> there are two separate personas that you need to “create”: The user persona and the buyer persona.
Even more important: stop using personas, start using actual people. I've experienced many startups make unforced errors by conflating people into personas. A better way is to tag people with attributes, such as specific interests, explicit concerns, tasks to be done, usage goals, learning preferences, and the like.
When you switch from personas to actual people, it opens up many more product experiments-- many of which are surprising and may even feel counter-intuitive to founders. Increase your startup chances of success by carefully connecting with your actual users.
Personas are useful for developing a general character that you can refer to. But you still have to be able to say "Alice Robertson, who is a demand-gen marketer at $CUSTOMER, is a prime example of this persona and someone we should talk to during product research." If you can't speak to an actual human and validate your ideas, then you are at risk of creating a fake persona who sounds just plausible enough to convince you to make wrong decisions.
Those two personas were very helpful to me in my previous life as a technical marketer; they helped me learn when to leave a job. Any time a company I have worked for told me they're shifting emphasis from talking about our product with the actual users to talking about "solutions" for the buyers, I knew it was time to start sending out resumes because the product was about to stall and the work climate was about to get insufferable.
I see a pattern where companies end up becoming consulting firms with a bit of proprietary tech. Then all their efforts are put into a handful of clients. The companies call them “design partners” but they’re basically clients.
Seems like a particularly risky trap for bootstrapped companies desperate for revenue. At the same time the best companies I see out there are relentlessly customer focused.
How do you draw the line between “design partner” and becoming someone’s consultant.
That comes down to the ability to say no (or at least "not yet"). I have seen lots of startups that land a few mid or big clients and lose the plot by serving every throwaway request the client makes. Doing this slowly turns your product into a bespoke solution not fit for others. There needs to be constant tension between the product goals and its application, and holding that line will always, always annoy a sizeable swath of users.
Apple famously ignored users on lots of fronts: can't manually add RAM, mouse has 1 button, etc. They didn't serve one type of user specifically so they could appeal to a larger market. You can't serve everyone.
This rings true. A previous job I had did email analytics for the investment banking industry (from boutique firms up to the largest banks in the world). I kid you not, the single biggest driver of our success was the simple fact that our expertise in email meant that we fixed problems that almost all these firms had with email deliverability (bad IPs, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, broken unsubscribe functions, etc) over the actual product itself. This was in our best interest as our product was useless unless recipients could get email delivered to those that wanted it, but it was eye opening.
You don't have a product until there's ~3 customers, with perspective to more. Before that you're essentially a consultant. I'll add that to the next version of the doc, too.
The point is: For anything you build, you can find 1 customer. It's only when there's multiple customers that like the product and want to improve it where you move from "consulting" or "custom development" to "product".
- If you are bootstrapped, you can build dual use technology.
- All of this is predicated on the idea that building software is hard, you need 8 years to build a product that people like. Maybe this is all going away in the AI world in a couple of years.
I don't think you need 8 years to build a product people like, Prodfiler got good resonance and we built it in ~18 months, it would probably take 4 months now...
Excellent writeup from someone who clearly cares about hitting the intersection of "good for customers, good for himself and investors, and good for employees".
We'd be much better off with people thinking and acting in line with this!
Maybe a simple question I didn’t see here: paying yourself a salary?
How true is it you’ll need to persist under extreme duress unable to pay yourself a salary? Relevant for us with kids / families where we provide the family’s income.
I will add a section. Pay yourself a salary at the very latest the moment you've raised funding. If a VC objects to you doing that, get a different VC. You're in for the long run, and support from your family etc. is important, and you're already taking on a huge risk by pooling all your risk in one company, vs. the VC who is happily diversified.
Investors who imply you shouldn't take a salary are no bueno.
I've never once had a VC even ask about my paycheck let alone suggest I don't take one. FWIW the second you run a company you literally have to pay yourself at least minimum age, it's illegal not to.
Like equivalent to what your developer salary would be? Less? More because you’re a CEO now?
I basically have minimum $ amount I would accept for “developer job I absolutely love” that I know sustains my family comfortably without much extra fun or savings. Is that a good bar?
I basically specified that I'd make the highest salary and no more than that. It felt like a fair policy at least, it took a lot of guess work out of it. If I wanted to bring someone in at X00K, I had to make X00K.
I started off making significantly less than I did as a dev (~30-50k + I had spent months with 0 salary before raising), within ~2 years I was making a bit more and I capped out around there.
Yes. Usually, the VCs will want you to not take an extravagant salary, but a solid family with which you can keep your family comfortable. And that's normally the right bar.
And if there are liquidity pressures a few years into the process, and you have traction at Series B or C - don't hesitate to think about a small secondary.
I resonate a lot with these reasons. I definitely know I am not the most optimal employee, but often times the people I clash with are people that I cannot respect. Either
- They think they're higher than me (you cannot collab like that)
- They want it their way, despite there being multiple ways to Rome, and will cut off the conversation with orders, not arguments
- They pretend to be technical and are only making the bureaucratic back-and-forth worse. You can definitely tell when someone knows what they're talking about
Sadly a lot of companies will reward these type of people by putting them in the high seats.
