30s STARTUP CEO MINDSET SHIFT: Distribute More. Build Less.

Read time: 2.5 minutes

7 Mandatory Elements For Founders To Keep Track Of

1. Customers Cannot Buy Products Or Services They Don't Know Are There

Even the greatest product can be successful; however, if it’s not well-made enough to be searched for or located, it's not a viable option.

Shipping does not begin once you ship your product; it begins even before your product was ever created..

2. There Should Always Be A Customer For Each New Feature

So often I hear startups ask me, “Can we do this?”

What they should be asking is, “Does anyone have this issue?”

Your product should be built around customer issues rather than product possibilities.

3. Validate Demand Before Developing

Before coding, make sure that you’ve validated that enough people are interested.

Verifying customer engagement by talking to people, offering a release candidate and asking for feedback, and tracking customer interest in advance of building out a “new feature” will give you far more value than just adding more features.

4. Your Future Customers Are More Important Than Your Future Features

Most of the founders I work with are more focused on closing any functional gaps than on addressing actual customer gaps.

You can create the “greatest” product in the world, but as long as no one buys it, you don’t have a product; you have an idea.

5. Distribution Is An Integral Part Of Your Product

• Sale.

• Marketing

• All things customer relationships

• Partnerships.

Your product depends on all these items working together for it to succeed.

6. Steady Will Always Beat Launch

Big Launchs will usually never be a company’s “turnaround”.

It’s the consistent connection to customers, consistent production of market visibility, and ongoing customer interaction that produce steady, sustainable growth for your company.

7. Growth Comes From Reaching Customers, Not By Adding Features

The companies that succeed in the marketplace are not necessarily the ones building the most products.

They will usually be the companies that can connect their solutions to the greatest number of customers, even if they only have a couple of products.

💡Key Takeaway: 

Many founders view continued growth as resulting from adding features and capabilities to their existing products and/or services.

However, the key to growth is often not adding more features but rather increasing the visibility of a startup's existing value proposition to potential customers. If potential customers do not know about you or your products/services (or have never had a direct experience purchasing from you), they will never become a customer.