1/ Throughout my startup career, I’ve seen many founders have an aversion to sales. This is a mistake that can kill your startup.
More from Justin Kan
I just gave a talk to the W2021 YC batch. It's my favorite startup audience to talk to. Here are some of the highlights:
Finding product market fit is the critical thing to do in a startup.
Everything else: demo day, what investors you get, how much you raise, what press covers you -- it is all window dressing.
Many founders don’t want to talk to their customers because it makes them vulnerable, because it's hard work, because it's scary. Creating a tight feedback loop with customers is the one thing that will help you discover PMF.
If a customer isn't one of your cofounders, try to create a customer panel that allows as tight of a loop as possible. Call them daily. Put them in your Slack.
My Twitch cofounder Emmett Shear has a great analogy on PMF here: it's like rolling a boulder downhill.
Finding product market fit is the critical thing to do in a startup.
Everything else: demo day, what investors you get, how much you raise, what press covers you -- it is all window dressing.
Many founders don’t want to talk to their customers because it makes them vulnerable, because it's hard work, because it's scary. Creating a tight feedback loop with customers is the one thing that will help you discover PMF.
If a customer isn't one of your cofounders, try to create a customer panel that allows as tight of a loop as possible. Call them daily. Put them in your Slack.
My Twitch cofounder Emmett Shear has a great analogy on PMF here: it's like rolling a boulder downhill.
1/ What is \u201cproduct/market fit\u201d? I\u2019m not sure I can give you a definition. But maybe I can share what the subjective difference is in how it feels when you have it and when you don\u2019t. Founding a startup is deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus: pushing a boulder up a hill.
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) July 27, 2019
More from Startups
I gathered the best design tools for startups.
Save 100+ hours researching.
A thread 🧵👇️
1. https://t.co/JuO4PMIkK6
Checklist Design is a collection of best UI and UX practices to provide a complete, honest and rewarding experience for your users.
Price: Free
{ 1 / 12 }
2. https://t.co/pBbmgt6ITD
Coolors is a super fast color schemes generator for designers. Create, save and share perfect palettes in seconds!
Price: Free
{ 2 / 12 }
3. https://t.co/GYboviE1yX
Blush makes it easy for anyone to add stunning illustrations to their work with a huge collection of designs from artists around globe.
Price: Free + Paid
{ 3 / 12 }
4. https://t.co/eLsLkLAyNm
Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open source icons. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency and readability.
Price: Free
{ 4 / 12 }
Save 100+ hours researching.
A thread 🧵👇️
1. https://t.co/JuO4PMIkK6
Checklist Design is a collection of best UI and UX practices to provide a complete, honest and rewarding experience for your users.
Price: Free
{ 1 / 12 }
2. https://t.co/pBbmgt6ITD
Coolors is a super fast color schemes generator for designers. Create, save and share perfect palettes in seconds!
Price: Free
{ 2 / 12 }
3. https://t.co/GYboviE1yX
Blush makes it easy for anyone to add stunning illustrations to their work with a huge collection of designs from artists around globe.
Price: Free + Paid
{ 3 / 12 }
4. https://t.co/eLsLkLAyNm
Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open source icons. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency and readability.
Price: Free
{ 4 / 12 }
You May Also Like
To people who are under the impression that you can get rich quickly by working on an app, here are the stats for https://t.co/az8F12pf02
📈 ~12000 vistis
☑️ 109 transactions
💰 353€ profit (285 after tax)
I have spent 1.5 months on this app. You can make more $ in 2 days.
🤷♂️
I'm still happy that I launched a paid app bcs it involved extra work:
- backend for processing payments (+ permissions, webhooks, etc)
- integration with payment processor
- UI for license activation in Electron
- machine activation limit
- autoupdates
- mailgun emails
etc.
These things seemed super scary at first. I always thought it was way too much work and something would break. But I'm glad I persisted. So far the only problem I have is that mailgun is not delivering the license keys to certain domains like https://t.co/6Bqn0FUYXo etc. 👌
omg I just realized that me . com is an Apple domain, of course something wouldn't work with these dicks
📈 ~12000 vistis
☑️ 109 transactions
💰 353€ profit (285 after tax)
I have spent 1.5 months on this app. You can make more $ in 2 days.
🤷♂️

I'm still happy that I launched a paid app bcs it involved extra work:
- backend for processing payments (+ permissions, webhooks, etc)
- integration with payment processor
- UI for license activation in Electron
- machine activation limit
- autoupdates
- mailgun emails
etc.
These things seemed super scary at first. I always thought it was way too much work and something would break. But I'm glad I persisted. So far the only problem I have is that mailgun is not delivering the license keys to certain domains like https://t.co/6Bqn0FUYXo etc. 👌
omg I just realized that me . com is an Apple domain, of course something wouldn't work with these dicks