*There is an important tradeoff between being completely lost in the unknown and completely found in the familiar --John Maeda, The Laws Of Simplicity* # **Summary** 1. **Defines landscape**. Understand the market landscape, identify the initial business problems to solve and innovations required to solve them, identify early adopters and pathways to broader market adoption 2. **Go-to-market**. Develop and continuously refine the value proposition, set prices, execute an adaptive go-to-market plan, build a customer pipeline from zero, qualify customers, negotiate terms and close deals 3. **Focus**. Identify the most critical work, ensure team is solely focused on it and protects them from distractions, qualify and fiercely prioritize new opportunities 4. **Resourceful**. Identify gaps in our solution and team and fills them, recruit world-class talent, mentor, coach, and level up the team 5. **Grit**. Resilient to adversity, stamina to power through market & customer uncertainty and failure, overcome setbacks # Attributes ## **1. Defines landscape** Understand the market landscape, identify the initial business problems to solve and innovations required to solve them, identify early adopters and pathways to broader market adoption. References - [Making Sense of Technological Ecosystems](https://learnwardleymapping.com/2020/07/24/making-sense-of-technological-ecosystems/) - [Market_Segmentation_and_Product_Positioning.pdf](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1omBmxlk5k0ix63VOCHi42HI3ruqLTfWI/view?usp=share_link) ## 2. Executes Go-To-Market Develop and continuously refine the value proposition, set prices, execute an adaptive go-to-market plan, build a customer pipeline from zero, qualify customers, negotiate terms and close deals. References - Runs the business - knows what the product needs to prove - [What Is The Rule Of 40 For SaaS? (Rule Of 40 Formula)](https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/rule-of-40/) - Set the pricing strategy - Principles of Pricing: [HBR on Pricing.PDF](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18VOzUyr6NsJdXVB7Eooi8DTcs-iKpkmu/view?usp=drive_link) - [Product-Market Fit is Overrated… It’s All About Product-Market-Price Fit | by Parsa Saljoughian](https://medium.com/parsa-vc/the-intersection-of-value-achieving-optimal-product-market-price-fit-for-business-growth-115458dc598c) - [How to Enhance Product-Market-Fit: Add a ‘P’ | by Sam Bauman | Medium](https://medium.com/@samjbauman/how-to-enhance-product-market-fit-add-a-p-4b3b3a38b654) - [No Moat? Big Problem: The Impact of Industry Forces on Value Capture | by Parsa Saljoughian](https://medium.com/parsa-vc/no-moat-big-problem-the-impact-of-industry-forces-on-value-capture-d8245f7eae8e) - Sales / Customer Development / Campaigns - [Product-Led Acquisition - Acquire Customers](https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/product-led-acquisition) - [The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategies & How to Improve Your Digital Presence](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-strategy-guide) - [Amazon.com: Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization: How to Design, Build and Scale a Customer-Centric Sales Organization (Sales Blueprints Book 2) eBook](https://www.amazon.com/Blueprints-SaaS-Sales-Organization-Customer-Centric-ebook/dp/B07BL6FYQT) - Names things — works with marketing to set the product position & brand in context of the overall company mission - [How to Name a Product: 5 Golden Rules we Follow](https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/how-to-name-a-product-our-5-golden-rules/) ## 3. Focus Identify the most critical work, ensure team is solely focused on it and protects them from distractions, qualify and fiercely prioritize new opportunities References - Decision making - [The Effective Decision](https://hbr.org/1967/01/the-effective-decision) - [Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11143088-harvard-business-review-on-making-smart-decisions?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=oQOgz9TnLi&rank=4) - [Harvard Business Review on Managing Uncertainty](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1238326.Harvard_Business_Review_on_Managing_Uncertainty?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=DOnpqZo8Hw&rank=1) - [Gokul's S.P.A.D.E. Toolkit](https://coda.io/@gokulrajaram/gokuls-spade-toolkit) - Hypothesis-driven development - [Hypothesis-Driven Validation. How to reduce risk and build better… | by Hilary Hayes | Connected | Medium](https://medium.com/connected/hypothesis-driven-validation-5eafb2c37010) - [Difference Between a Hypothesis and an Assumption](https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2014/01/27/difference-between-a-hypothesis-and-an-assumption/#:~:text=mileage%20may%20vary%3A-,A%20hypothesis%20is%20what%20is%20being%20tested%20explicitly%20by%20an,An%20assumption%20is%20tested%20implicitly.&text=The%20two%20things%20that%20can,testing%20the%20value%20hypothesis%20on) - [Assumption vs. Hypothesis - to the Death! – Kromatic Blog](https://kromatic.com/blog/assumption-vs-hypothesis-to-the-death/) - [The Real Startup Book.pdf](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jV9FAE6HsikynE-oaiEk7FBoGflKcEfZ/view?usp=sharing) - great review of different hypothesis validation processes, e.g. generative versus evaluative. - [Generative Vs. Evaluation Research: What's the Difference and Why Do We Need Each?](https://www.usertesting.com/blog/generative-vs-evaluation-research) - Risk management - [https://www.svpg.com/four-big-risks/](https://www.svpg.com/four-big-risks/) - *value* risk (whether customers will buy it or users will choose to use it) - *usability* risk (whether users can figure out how to use it) - *feasibility* risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills and technology we have) - *business viability* risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business) - [Assumptions and Risks – Two Sides of a Coin – TenStep](https://tenstep.com/assumptions-and-risks-two-sides-of-a-coin/#:~:text=Neither%20are%20risks%20or%20assumptions,managed%20to%20make%20it%20happen). ## 4. Resourceful Identify gaps in our products and teams, successfully advocates to decision makers how to fill them, recruit world-class talent, mentor, coach, and level up the team. References - [https://hbr.org/2010/01/leaders-can-learn-to-make-do-a](https://hbr.org/2010/01/leaders-can-learn-to-make-do-a) - [https://hbr.org/2023/08/making-the-case-for-the-resources-your-team-needs](https://hbr.org/2023/08/making-the-case-for-the-resources-your-team-needs) ## 5. Grit Resilient to adversity, stamina to power through market & customer uncertainty and failure, overcome setbacks. Grit is important because building successful products is very hard. Marty Cagan laid out 2 inconvenient truths about product 1. 50% failure rate of ideas 2. The best ideas take time I believe both of these to be true. References - [https://hbr.org/2018/09/organizational-grit](https://hbr.org/2018/09/organizational-grit)