The Reality Check
As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”. As a founder, you are expected to hold the vision, sell the dream, act as the product manager, raise capital, and manage burn—all while maintaining a realistic lens on the market opportunity.
The landscape has changed. Software is now fast and cheap to build, meaning “me too” products are everywhere and competitive moats are breaking. Customers are bombarded with options daily and are tired; they self-educate before buying, and their budgets are tighter. To survive, you must validate your proposition quickly before you are beaten to market.
The MVP Mindset: Just Build
Stop trying to build the final version immediately. Your goal is to develop minimal-feature workflows quickly to demonstrate a solution to the customer’s problem. You need to find out if your workflow solves a big enough problem, or if the customer can just get by with a spreadsheet.
How to Get There (And How Not To)
• Don’t paint the whole Mona Lisa at once: Do not try to release a fully perfected product in stages. Instead, start with a sketch—a loose proposition—and refine it into a value proposition through research.
• Avoid the Silo: The biggest mistake you can make is building in isolation without specific customer design programs or early adopters. If you spend months perfecting UI without launching the core workflow to potential customers, you will fail.
• Partner to Succeed: You need a “Customer Design Program.” Identify early adopters—whether enterprise or self-serve—who will provide feedback for free. Incentivize them to help you shape the workflows.
Execution: The “Inflection Phase”
Your product journey will go through an intense “inflection phase”.
1. Start Lo-Fi: Reduce design detail. Use basic frameworks and navigation patterns to create prototypes for feedback.
2. Validate Workflows: Test if the core workflow works technically and functionally before you worry about scaling design.
3. Iterate: Your roadmap and backlog should constantly evolve. You will eventually redo the UX/UI and adopt a design system, but that comes later.
Leveraging the New Standard
Great UX is no longer a differentiator; it is the baseline expectation. However, you can move faster than ever:
• Use AI: Leverage tools like FigmaGPT or screen builders to generate variations in seconds.
• Personalize: Move toward AI inclusion by asking what workflows can be automated and how you can personalize the experience for specific buyer personas to increase time-to-value.
The Bottom Line
The industry is moving fast. To win, you must be honest about whether your solution is worth pursuing and whether you have a real “sweet spot” regarding value and differentiation.
Be kind, work hard, and stick together. But ultimately, you have to ask yourself: How bad do you really want it?
