How Seed Funding Helps Startups Achieve Product-Market Fit

Throughout a start-up's journey from inception to maturity, several rounds of funding are raised, typically progressing from pre-seed to seed, Series A, B, C, and eventually an Initial Public Offering (IPO) if all goes well. Each funding round is significant, but early-stage funding— particularly seed funding—is especially critical. At the seed stage, start-ups often have little to no traction, and the capital provided helps them bridge the gap between a promising idea and a viable business. This is where seed funding plays a pivotal role in helping startups achieve what is known as Product-Market Fit (PMF), an important milestone on the path to long-term success.

Early-stage investors more often than not provide more than just capital. Many bring industry expertise, strategic guidance, and valuable networks, which are crucial for navigating the challenges of achieving PMF.

At its core, seed funding provides start-ups with the financial runway to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and test it in the market. The MVP is an early version of the product, designed to gather feedback from initial users with minimal development.

In addition to building the MVP, seed funding allows startups to conduct market research, acquire early customers, and refine their go-to-market strategy. Without this initial influx of capital, many start-ups would lack the resources to gather customer insights, make necessary product adjustments, and ultimately validate whether their product fits the needs of the market.

WHY PRODUCT-MARKET FIT MATTERS

PMF is the holy grail for any startup, representing the moment when a company finally finds a product that satisfies the needs of a specific market. PMF is when a start-up's value proposition finally aligns perfectly with the market demand. PMF is often described as the first step toward scalability.

Given the significance of PMF, many venture capitalists now use it as a gating mechanism for funding rounds, especially Series A. A company with a well-established PMF has a higher chance of securing further investments, but reaching that point often requires early-stage capital. This is where seed funding comes in.

_{The original content of the note was published on Entrepreneur.com. To read the full note visit here}

AI in Product Management: Leveraging Cutting-Edge Tools Throughout the Product Management Process

Product management stands at a very interesting threshold because of advances happening in the area of Artificial Intelligence. As the capabilities of AI evolve unceasingly, the traditional role of the product manager will be transformed in ways never dreamed possible, marking the dawn of a new era: that of the “Product Alchemist.”

As a hyper-growth driver at startups across diverse industries such as ed-tech, food-tech, and social networks, I have created products that create an impact at scale.

In this article, I want to consider the emerging landscape of product management, changes in landscape AI is bringing, and how the product manager has a number of levers available to create their mark on the dynamic landscape.

The Rise of the Product Alchemist

Product management, as we know it, is about to fundamentally change. The days of the generalist product manager, responsible for overseeing the entire product lifecycle, are quickly giving way for a far more specialized, hands-on role, the “Product Alchemist” as I call it.

This new breed of product professionals will be able to meld their strategic expertise with deep knowledge of design, coding, and data analysis by applying AI to amplify their capabilities. The key drivers of this transformation include the rapid strides AI is making, along with its increasing infusion into all points of the product development process.

The Three Pillars of the Product Alchemist

Ideation
This is the most strategic and visionary pillar of product management. It includes activities like the analysis of market trends, setting goals and objectives, and developing product specifications. AI will have a significant impact in this domain, aiding the product manager in several ways:

Strategy and Vision
AI-powered tools can enable product managers to analyze vast amounts of market data, customer insights, and industry trends and equip themselves toward more data-driven and forward-looking strategy formulation. This means product managers curate their inputs better, frame their questions better, and move from pure data analytics toward decision making by relying on AI-augmented insights.

Setting Goals
Product managers can rely on AI-recommended goal metrics and KPIs that are highly aligned with the overall strategy, which leaves them with more time to refine and finalize and not create from scratch. AI can even draft PRD and briefs for product specification based on the inputs of the product manager.

Customer Discovery
While AI itself is not going to replace direct contact with customers, it can synthesize and filter customer insights to allow the product manager to focus resources on the most valuable feedback to distill genuine customer perspectives.

Execution
This is the second, more tactical pillar of product management: it includes the areas of quality assurance, advocacy for resources, and preparation of go-to-market. Automating and smoothing out various tasks in this area, AI-powered testing tools can do the work of identifying bugs and inconsistencies before they can present a problem. This frees up the product manager to worry about quality assurance and product consistency.

