If your app crashes overnight, what’s your move? Transparency with every customer, or hope it slides under the radar? Welcome to core values. Urgh…

Founders struggling to find customers? The issue lies with you, your messaging, your product, your strategy; not the prospect. Likely a result of random acts of marketing, prayer, and doing too much, too moderately.

As a founder, whatever you build, no matter its epicness, you’re up against forces determined to see you fail. Every customer you win is a loss for someone else. It’s governed by Porter’s 5 Forces and 7 Barriers, known as the meso level, the arena for market relevance and dominance.

Market sizing is more than a pitch deck requirement. Once you’ve worked out it’s BIG, it becomes an internal guide for every feature, expansion play, and strategic decision.

Founders’ obsession with speed is akin to a squirrel on espresso – hyperactive and directionless. You don’t want speed, you want velocity: momentum in the right direction. For founders, before the user journey, before the wireframes, before the before, comes the 5 pillars of the user journey.

Gone(ish) are the days of “launch fast, fix later” or bare-bones Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Users today have low tolerance for clunky interfaces, frustrating experiences, or lackluster support. Why can’t we exceed expectations from the first interaction? This is the era of Minimum Delightful Product (MDP).

As a founder, never lose sight of what you’re here to do. Strip everything back to that one critical feature your app or service must-execute flawlessly aka the job to be done. Then, reverse-engineer the path to achieving it, pinpointing the must-haves to make it happen.