Becky Flint

Can hyper-growth actually hinder a startup's ability to build a great product? In this latest episode of the Product Thinking, I'm joined by Alex Wattrelos, former Chief Product Officer at sunday, who witnessed firsthand the double-edged sword of explosive scaling. Sunday went from an idea to 450 employees with $203 million in seed funding in a mere 4 years. While living the startup dream of rapid growth, Alex and his team also had to navigate how to stay laser-focused on solving real customer problems amidst the chaos. When the 2022 tech crisis struck, they faced the harsh reality of de-scaling the entire operation and ruthlessly prioritizing initiatives that drove market fit and profitability. Throughout our discussion, Alex shares firsthand insights into the key challenges he faced as Sunday's CPO, including the delicate balance of maintaining a clear product vision while continually pivoting priorities. He also shares insights on leveraging an MVP to unlock early success, solving the "busy restaurant bill payment" problem plaguing Europe. And we examine the critical differences between product management in the US vs. Europe markets. Don't miss Alex's hard-earned wisdom on: ►Scaling products AND teams at breakneck speed ►Abruptly de-scaling and reprioritizing the entire roadmap ►Keeping the team focused on driving real value vs. vanity metrics ►Navigating cultural nuances across European product teams For startups wanting to avoid growth at all costs, this is a must-listen on building the right product before chasing unicorn status. Have you ever had to rapidly de-scale your product roadmap? How did you approach it? Share your experiences in the comments! #ProductManagement #TechStartups #ProductLeadership #ScalingProducts

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Conducting Impactful Product Reviews: Steering Your Product Towards Success 🚀 In my dual role as an advisor and operator, I've observed that product reviews—crucial meetings intended to guide product direction—are often underutilized. Here’s how you can make these reviews more impactful: 1. Whether you are solving for Pre or Post Product-Market Fit (PMF): Harping on these four aspects consistently improves the team's muscle to define these well. Customer Definition: Know who you're building for. 🎯 Problem Identification: Use frameworks like BELT to precisely identify customer problems. https://lnkd.in/dJERFbre Value Proposition Hypothesis: Explore multiple value propositions to increase the odds of success. 🔍 Success Metrics: Establish clear and measurable success metrics, along with check metrics to track progress. 2. Assessing Risk of Impact and effort: The balance of risk and impact dictates the level of confidence required before shipping a product. Itamar Gilad’s confidence meter is a practical tool to quantitatively align team expectations on the necessary confidence levels. Remember, not all products require the same degree of certainty. ⚖️ 3. Purpose of the Review - Discovery or Delivery: If the focus is on discovery, prioritize finding a compelling value proposition supported by solid insights. 🕵️‍♂️ For delivery, concentrate on reviewing the design and development stages to ensure they meet planned objectives. 🛠️ Leveraging these strategies in product reviews can significantly enhance your team's ability to make informed decisions, align on priorities, and ultimately drive your product towards success. If you are running a startup or scale-up, especially in consumer products, I encourage you to check out the product review brief that is now a Reforge artifact. We used this artifact at PropertyGuru and other companies to create impactful products (https://lnkd.in/gGDTHHhN). This concise, two-page document is highly effective, especially if you are just starting with this process. It is a forcing function to think clearly and rigorously. The artifact when combined with a consistent ritual creates non linear impact. #ProductManagement #Leadership #Innovation #BusinessStrategy #ProductDevelopment #Reforge.

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🚨 Bookkeeping is HARD - a Lesson from Synapse's Collapse 🚨 I was recently quoted in Mary Ann Azevedo's TechCrunch article on the bankruptcy of Synapse, a banking-as-a-service startup. As someone who works at a CPA firm that does bookkeeping for clients, the Synapse situation really resonated with me. Synapse had essentially one job - to sit between fintech startups and banks, and keep track of where each end-customer's funds went. Sounds simple, right? WRONG. Bookkeeping, especially in the highly-regulated world of finance, is incredibly complex. When Silicon Valley tries to "move fast and break things" in fintech without truly understanding the accounting complexities, people can actually get hurt. Supposedly, Synapse's collapse has impacted up to 10 MILLION consumers who now can't access their money. 😱 That's a lot of ordinary people who are going to have problems paying their rent or getting groceries. I'm seeing a similar wave of unkept promises hitting the small business accounting space. Startups saying that they can "automate" complex accounting tasks, but not really understanding what they actually need to do. And not taking into account how their mistakes will impact their small business customers. The last time this happened there were a lot of business owners who ended up losing a lot of their hard-earned cash when their supposed expert accountants messed up or dropped the ball. 😞 I'm sure that will happen again, and it bums me out. I'm all for moving fast and breaking things, but not if it hurts other people. https://lnkd.in/g6p_5viM?