Go-to-Market Preparation
AI can take on a lot of creative work such as writing marketing materials, designing promotional graphics, blogging, generating product descriptions, or creating social media content. Product managers, in turn, can focus on fine-tuning the sales strategy, distribution channels coordination, stakeholder expectations management, and readiness of the product itself.

Shifting Resources
While AI can bring insight and recommendations on the shifting of resources, it is the human intuition and flexibility of a product manager that remain so critical in team adjustments and rebalancing priorities.

Alignment and Leading with Influence
The third pillar of Alignment and Leading with Influence encompasses the critical soft skills and stakeholder management responsibilities of the product manager. In this domain, the influence of AI is still at a moderate level as human interaction and interpersonal relationship building are of great importance:

Running Meetings and Internal Comms
AI can definitely help to prepare an agenda for a meeting, take notes, and follow-up actions, driving productive team discussions and fostering alignment remains number one duty for the product manager. AI-powered tools can also aid the flow of information, but still very implicitly, it is of utmost importance that a product manager understands and makes sure the information flows and is clear.

Stakeholder and Team Alignment
AI shall be able to help plan and present information; however, building consensus and alignment of stakeholders will still continue to require the person-to-person interaction and relationship skills of a product manager. On the other hand, AI can provide clarity on vision, goals, and timelines; however, the product manager plays a major role in developing understanding and commitment within a team.

Team Morale
AI is going to help find out where morale may be low, but it is addressing it that requires human connection and leadership skills from a product manager if one wants to maintain a high-performing team.

Adopting a Product Alchemist Mindset

As the job of the product manager evolves, successful professionals will have to adopt what Forrester terms a “Product Alchemist” mindset: taking strategic acumen and melding it with hands-on, multidisciplinary skills. This means product managers must acquire a raft of new skills and competencies.

First, it would involve the ability to create appropriate prompts for AI-powered tools so that the output is per the requirements for high quality, thus enabling the product manager to craft precisely what he needs and requires.

Second, it would require building competencies beyond the traditional mantel of product management into areas like design, coding, and data analysis will better equip the product manager to interface with cross-functional teams.

Third, product managers need to be like lifelong learners, agile, adapting to an ever-changing technological landscape, and continuously upskilling to exploit the newest breakthroughs in AI for their benefit.

Finally, with the recent rise of integrating AI into product development, it is important that a product manager gains sharp insight into AI ethics, bias, and responsible implementation, with his products standing at the highest standards of integrity and user trust.
To understand the evolution of a product manager, we can categorize their responsibilities into three distinct pillars: Ideation, Execution, and Alignment and Leading with Influence.

Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is making rapid strides into product management, which forms an emerging discipline of its own. As AI capabilities continue to improve, the role of the traditional product manager will dramatically change, and with that, a new generation of product professionals is born: the “Product Alchemist.”

Only through fostering a mindset of Product Alchemist-a set of new competencies comprising prompt engineering, cross-disciplinary skill sets, adaptability, and ethical AI governance-can product managers succeed in this dynamic landscape.

As the profession of product management continues to evolve, the Product Alchemist will be front and center, revolutionizing how products are envisioned, built, and taken to market. If one moves forward with the pace and changing landscape, then as a product manager this can be an exciting new frontier in which to lead one’s organizations to even greater successes.

_{The original content of the note was published on Unite.ai. To read the full note visit here}

Is product-led growth a GTM silver bullet?

Should product-led growth (PLG) be your No. 1 pick as your go-to-market (GTM) motion? Should it be blended with other motions like inbound, outbound, social media, community and events? Should the makeup of that blend change with time? Or is PLG just one of the latest terms people like to throw around?

In fact, PLG as a strategy (if not a term) arguably dates back more than 20 years to when Atlassian (Jira, Trello, etc.) went to market with a product-led process that, for a decade, obviated the need for a sales team. It was obvious to users that the products solved problems; the users tried them; the users didn’t need to be “sold” them.

