from Lenny Rachitsky | by Lenny Rachitsky

A guide to prioritizing at a pre-PMF B2B startup Handy summary in thread 🧵 lennysnewsletter.com/p/prioritizing…

1/ Broadly, your single goal as an early-stage pre-PMF startup should be to make 10 customers very happy. Everything you prioritize should be in service of this goal.

2/ Why 10? If you can make 10 customers very happy, you can probably make 100 customers very happy. From there, you can continue to add value, reduce friction, build your growth engine, etc. On the flip side, if you cannot make 10 customers very happy, you're in trouble.

3/ Why very happy? Because there are endless products fighting for your customers’ attention. The bar for people continuing to come back to (and pay for) your product is much higher than you think. When you’ve solved a real problem, people will beg you to take their money. pic.twitter.com/2bh6YfMU7S

4/ What does very happy look like? Check out these two posts. lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-know-… lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-it-feel…

5/ How do you make 10 customers very happy? SUSS it out: Segment, Understand, Solve, and Stay focused 👇

1. Segment: Narrowly and concretely define who you’re building for. Here's a template I like by @carolinedclark. docs.google.com/presentation/d…

2. Understand: Talk to many (ideally 100+) people from this segment. Identify a major pain point that you can solve. Here's a guide to interviewing for PMF. lennysnewsletter.com/p/interviewing…

3. Solve: Put all of your energy into building a product that significantly reduces this very specific pain point. Come up with ideas, test them out, and continue to iterate until your customer can’t live without your product. The bigger the pain, the bigger the opportunity.

4. Stay focused: Resist solving adjacent problems, or problems for other segments. Continue to come back to your primary segment and the primary problem you’re solving for them. Unless, of course, you discover that the segment or problem isn’t big enough and intentionally pivot.

6/ What should I actually prioritize when working to solve these pain points? Prioritize work that will bring you closer to 10 very happy users—across these three buckets 👇

1. Increase the value of your product (~80% of your time): Focus on reducing your users’ pain, saving them time, and helping them do better work. Look for: • Blockers • Retentive features • Acquisition features • Differentiators

2. Improve onboarding (~10% of your time): Though most of your time should be spent increasing the value of your product, there’s also value in making it easier for new users to experience that value. If a great product exists and no one is able to use it, does it even exist? 🤷‍♂️

3. Create delight (~10% of your time): Your users are human—part rational, part emotional. Delighting your users with humor, design, personality, surprises, or even simply quick turnaround on issues. These can go a long way.

For more, including 🔥 insights from some of my favorite founders (@benjaminencz @christinacaci @juliannaelamb @may_habib @rujulz @TommyDANGerouss), and the most common pitfalls of early-stage prioritization, don't miss today's post lennysnewsletter.com/p/prioritizing…