I spent today working on a project on my to-do list. I’ve got most of it figured out, but I noticed that one thing is holding me up. The companies I’ve historically used are charging rates that are within the range I’m comfortable paying, but the value of the services they offer has diminished. Translation . . . the cost far exceeds the value, so I haven’t pulled the trigger.

The companies I looked at are likely pricing based on market conditions, which makes sense given the mature state of their companies. But their services haven’t evolved as consumer tastes have changed. Their services don’t measure up anymore. I think these incumbents are unwittingly giving upstart competitors an opportunity to steal their loyal customers. When value exceeds cost, the purchase decision is easier. When cost exceeds value, the result is hesitation—hesitation that can cause a customer to look at others and even give them a try if they like the value-vs.-cost alignment. If the upstart does a good job, they’ve likely stolen a customer from the incumbent.

I decided to keep looking. I found a start-up that offers services more aligned with my expectations at a price similar to that of incumbents. I’m excited to give them a shot and hope they deliver. If they do, I’ll continue using them.

If you’re a start-up going against incumbents, you don’t have to compete by being cheaper. Consider finding areas where they haven’t kept up with customer expectations and then doing a better job in those areas. If you can offer more value than incumbents, you’ll increase your chances of their customers giving you a shot.

I started working on a project today. I have zero experience in the space and had no idea where to start, so I did some research online. I found a service provider whose site answered all my questions and then some. It had videos and document templates and offered a quarterly masterclass to answer questions. After digesting some of this content, I understood what it would take to complete the project and decided it’s best to hire someone instead of doing it all myself. I decided to hire the company whose content was so helpful. In fact, I didn’t even consider anyone else.

I really like how this company is giving knowledge away, free of charge, to attract customers. No salesperson or email campaign tried to convert me to a customer. Just a self-serve educational process that reinforced to me that this company is credible and trustworthy but also positioned me to complete the project on my own if I chose to do so. I’ll sign up and likely have to talk to a salesperson to become a paying customer, but the salesperson will basically be processing my order instead of having to sell me. Actually, I’ll be pushing them to get me onboarded quickly so I can complete my project quickly.

If you’re an early founder who understands a problem and space deeply, consider sharing that knowledge broadly. It could be a great way to attract qualified customers and shorten your sales cycle.

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I talked to two early founders today who asked questions related to similar challenges. With many things they could be working on, they’re not sure what they should be doing right now. Both have early versions of their products but no product–market fit.

We discussed the objective of this early stage of the entrepreneurial journey: building something that solves a problem well enough that people want to pay for it. That’s always the objective when you don’t have product–market fit. These founders have good products, but they’re missing something. They don’t yet know what that something is. If they figure it out and build it, they’ll find product–market fit and be ready to scale the company around this solution.

When I think about this stage, I see it as a cycle. Talking to customers, distilling what you’re hearing, improving the product based on that feedback, and finding out if customers like the new product are key. Anything that doesn’t support this cycle, important though it may be, probably can wait.

I caught up with a founder friend today, and one of the things we talked about was hybrid work. His team is coming to the office a few days a week and working from home the rest of the time. He mentioned the importance of being more intentional about communication in the absence of physical proximity.

He shared that clear written communication has become more important. When you can’t pop by someone’s office, you likely send a Slack message, email, text, etc. These can be misinterpreted more easily, so it’s important to be precise when you compose them.

He mentioned that increasing the cadence of communication is important as well. Making sure everyone is aligned is always important. Absent daily in-person interaction, some people feel siloed or unsure what’s going on in the company. Sending updates more often and reiterating objectives helps keep everyone aligned. Things like weekly or every-other-week emails from leadership are good at maintaining alignment.

Having run a company that had in-person and remote team members, I agree with his observations. A lot of communication happens informally when people are together in one location every day. Keeping the team moving in the right direction and everyone feeling included is possible in a remote or hybrid environment, though—it just requires more intentionality.

On a podcast that I listened to recently, a guest said something that resonated with me: lean into the hard things. That comment took me back to my early days as a founder and a realization I had then. Solving the hardest problems tended to move the needle the most. The solutions weren’t easy or obvious, but when we found them, their impact was orders of magnitude greater than the impact of solutions to easier problems.

If you’re a founder looking to build a big business, consider asking yourself: “Am I leaning into the hard things?”