Current interest in the motion comes against a backdrop of faltering traditional B2B strategies like demand gen and lead gen. Mark Stouse, founder and CEO of ProofAnalytics.ai told us about interviewing hundreds of CEOs and CFOs about GTM for a forthcoming book. “One observation that becomes clear in those interviews is that they believe that the average B2B marketer has absolutely no idea of what works and what doesn’t work. You can see a pattern of what one CFO called ‘all these enthusiasms.’”

PLG is a current enthusiasm. Rightly so?

One motion among several
PLG is one of a number of recognized GTM motions. Lists vary, of course. Sangram Vajre’s startup consultancy GTM Partners used to reel off seven:

Inbound-led.
Outbound-led.
Product-led.
Channel-led.
Event-led.
Community-led.
Ecosystem-led.
Subsequently ecosystem fell from the roster and they now list six. But one could easily add to the list — partner-led, for example.

In its purest form, product-led GTM lets the product speak for itself. By reducing or even eliminating the roles of sales, marketing and advertising, it looks like an obvious cost-saver. Of course, it’s rarely found in that pure form.

The roots are in software
After several conversations, we were left in no doubt that PLG plays best in the technology space and specifically in the SaaS space. On the one hand, brands like Slack, Uber and Zoom are obvious examples of (primarily) product-led success stories. People try the products, they like them, they tell their peers. But then, many would see Slack, Uber and Zoom as, fundamentally, software companies.

The people we spoke to seemed to believe that PLG can make sense in many industries. Wes Bush, CEO and founder of ProductLed and author, most recently, of “The Product-Led Playbook,” told us: “It can work in any vertical.”

Choosing your GTM motion
As you’d expect from someone who is the author of three books on the subject, Bush is bullish about the product-led motion. “What people are looking for is efficiency, it’s not about grow at all costs.” In a PLG environment: “The product will do the majority of the onboarding, it will upgrade people, it will take care of most support issues that would be human-led in a sales-led company. The biggest metric we look at is revenue per employee. In a product-led company it can be really high, just because the product is doing the majority of the work.”

The product itself can be used to acquire, engage and monetize users. As with perfume, so with software: “To embrace it fully, I believe you have to have the try before you buy experience because people want to be able to make educated decisions,” said Bush. This is reflected in the widespread trend for software vendors (whether considered product-led or not) to offer freemium versions of their tools before asking for a subscription.

But even Bush admits it’s not for everyone. “If you are looking at solving complex, advanced problems in your market, that’s usually more of a sales-led play; a salesperson can add a ton of value,” he admitted.

Or should that be GTM motions?
In contrast, Mark Stouse is all about diversification. Proof Analytics, the company he created, promised to help marketers “plan, predict, prove & pivot your go-to-market investments in real time” (emphasis in original). The concept of proof here signals that GTM decisions should be based on sophisticated math.

For Stouse, choice of GTM motions is an outside-in question. “It starts with the marketplace and the customers and moves in to the vendor,” he said, “and we’re talking about the need to understand how to place our bets most effectively at any given time with the situations swirling around us. PLG as a component can be super-effective for a business but I think this is all ultimately about CX. Every single thing that you can identify that touches a customer, makes them want to buy/not buy, renew/not renew, is part of CX.”

Math or strategy?
As became clear in a spirited exchange on LinkedIn, Sangram Vajre takes a different view. “What I’m observing is that most companies over the last couple of decades have been very oriented towards doing a spreadsheet-oriented sort of strategy, because it’s easy to do that,” Vajre explained. “They would raise money based on that, they would hire based on that, but if it’s immediately not working within six months they’ve spent all the money. There are too many people I know that have fallen into that trap.”

PLG or not PLG?
Three points of view. Bush is advocating for a product-led motion, not for all businesses, but for the types of clients he attracts; and although he sees PLG as effective across verticals, he admits his business’s “beachhead” is tech startups.

Vajre lays out a buffet of possible GTM motions. Many businesses adopt more than one. Salesforce and HubSpot, he points out, are skilled at all six motions listed by GTM Partners, but then they are mature organizations with large budgets. “In the early days,” he says, “you have to pick your lane of genius.” And you pick it, he argues, based not on numbers but on a strategic conception of where you are and where you want to be.