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I really like this PMF Framework from Sequoia. https://lnkd.in/gT2nWttx

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Stripe's decoupling of their value-added services from payment processing is commendable. Clayton Christensen would tell you: “When there is a performance gap — when product functionality and reliability are not yet good enough to address the needs of customers in a given tier of the market — companies must compete by making the best possible products. In the race to do this, firms that build their products around proprietary, interdependent architectures enjoy an important competitive advantage against competitors whose product architectures are modular, because the standardization inherent in modularity takes too many degrees of design freedom away from engineers, and they cannot not optimize performance.” Digital payments had significant performance gaps and both Stripe and Adyen saw this and approached it with a similar mindset back when they launched 10 + years ago. But a lot has happened in 10 years to close that performance gap. Again, from Christensen: “Once their requirements for functionality and reliability have been met, customers begin to redefine what is not good enough. What becomes not good enough is that customers can’t get exactly what they want exactly when they need it, as conveniently as possible. Customers become willing to pay premium prices for improved performance along this new trajectory of innovation in speed, convenience, and customization.” At Spreedly, we saw this change occur somewhere between 2017 - 2018. We went from a fringe idea (why would you want to work with multiple providers?) to hearing “Even the best provider places restraint on our product roadmap and growth. We need to build in flexibility from the get-go/now" I’m sure Stripe has known this for the last couple of years. This would be a gigantic engineering task to make happen though - a very impressive accomplishment. For existing PSPs and payment platforms like Spreedly that have always had an open platform mindset, this is excellent validation via a major market participant. And for merchants, there is more choice than ever when building the ultimate payment stack.

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Learn how to fine-tune your product to meet market demands with strategic customer conversations and data-driven feedback mechanisms 👇 ➡ 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗲: Brian Long, CEO & Co-Founder at Attentive 🔌 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿: Nick Moran, General Partner at New Stack Ventures and Nate Pierotti, Principal at New Stack Ventures ✏ “The Playbook to Finding Product-Market Fit, When Founders Should Begin to Scale, and Lessons from Building Attentive” ⭐ 𝗦𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀: 💬 "I think that what we got right were two things. One, I think that we talked to a tremendous amount of customers, before we started building things. So we learned to hear their problems, hear their issues, and then start building and assaulting those, you know, rather than kind of just jumping right into build-build-build, so that saved us a lot of time." ⭐ 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸, 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗯𝗶𝗮𝘀: 💬 "I think you're also looking at things like NPS, you know… because if that number starts dropping, it's often because you're no longer solving the problem." ⭐ 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆: 💬 "I think that we've taken an even longer term focus. We know what can be big. And we know it's dangerous to start getting an ego to think you can do things because it's always very hard. You've always got to think towards taking a longer term view, having a thesis around that view, and then understand how the pieces can come together for success." ───── 👉 Follow me, Alexander Small, for tactics and strategies for building startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors

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I just finished Isaacson's book on Musk. It's incredible! Every founder and CEO should read it. Here are my top four learnings: (1) Mission Above All: Musk has the fortitude to build many multi-billion dollar companies concurrently because each has a humanity-altering mission that deeply convicts him. He doesn't care about being the top rocket company; he believes humanity is doomed if we don't become multi-planetary. He doesn't care about making the best-selling car; he thinks society must transition to clean energy to survive. To him, SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink's missions are vital to preserving humanity. Musk won't stop until he achieves these missions. (2) Guided by First Principles: Musk challenges all generally accepted conventions with first-principles thinking. This approach allows him to create much grander visions than 99.9% of people. He questions everything. He considers all fresh ideas, no matter how ambitious and unrealistic they appear. So long as the laws of physics don't preclude an idea from becoming an actual product or process, it's game on. (3) Hardcore and Extreme Urgency: Musk sets seemingly unrealistic targets with public launches and oftentimes puts his teams through excruciating circumstances to achieve massive dreams. He catches a lot of flack for it. But show me another way to build numerous multi-billion businesses at the speed he's done it. Bill Gates ran Microsoft equally hardcore in the early days - same result. Every sports championship documentary I've ever watched is about blood, sweat, and tears. I'm convinced that if you want to go big and fast, you must be hardcore. (4) Maniacal Attention to Product Simplicity and Cost: I think this is so overlooked in software. CEOs delegate to CTOs while focusing on fundraising, GTM, and culture. Imagine CEOs obsessed over product details, simplicity, and production costs. Sure, that might drive some product managers and engineers crazy, but if managed well, we'd have much better products requiring much less marketing, sales, and support investment. If you're building a company today, a few key questions: a) How much conviction do you have in your mission? Even if you're not sending rockets to Mars, will your mission fuel your drive for the next 7-10 years? b) Are you breaking conventions or following common processes? How can you shatter the mold and push your industry forward? c) Is your culture hardcore or laid-back? Do you want to go big and win championships or be comfortable and achieve moderate success?  d) Do you really understand your industry, user, and product? What are the top five ways to simplify your product and reduce time-to-market and production costs? #founder #startups #ceo #saas

