Best to market will always beat first to market
(at minute 31:28)
Founder Lesson
Startups have lots of worries on a daily basis. Big worries that immediately to mind are (a) running out of money, (b) building the correct product and (c) hiring the right people. Another big, macro worry is how to think about competition, particularly how much to worry about getting your product launched before anyone else.
The speed of your product launch affects many things, but two in-particular...
Cash. Moving quickly typically burns more capital.
Product quality. Moving quickly typically affects product quality.
In some instances, spending more money and reducing product quality is the right thing to do, but often it’s not because (over time) the best product in the market will win-out over the first product in the market.
As the founder says in this podcast, you have to have a unique playbook that you believe in. Once you do, decisions become easier and you worry less about competitive pressures like speed-to-market.
The Traction podcast by NextView Ventures is a fairly new podcast, but it’s quickly become one of my favorites because they chose to focus on the very early, scrappy things that founders do to get their earliest traction. These types of things are rarely discussed in the big tech media, but these lessons are some of the most valuable to other founders.
In this podcast, the founder of (the very popular) Behance discusses his passion and journey.
Update: This article was used for my monthly Hypepotamus column (that includes some addition content from Pat Pow-anpongkul, the co-founder & CEO of Real Meal Delivery). All of my Hypepotamus articles are here and here.
Get Right to the Lesson
I’d recommend listening to the entire thing, but to get right to the point go to minute 31:28 of this podcast.
Thanks to these folks for helping us all learn faster
Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky), co-founder of Behance (@Behance)
NextView Ventures (@NextViewVC)
Jay Acunzo (@jayacunzo) of NextView Ventures (@NextViewVC)
Please let me and others know what you think about this topic
Email me privately at dave@switchyards.com or let's discuss publicly at @davempayne.
The best startup advice from experienced founders...one real-world lesson at a time.