_{The original content of the note was published on Martech.org. To read the full note visit here}

If your developments do not meet expectations, it is because you do not have the right equipment.

Creating a successful mobile application goes far beyond having a good idea. It requires planning, strategy and, above all, a development team that understands how to transform your vision into a functional and attractive digital solution. If your developments are not achieving the results you expected, the problem might not be in the idea, but in the team behind it.

Why does your development team make a difference?

App development is not just about writing code. It's a process that involves UX/UI design, software architecture, systems integration, rigorous testing and a growth strategy. An inexperienced or poorly structured team can lead to problems such as:

-Performance failures: apps crashing, consuming too many resources, or not working properly on all devices.
-Poor user experience: Confusing interfaces, unintuitive navigation or lack of end-user optimization.
-Late releases: Teams without an efficient working methodology can delay development, impacting time to market.
-Scalability problems: A poorly built app will not be able to grow with your business, forcing you to redo key parts of the development.

Mobilenik: The team you need to take your app to the next level.

At Mobilenik, we know that the success of an app depends not only on the code, but on the strategy and the team that builds it. We specialize in the development of innovative mobile applications, offering a comprehensive service from ideation to launch and continuous optimization.

Why choose us?

User-centered development
We design apps with a flawless user experience (UX), making sure they are intuitive, engaging and functional.

Cutting-edge technology
We use the most advanced tools and frameworks to ensure fast, secure and scalable applications.

Agile Methodology
We work with agile methodologies to deliver constant advances, adapting quickly to changes and optimizing each phase of development.

Multidisciplinary team
From UX/UI designers to developers and digital strategy specialists, at Mobilenik we bring together the necessary talent to make your app a reality.

It's not just about developing, but about developing well.

If your app doesn't meet expectations, it's time to rethink who is in charge of its development. Mobilenik not only creates apps, but ensures that they are successful from day one.

Ready to boost your app? Contact us HERE and let's work together on a development that really makes a difference.

Building to an MVP From Scratch

The leap from idea to minimum viable product (MVP) is never straightforward. When my co-founders and I started HappyPath, we knew we were jumping headfirst into uncharted waters. Prior to HappyPath, none of us had raised a penny of funding, hired teammates without a pre-defined job spec or built a viable business from scratch. Yet there we were, sitting at our dinner table, laptops open, furiously typing in a shared doc, trying to articulate every detail of a product and business we’d only dreamt of.

Throughout the past year, as our team grew from three to nine and our product iterated hundreds of times, we learned that building from scratch isn’t about being right the first time — it’s about failing fast, learning faster, and focusing on the essentials while adapting to a constantly changing landscape. These lessons have shaped our approach, offering insights that may resonate with anyone embarking on the journey of building something from the ground up.

The Importance of the Role-Player

From a young age, I thrived in team environments such as sports, music and schoolwork, driven by a desire to stand out and improve my own abilities. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the value of being a role-player, someone who elevates the collective effort instead of seeking individual recognition.

As I transitioned into my professional career as an engineer and later as a product manager, this individualistic mindset gave way to the pursuit of becoming a “glue guy.” I aspired to be the person who understood the boundaries of my skills and was cognizant of each teammate’s strengths, meticulously learning, blending and arranging to help teams achieve their goals. My managers encouraged this growth, giving me opportunities to lead small teams on projects building tools to facilitate better communication for application support teams.

Going From Dream to MVP

Whether you’re raising your first round of funding, launching a startup from your kitchen table, or helping a team innovate within an established organization, the leap from idea to MVP is daunting. Questions pile up quickly:

What features should we build, and how do we measure success?
When will we be ready to release a beta to real users?
Whom should we hire, and what skills should they bring?
How many people do we actually need?

How to Define an MVP

Building an MVP is like packing for a business trip with an evolving itinerary.

Budget, timelines and team resources became our first set of filters, naturally narrowing our scope. We evaluated every feature under one guiding principle: Does this directly help our users accomplish their most essential tasks? If it didn’t, it was an unnecessary item taken out of the suitcase. This focus freed up space for what truly mattered.

