Should PLG products launch to a closed set of design partners before opening self-serve signup?
4 recorded positions from 3 people, first published Jul 2013. They do not agree — the readings below are what each one actually argued.
Professional services style design partner focus beats broad vision early on
Paul Graham · published Jul 2013
A B2B startup should pick a single user and build for them as if consultants, because fitting one user's needs perfectly usually yields something other users want too.
The initial user serves as the form for your mold; if you can find one user who really needs something, you have a toehold in making something people want, which is all a startup needs initially.
Scope: B2B startups; initial stage
source Do Things that Don't Scale
Geoff Charles · published Dec 6, 2023
Early-stage product teams should be more professional-services oriented — find one or two design partners and build specifically for them — rather than pursuing a grand vision of a perfect product.
Design partners you build directly for will love you far more than the best-in-class SaaS product already on the market.
Scope: earlier on in a company's life
9:32 20VC: Ramp's Product Playbook: How To Hire Product Teams, How to Run Sprints, How to Increase Product Velocity, When and How to Go Multi-Product with Geoff Charles, VP Product @ Ramp
Also on the record
Martin Gontovnikas · published Feb 14, 2024
Product-led-growth companies should start with six to eight design partners found through their network and only open self-serve signup once onboarding and experience are right
First impressions matter enormously and happen only once — it is far harder to win back someone who tried the product than to convert a first-timer
18:31 Start with six to eight design partners before opening self serve
Paul Graham · published Jul 2013
Doing consulting-like work for early customers is safe only if you aren't paid for it; taking payment for attentiveness changes customers' expectations to demanding everything.
A product company being extra attentive gets gratitude even without solving all problems, but paying by the hour makes customers expect everything.
source Unpaid consulting style attention avoids raising customer expectations that paid work creates
Your assistant can query this graph directly — 4 positions here, 19,646 across the corpus. Add 996.fm over MCP.