"Their way" - some way has to be chosen, without too many back-and-forth.
In addition to technical there could be other reasons to prefer a solution. Some of those reasons can't be stated - for various reasons, like privacy or intuitiveness.
There are some reasons people like that are rewarded, and not all of those reasons are bad.
Great article! One question: you talk about market size, but you don’t address the existing competition in the space. In my opinion, two equally sized markets can have very different levels of competitive pressure.
Is that something you factor into your playbook? Or do you simply not find it relevant to judge whether to enter a certain space?
This is really well written and clearly from someone who has loved through it. I think just about all of their observations are correct (except for getting a coach - incredibly detrimental in my experience).
Author here. I'd be curious what went wrong in your case? (Also, happy to soften that advice further if there's strong evidence that people find the advice detrimental).
Not OP, but when I did my startup I also tried coaches, and the first one I talked to was kinda like what gold diggers would be in a relationship context (asking high price, since he knew we raised, and in the demo sessions provided superficial value), then I finally went with one who actually had business experience and uni degree in psychology and provided modest but solid advice for a fair price, that was quite helpful in those difficult times.
So I guess spot and avoid sweet talking charlatans (this applies to all business relationships though).
Also - I use the term "coach" broadly here. Many people react very poorly to the term "therapist", and "coach" is a much broader term encompassing both therapy or just people that have significant experience in a field. Or just an older relative or acquaintance that is willing to provide regular advice/feedback.
There's definitely charlatanism, particularly when people advertise themselves as "business coach" or "startup coach".
Even more important: stop using personas, start using actual people. I've experienced many startups make unforced errors by conflating people into personas. A better way is to tag people with attributes, such as specific interests, explicit concerns, tasks to be done, usage goals, learning preferences, and the like.
When you switch from personas to actual people, it opens up many more product experiments-- many of which are surprising and may even feel counter-intuitive to founders. Increase your startup chances of success by carefully connecting with your actual users.
Personas are useful for developing a general character that you can refer to. But you still have to be able to say "Alice Robertson, who is a demand-gen marketer at $CUSTOMER, is a prime example of this persona and someone we should talk to during product research." If you can't speak to an actual human and validate your ideas, then you are at risk of creating a fake persona who sounds just plausible enough to convince you to make wrong decisions.
Seems like a particularly risky trap for bootstrapped companies desperate for revenue. At the same time the best companies I see out there are relentlessly customer focused.
How do you draw the line between “design partner” and becoming someone’s consultant.
Apple famously ignored users on lots of fronts: can't manually add RAM, mouse has 1 button, etc. They didn't serve one type of user specifically so they could appeal to a larger market. You can't serve everyone.
The point is: For anything you build, you can find 1 customer. It's only when there's multiple customers that like the product and want to improve it where you move from "consulting" or "custom development" to "product".
- If you are bootstrapped, you can build dual use technology. - All of this is predicated on the idea that building software is hard, you need 8 years to build a product that people like. Maybe this is all going away in the AI world in a couple of years.
We'd be much better off with people thinking and acting in line with this!
How true is it you’ll need to persist under extreme duress unable to pay yourself a salary? Relevant for us with kids / families where we provide the family’s income.
Investors who imply you shouldn't take a salary are no bueno.
Like equivalent to what your developer salary would be? Less? More because you’re a CEO now?
I basically have minimum $ amount I would accept for “developer job I absolutely love” that I know sustains my family comfortably without much extra fun or savings. Is that a good bar?
I started off making significantly less than I did as a dev (~30-50k + I had spent months with 0 salary before raising), within ~2 years I was making a bit more and I capped out around there.
And if there are liquidity pressures a few years into the process, and you have traction at Series B or C - don't hesitate to think about a small secondary.
- They think they're higher than me (you cannot collab like that)
- They want it their way, despite there being multiple ways to Rome, and will cut off the conversation with orders, not arguments
- They pretend to be technical and are only making the bureaucratic back-and-forth worse. You can definitely tell when someone knows what they're talking about
Sadly a lot of companies will reward these type of people by putting them in the high seats.
In addition to technical there could be other reasons to prefer a solution. Some of those reasons can't be stated - for various reasons, like privacy or intuitiveness.
There are some reasons people like that are rewarded, and not all of those reasons are bad.
Is that something you factor into your playbook? Or do you simply not find it relevant to judge whether to enter a certain space?
So I guess spot and avoid sweet talking charlatans (this applies to all business relationships though).
Also - I use the term "coach" broadly here. Many people react very poorly to the term "therapist", and "coach" is a much broader term encompassing both therapy or just people that have significant experience in a field. Or just an older relative or acquaintance that is willing to provide regular advice/feedback.
There's definitely charlatanism, particularly when people advertise themselves as "business coach" or "startup coach".