The process of constant prioritization felt ruthless but proved invaluable, with each reduction in scope clarifying and solidifying our MVP vision and product roadmap. As a byproduct of the rigorous feature scrutiny and detailed PRDs, we created a prioritized list of items that included new features or quality-of-life improvements to existing ones, laying the foundation for future growth.

So, How Do You Build Your Team?

Your team is your most important asset in the MVP journey. In the early days of HappyPath, we debated endlessly about hiring: Should we run lean or scale fast? Should we prioritize experience or potential?

Here’s what we learned, captured in the archetypes that define our team:

6 Hiring Archetypes in Software Engineering
The Savant.
The Corporate Beast.
The Rover.
The Conductor(s).
The Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife.
The Junior Powerhouse(s).

Bask in the Process

As you begin your journey, remember that an MVP is not simply a deliverable. Your MVP reflects the team’s ability to focus, adapt and collaborate under pressure. With the right mix of complementary skills and a well-defined North Star, your small team can turn limited resources into meaningful user impact.

When executed properly, good decision-making, paired with a little bit of luck and a relentless effort to understand your users, builds the foundation for long-term growth. Be present with your team, users, and product vision throughout this process; your MVP is proof that small teams, with big ideas, can achieve extraordinary outcomes.

_{The original content of the note was published on Builtin.com. To read the full note visit here}

The Power of Design Thinking in Problem-Solving: A Revolutionary Approach to Innovation

The top-down problem-solving approach is outdated. Linear, hierarchical paths handed down by leadership often miss the mark when solving challenges and thinking through projects. Design thinking - a dynamic shift in problem-solving - puts the user at the center of the process. It’s a game-changer for businesses and organizations seeking to create meaningful solutions to complex challenges.

By excluding the end user from the development process, crucial perspectives are often missed, and solutions often fail to address real needs. Design thinking fundamentally shifts this paradigm by integrating multiple viewpoints and placing the user’s experience at the heart of the solution-development process.

Understanding Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Framework
Design thinking is more than just a methodology—it’s a mindset that prioritizes empathy, experimentation and iteration. This approach challenges traditional problem-solving methods by emphasizing the importance of understanding human needs rather than making assumptions and jumping to solutions. It comprises five key stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.

The empathy stage marks a departure from conventional approaches. Rather than assuming we know what users need, design thinking advocates for deep user research and engagement.

Once empathy research yields insights, the define stage helps crystallize the problem. This phase often reveals that the initial problem statement barely scratches the surface of the real issues at hand. Through careful synthesis of user research, teams can reframe problems in ways that open up new possibilities for innovation.

Breaking Free from Traditional Constraints
Traditional problem-solving methods often fall into the trap of seeking immediate solutions based on existing frameworks, past experiences and assumptions. While this approach might seem efficient, it frequently leads to incremental improvements rather than breakthrough innovations. Design thinking encourages teams to break free from these constraints by embracing ambiguity and exploring multiple possibilities before converging on solutions.

The ideation phase exemplifies this approach by creating space for differing ideas, multifaced perspectives and unexpected connections. By temporarily suspending judgment and encouraging quantity over quality in the initial stages, teams can generate a rich array of potential solutions.

Prototyping: Making Ideas Tangible
One of design thinking's most powerful aspects is its emphasis on making ideas tangible through prototyping. Rather than getting caught up in endless planning meetings or theoretical discussions, teams create simple, low-fidelity prototypes to test their assumptions quickly. These early prototypes might be rough sketches, paper models, or role-playing exercises—anything that allows users to interact with and test the core concept.

Rapid prototyping serves multiple purposes. First, it helps teams identify potential issues early in development when changes are relatively inexpensive. Second, it provides concrete artifacts that facilitate meaningful feedback from users. Third, it helps build momentum and enthusiasm by making progress visible to all stakeholders.

Testing and Iteration: Embracing Failure as Learning
Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of design thinking is its attitude toward failure. Rather than viewing failure as something to be avoided, design thinking frames early failures as valuable learning opportunities. The testing phase isn't about validating success. It's about learning what doesn't work and, more importantly, why and then using those insights to improve the next iteration.

This approach starkly contrasts traditional waterfall methods, where substantial resources are invested before any user feedback is obtained. Allowing user experience to dictate the solution process by getting feedback early often will enable teams to explore a rich array of potential solutions and then course-correct before investing heavily in the wrong one.