Last week I attended a local start-up event in person. The audience heard a few companies pitch and asked the founders questions. I hadn’t been to one of these in quite some time. Today I followed up with everyone I connected with at the event. A few observations:

• Energy – Start-up energy is a powerful force. It’s magnified when you get more people in a room who are passionate about building or helping others build. It’s hard to re-create the energy of being in person at a start-up event.
• Context – You can learn a lot about someone by watching how they interact with other attendees. This can’t be replicated via video and is very difficult during one-on-one meetings. I’m able to see another dimension of a person in these group settings.
• Efficiency – Video allows you to have back-to-back meetings, maximizing the number of one-on-one meetings you can have in a day. In-person events are efficient in a different way. They allow you to reconnect with many people organically. They allow you to meet and have the attention of people you otherwise wouldn’t be able to chat with. And they allow you to more efficiently connect people who may benefit from knowing each other.
• Memorable – Even if it’s a brief chat, an in-person connection is always more memorable than a digital one. People are more likely to remember people they’ve talked with in person.
• Hybrid – Don’t get me wrong—if attending in person isn’t an option, there’s value in attending virtually. Offering both attendance options is great because it makes events more accessible to more people.

People like interacting in person, and that was evident at this event last week. I’m looking forward to attending more in-person events this year.

Talked with a founder who has taken an unusual approach to building his start-up. He read about a space and was intrigued. Deciding he wanted in, he did an unpaid apprenticeship before eventually setting up his own operation. He started having problems managing the operation and built manual solutions. He realized other people had one of the same problems and, to help, began sharing what he’d learned. He created and openly shared videos and written materials. He realized the manual solution wasn’t a long-term fix and that tons of other people—based on the consumption of his content—were having this problem. He decided to create software to solve the problem.

Once the product was created, he needed people to use it. Instead of spending lots of money on marketing to acquire customers, he went back to the people who’d consumed his content. He told them about his new software and asked them to give it a try. A few hundred took him up on the offer and became paying customers. He’s now getting feedback from those customers so he can improve the product and attract more customers.

I like this founder’s approach. He discovered a problem in his space by getting his hands dirty, and he built great founder–market fit too. He then shared what he learned with others and built credibility with a passionate user base. By understanding the space very well, he positioned himself to create a superior product, and he quickly got people to try it with minimal spend on marketing because he already had an audience. All in less than a year without raising any outside capital from investors.  

I think this founder has put himself in a great position to build a massive company in his space.

I’m a big fan of cofounding teams. It took my being a solo founder to understand that every individual has gaps, but teams can be well rounded. The areas where I was individually weak were where my company could have done better (e.g., marketing). Building a cofounding team is easier said than done, though, especially for nontechnical founders. Finding a complementary cofounder is hard—many people aren’t sure how to evaluate fit.

One of the things I try to understand when evaluating a founding team is how they individually handle adversity. When things are going well, everyone is happy, and it’s easy to get along. It’s when things aren’t going well that friction becomes more evident. Adversity can bring out another side of people and push cofounder relationships to their breaking point.

If you’re a founder looking for a cofounder, consider taking time to understand how candidates have historically handled adversity. Their past isn’t proof of what they’ll do in the future, but it will give you insight into how your relationship might look if times get tough.

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I talked to a second-time founder recently. She had a modest exit from her first company and wants to build another, bigger company. She’s hard at work, and I can tell from our conversation that she learned a lot from her first journey that she’s incorporating into her new start-up. She made painful mistakes and has had time to reflect on them, which has allowed her to grow as an entrepreneur.

Many people don’t realize that a lot of successful entrepreneurs don’t hit a home run during the first at bat. They may hit a single, or even strike out, many times. All those at bats are learning opportunities (some of them painful) that hopefully will set the founder up for the grand slam.

If you’re a founder and you don’t knock it out of the park the first time, that’s OK. Remember, it’s a failure only if you didn’t learn anything.

I talked to a founder who’s had an interesting journey. He built a great product and company. Before becoming a founder, he worked in corporate America and aspired to start his own company. He had a problem in mind that he wanted to solve but realized there was a lot he didn’t know about building a start-up and raising capital. With no connections to those worlds, he decided to focus on networking to forge some. He developed a list of people he believed could help him and began meeting with other people who might know them. Over the course of a year, he ended up meeting most of those on his list, and they invested in his company and introduced him to their networks. He then hired a team and built the first version of his product. He was off to the races.

The big takeaway from his story? The power of networking. He was intentional about building his network to fill his gaps. He hustled to find a way to get in the room with people who had the knowledge and relationships he needed to achieve his goal of being a founder. This resonated with me because networking—building relationships—is something most can do. A little bit of effort and consistency usually have an outsize return, though, because so few people do do it. Taking the initiative and being consistent will set you apart and sometimes are all you need.

This founder’s journey, like every founder’s, is unique. If you follow his example, there’s no guarantee you’ll have the same outcome (you still have to execute). But his story shows that relationship building is a powerful tool in the arsenal of founders and aspiring founders.

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