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Do you recognise discussions with your co-founders? Starting and growing your startup isn't easy and a one way street.. Its really easy to ignore input, opinions and stop analysing how others view your vision. If there is something I learned it's listen and analyse your teams directions and input before you start changing directions, make sure all visions are aligned.

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Treating Product/Market Fit as the first significant milestone of a startup makes sense for VCs. However, it does not make much sense for startup founders because it is too far into the future to be actionable. This is why the early-stage journey is often depicted as a wavy squiggle of aimless wandering and is commonly viewed as high-risk or unstructured. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With the right mindsets and thinking processes, it is possible to turn this wavy squiggle into a more systematic and structured process. In last week's newsletter, I outlined such a process using my 3 Rings Framework.

Turn the search of PMF into a more systematic and structured process 🤘

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Great insights! I'd like to add that early-stage founders can benefit immensely from adopting a hypothesis-driven approach. By continuously testing and validating assumptions about their market, product, and customers, they can reduce uncertainty and make more informed decisions. Additionally, leveraging data analytics early on can provide actionable insights that guide strategic pivots and iterations. It's also crucial to build a strong network of mentors and advisors who can offer guidance and support throughout the journey. This structured approach can transform the perceived chaos of early-stage development into a more predictable and manageable process.

Contain Excitement during the MVP phase 😃 🚀 Creating a startup product is a rewarding journey. I used to overwhelm my boss with lots of new ideas. But I realised that at the beginning, it's really important to focus on just the main thing we need to make. If we try to do too much, it gets messy and hard to handle, both financially and operationally. Here are some simple lessons I’ve learned to keep my excitement in check while making a good MVP, with real-world examples.  

I’ve bootstrapped all my products to date, from books to services to software. Bootstrapping (or bootstarting) is even more relevant today because: Investors today no longer fund product development, but traction. Here’s my bootstarting recipe: 1. Define your business model success criteria 2. Find one or more ideas that fit your criteria 3. Learn before you pitch 4. Sell before you build 5. Use a 10X launch strategy 6. Prioritize repeatability before scalability 7. Add investors to grow (OPTIONAL) Bootstarting = new Startup Operating System.

Note to self and to-be founders: When you're in a 0-1 startup stage, it's like building a car from scratch. Apart from fellow nerds, nobody appreciates the journey of building it. Most people only celebrate once your car is ready and you start revving/accelerating it. That's where most of the vanity lies. Accelerating the car before it is ready can rip it apart. Resist falling for the vanity before the fundamentals are in check 🤞🏼 Surprisingly, most of your friends who are advising you when you're in 0-1 have worked in 10-100+ journeys entitled to a lot of guarantees which you're yet to ensure. Keep the blinders on and work towards the fundamentals so you can 🚀 smoothly!

I remember texting my co-founder "I think we should change the name of our startup" after the talk by 🦔 james hawkins from PostHog during YC Startup School. We started our project with our original Hackathon team name (Flying Submarine) and we were told it was too silly to be an enterprise software company. So, we changed it, to something more palatable. From our point of view, the name of the company is not "too" important, as long as we build an awesome product. So we changed our name to something rather bland. We want to automate documentation tasks for knowledge workers, like filling in Test reports for a SaMD product (hell every release...). We decided on a rather tepid-water-like new name because our ICP was process engineers and regulatory freelancers, they can't be too exciting, right? Well. The take-home message from James's talk is "branding has to be opinionated". Our tepid-water brand is rather flavourless, and I am sure compliance people are rather exciting people too. My co-founder Michael Erdl is one of them. So, we finally settled on calling ourselves fsub (hehe), it is us enough to feel like a forever inside joke, because what is the point of a startup without a little fun? Ultimately, I still believe we can call ourselves whatever we want, as long as we build something people want.