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Corporate card wars continue… Brex, Ramp, Rho, etc. American Express, Visa and Mastercard are also continuing to scale. Glorified reward programs, like Bilt Rewards, seem like interesting approaches, but is it not just a race to the bottom? So many companies are focused on rewards and niche markets, but the more appropriate path forward is workflow-driven solutions. The challenge is that the unit economics for card players are juicy, so if you partner on the commercial card side, you’re losing out on large attractive spreads. It’s a fascinating landscape with 100s of companies taking various approaches.

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Kudos to Zuck for taking aim at VP titles, the proliferation of which is inversely correlated to how lean a company is and how fast it can move. Hope more CEOs follow in his footsteps. It’s also an appropriate time to reshare my old article on Titles. It’s a call to arms to be very thoughtful and intentional about Director / VP titles and avoid them for as long as possible. https://lnkd.in/g4zQkEr

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Seed-stage fundraising looks very different depending on the startup industry. Valuation and cash raised typically move together (not a lot of tiny rounds at very high valuations), but the disparity between industries can be quite large. All data from 1,271 priced Seed rounds raised from Apr 2023 thru Mar 2024. Primary rounds only, US rounds only. Industries had to have 10 separate raises to be included. A note on AI - if you tracked it as a separate industry, it would at the top of every list. But it exists within many of these categories as well, so we displayed it in the chart below as a little red box. 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 1. Healthtech overtook Fintech as the second-largest category in our data, a change from the last time we measured these metrics. 2. Seed volume is down across almost every category save AI (and even there, not up much lately). More seed deals are being completed on SAFEs (not shown in this chart) but the valuations and cash raised are very similar between SAFE and Priced rounds by industry. 3. The laggards in the chart (DTC Retail, Food, Personal Products) are essentially the same as last year. Are founders here turning towards other methods of funding, including revenue, instead of going the VC route? 4. Will many of these companies ever raise a Series A? Lots of talk lately about "venture stripping", "thin VC", "single round VC", whatever you want to call it - founders who explicitly set out to raise only 1 round and then fund their growth with revenue from then on. Very cool strategy! Remains to be seen if many $1B+ valuation companies can be built that way (though of course that isn't always the goal). Please share this post with a fundraising founder 🙏 #cartadata #startups #fundraising #seed #founders ---------- More data like this out every week in our Carta Data Minute Newsletter - subscribe at the link in graphic!

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Gilad Uziely, CEO of Sequence, shares the incredible story of how they got 100 customers to pay $200 upfront for a fintech product they hadn't even built yet. This milestone was reached by leveraging high-friction validation to ensure real interest and commitment from early adopters, fundamentally changing the startup validation game. In our conversation, we dive into: 🔸 Strategies for early-stage validation and building customer conviction 🔸 The pivotal role of a feedback-oriented community in product development 🔸 Lessons from pivoting from their initial business model to a more sustainable one 🔸 The importance of being fundamentally different in the crowded FinTech space Key Takeaways from the Episode: - High-Friction Validation: Sequence's approach to validating their product idea involved high customer buy-in, which significantly filtered genuine interest. - Community-Driven Development: Gilad emphasizes the value of an organically grown, engaged community that actively contributes to the product's evolution, proving essential for rapid iteration and improvement. - Transparent Pivot Strategy: Open discussions about pivoting from their original model to what Sequence is today illustrated the importance of agility and learning from operational feedback. - Fundamental Innovation: Gilad stressed the necessity of being fundamentally different rather than incrementally better, which has helped Sequence carve out a niche in the competitive FinTech landscape. - Customer-Centric Focus: By putting early adopters and their feedback at the core of their development process, Sequence has ensured that their product not only meets but anticipates customer needs. Gilad's story is not just about financial management; it's about setting a new standard in customer engagement and startup strategy. His journey offers invaluable lessons for any founder looking to make a mark in the tech industry. Full episode in the comments

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Starting a new fun project with Victor Lee - an AMA series with early stage founders. There are many podcast shows featuring successful, famous entrepreneurs. But what about those who are still relatively early in their journey, perhaps just one step ahead? The zero-to-one founders who have recently cracked the product-market fit and raised Seed or Series A capital. They may not have figured out everything yet, but they have fresh, relatable tips and advice to share. We’ll invite early-stage founders for a one-hour AMA session. Afterwards, we’ll create a public webpage featuring each Q&A session with media clips and transcriptions. This will be 100% free and open to the public. Our first AMA (June 11 1pm PST) will feature Will Drewery, whose company (Diagon) recently raised $5.1 million in Seed funding. We’ll get to know Will better and cover topics such as tips on raising funding in this tough environment. It will be a fun AMA, and you can register for free using the link below. RSVP now!