Real-World Impact and Implementation
Organizations that successfully implement design thinking reap significant benefits beyond improved products and services. This holistic approach fosters enhanced team collaboration, increased employee engagement, and cultivates a more innovative organizational culture.

However, despite its positive outcomes, implementing design thinking requires more than just following a process—it demands a fundamental shift in mindset and team ethos. Leaders must be willing to embrace uncertainty, encourage experimentation and create psychological safety for teams to take risks.

The Future of Problem-Solving
As organizations face increasingly complex challenges in a rapidly changing world, the need for more adaptive and human-centered problem-solving approaches has become critical. The future of problem-solving lies not in rigid methodologies but in flexible approaches that combine analytical thinking with creative exploration.

Design thinking provides this balance, offering structure without constraining innovation. As more organizations adopt these principles, new hybrid approaches that combine design thinking with other methodologies like Agile and Lean Six Sigma are likely to emerge. The revolution in problem-solving is here—the question is whether organizations will embrace it or be left behind.

_{The original content of the note was published on Villanova.edu. To read the full note visit here}

Your checklist to launch a product

Launching a product is an exciting, nerve-wracking, and sometimes chaotic experience. A well-executed product launch isn’t just about hitting “publish” and hoping for the best. It requires careful planning, market research, and coordination across teams.

To help you navigate this journey, we’ve put together a comprehensive checklist to launch your product successfully.

Phase 1: Market research & validation
Before investing time and resources, ensure your product solves a real problem and has a clear audience.

Define your target audience: Who is your product for? Create user personas that outline demographics, pain points, goals, and behaviors.

Validate the problem: Conduct customer interviews, run surveys, or analyze existing data to confirm demand for your solution.

Analyze competitors: Research direct and indirect competitors. What do they offer? What gaps can your product fill?

Test your idea: Consider running a small pilot program or MVP (Minimum Viable Product) before going all-in.

Phase 2: Product development and readiness
Once you’ve validated your idea, it's time to build a solid product.

Develop an MVP: Focus on must-have features that solve the core problem effectively. Avoid feature creep.

Ensure product stability: Conduct rigorous testing—QA, usability tests, beta testing—to catch bugs before launch.

Optimize User Experience (UX): A confusing product won’t retain users. Ensure smooth onboarding and easy navigation.

Security and compliance: If your product handles sensitive data, confirm it complies with necessary regulations (GDPR, HIPAA, etc.).

Phase 3: Marketing and positioning
A great product won’t sell itself. You need a strong marketing and positioning strategy.

Craft a clear value proposition: In one sentence, explain why your product matters. Use simple, compelling language.

Create pre-launch buzz: Build an email list, tease features on social media, and offer early access sign-ups.

Develop a launch narrative: Why did you create this product? What problem does it solve? Storytelling builds emotional connections.

Prepare marketing assets:
-Website/Landing Page
-Blog Announcements
-Social Media Posts & Ads
-Product Demo Videos
-Press Releases

Build a Go-to-Market strategy: Decide how you'll launch—via an exclusive beta, a full public release, or partnerships.

Phase 4: Sales and distribution
Your distribution strategy will determine how your product reaches users.

Select a distribution channel: Will you sell through a website, app store, third-party marketplaces, or direct sales?

Price your product strategically: Research competitors and decide on a pricing model—one-time fee, subscription, freemium?

Develop sales & onboarding material: Create guides, FAQs, and video tutorials to help users get started.

Train your sales and support teams: If applicable, ensure your team knows how to answer customer questions confidently.

Phase 5: Launch execution
It’s showtime! Ensure everything is set for a smooth rollout.

Soft launch or beta test: Release your product to a small group first to gather feedback and fix last-minute issues.

Coordinate cross-team efforts: Ensure marketing, sales, support, and development teams are aligned.

Monitor performance in real-time: Use analytics tools to track user engagement, sales, and technical issues.

Engage with early users: Respond to feedback, offer support, and build a community around your product.

Phase 6: Post-launch growth and optimization
After launch, the work isn’t over. Now, it’s time to sustain and scale your product.

