am really unsure of how to answer the type of questions outlined in this post…” then it might be time to take a moment, build out your product strategy, and move forward with the confidence to execute on the opportunities that come your way.
If this sounds familiar or you know you need a more robust strategy but are not sure how to get started, drop us a line and we can start with a free consultation to help.