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Ode to the Start-Up Founder In the realm where founders tread, a venture born, a path to lead, Trust thy team, with fervent creed, in their wisdom let your company feed. Hire those whose knowledge towers, igniting growth, unleashing powers, Loyalty to those first on scene, rewards the roots that keep you green. Stay the course with strategic mind, in foresight’s grasp, your path defined, Be the brand, its soul, its face, embody values, grace, and pace. Investors’ gold can bind or blind, stand firm in vision, self-aligned, Vulnerability, a strength not less, in open hearts, employees invest. Know thyself, both flaws and peaks, in self-awareness, wisdom speaks, Lead by example, set the stage, for every employee, every age. Faults may come, let blame not cast, upon others for shadows past, In leadership’s mirror, take thy stance, for change begins with one’s own glance. So forge ahead with these in mind, a founder’s guide to be refined, Innovation’s journey, wild and vast, where leaders’ truths hold steadfast fast. - Loren Shumate #startups #saas #gtmstrategy

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Yelp has launched a new AI-powered assistant on their iOS app, revolutionizing the way users connect with local businesses. Located under the "Projects" tab, the Yelp Assistant allows users to easily find professional services by simply chatting with the AI, which smartly matches them to relevant professionals based on their needs. Yelp is empowering developers with the new Yelp Fusion AI API, enabling the integration of this conversational AI into third-party platforms for tailored business recommendations. On the restaurant front, Yelp has also revamped its Guest Manager tool, enhancing the dining experience for customers and streamlining operations for restaurant staff. Yelp continues to innovate, providing efficient solutions for discovering and connecting with local businesses. Read more from Techcrunch here => https://neoswap.cc/28e2a5 #YelpUpdate #AI #TechNews #LocalBusiness #Innovation

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What do VCs actually look for in pre seed deals, particularly given the recent wave of AI startups? As a B2B SaaS focused investor, I have the opportunity to evaluate thousands of software businesses, and invest in 100+ each year. One of my favorite parts of my job is meeting exceptional founders and learning about problem spaces that are completely new to me, but the investment team at Forum Ventures spends a lot of time discussing focus areas and opportunities where we see the most promise and are actively looking to invest. In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing a series of market opportunities where I am looking to back exceptional founders solving challenging problems.  * Automation of complex, legacy workflows within enterprise, particularly across regulatory and compliance use cases. * Application of AI across the defense and broader government sectors, specifically related to operational efficiencies, the infrastructure stack required to leverage cutting edge AI advancements, and the development and adoption of autonomous systems. * Manufacturing/hardware design and production, spotlighting modern manufacturing - robotics, aerospace, alternative energy, medical devices, etc. * Complex manufacturing supply chains- from extraction to processing and refining, and ultimately through manufacturing and distribution.  If any of the above sounds like something you are building, let’s connect. #GenerativeAI #VentureCapital #EarlyStageStartups #Innovation #TechTrends #AI

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Think like a PM Thursday: As a consumer it was always annoying for me to track how much left I had to spend to hit the spending bonus upon opening a new credit card. Now at least two different companies have added a feature to my dashboard where I can see that right away (hat tip to Capital One & Chase). So, how can we think like a PM in this case? If we took the view of short term profit only, it is probably better for companies when consumers don't hit their spending requirements, because then they don't have to tole out the points. So if they make it hard for consumers to track this data, they are less likely to meet the requirements. But looking at the long term and customer focused view: if a consumer is upset that they didn't hit the bonus not only will they have a tainted first impression of that brand, but they are less likely to want to stay loyal to that brand in the future thereby possibly decreasing the long term profit from that consumer. As a PM how else have you possibly sacrificed short term gain for long term benefits with customers?

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What do you do when you don’t want to raise venture funding, or don’t have the option? Jive got started in 2001—my first day with the founders was September 11. We had no other choice but to bootstrap, which we did for five years. Eventually, we reached a crucible moment: We could stay independent and bootstrapped, or we could ride the social software trend to something much larger—but we’d have to raise money. I spoke with Lighter Capital CEO Melissa Widner about what it took to take Jive from a small open-source project to an IPO-ready SaaS business, and how it shaped my ideas on when and how to fund startups to optimize success. It’s not about funding versus bootstrapping, but about when and how much. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gDQSmuFy #Entrepreneurship #Startups #VC #IPO #Reignition

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