Track key metrics:
-User Acquisition
-Retention Rates
-Conversion Rates
-Customer Feedback & NPS Score

Optimize based on feedback: Analyze user behavior, address pain points, and release

Refine marketing and sales strategies: Double down on what’s working and experiment with new approaches.

Scale customer support: As your user base grows, expand your support channels and automate where possible.

Your quick product launch checklist template

Pre-launch:
-Define target audience and validate the idea
-Develop an MVP and test thoroughly
-Finalize branding and messaging
-Build a pre-launch email list
-Create launch marketing assets
-Choose distribution and pricing strategy

Launch Day:
-Ensure website and product are fully functional
-Publish blog announcement and press release
-Promote across social media and email lists
-Engage with early users and address issues quickly
-Track analytics in real-time

Post-Launch:
-Monitor key performance metrics
-Gather user feedback for improvements
-Scale marketing and sales efforts
-Continue iterating based on user behavior

Final thoughts
A product launch isn’t just a one-day event—it’s a process. The most successful launches are methodical, strategic, and user-focused. By following this checklist, you’ll be in a strong position to introduce your product with confidence and set the foundation for long-term success.

Got a launch coming up? Use this checklist to keep everything on track—and remember, no launch is perfect. Stay adaptable, listen to your users, and keep improving!

_{The original content of the note was published on Productledalliance.com. To read the full note visit here}

Navigating change: IT strategy meets business model reinvention

In an interconnected world, resilience means not just having the best tools but a comprehensive strategy that aligns technology with business goals.

This year has seen unprecedented innovation and adaptation, as organisations navigate the complexities of a dynamic market landscape, ensuring they stay ahead of the curve and continue to thrive.

As technology continues to disrupt industries, its impact reverberates across all facets of a business – reshaping customer expectations, redefining workforce roles and challenging legacy operational models.

Transformation is no longer a negotiable

Yet despite broad agreement on the need for transformation, leaders face complex challenges. CEOs expect more pressure from technological disruption, climate change, demographic shifts, social instability and nearly every other global megatrend. Businesses grapple with balancing high implementation costs, navigating data security risks and overcoming cultural resistance.

A lasting transformation therefore demands more than implementing new tools. It also requires a shift in mindset, operational restructuring and continuous skill-building to equip employees with new ways of working.

Realising business potential with tech

Is generative AI still only hype? Whether you’re a sceptic, champion or realist, one thing is clear: emerging technologies are fundamentally reshaping business landscapes and resetting expectations.

Strategic adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and the cloud can redefine possibilities across industries, empowering companies to streamline operations, unlock new revenue streams and deliver unprecedented customer value. Research shows that companies investing strategically in AI and cloud are twice as likely to realise significant value compared to their peers.

Purpose-driven tech adoption

Technology is a fundamental catalyst for business reinvention. However, successful transformation requires connecting the business ‘why’ with the technology ‘how’, a precise alignment between business needs and technological capabilities.

Many organisations rush to adopt emerging technologies such as generative AI (gen AI) without clearly defining the business problem they’re trying to solve. This approach often leads to increased complexity rather than enhanced value.

The key lies in developing comprehensive, tailor-made solutions that remove complexity while ensuring scalability and security – whether through cloud-native architectures that increase business agility, AI-powered data strategies that enhance decision-making or industry-specific solutions that deliver real-time impact.

Role of cultural transformation

Another key aspect of ensuring long-term and sustainable transformation is reskilling and cultural adaptability. Technology alone doesn’t change outcomes; it’s the people and processes behind it that determine success. Thus, organisations must prioritise building an agile, skilled workforce alongside implementing new tools.

Responsible innovation

When future-proofing tech adoption, ethical and environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations cannot be afterthoughts. The complexities of today’s regulatory and geopolitical environment demand agile strategies that can adapt to diverse regional requirements while ensuring businesses remain compliant and resilient amid global changes.

Data integrity and traceability aren’t just technicalities. They’re ethical pillars in today’s digital landscape, enabling responsible AI applications and building stakeholder trust, especially in highly regulated sectors. Similarly, sustainability has become a driving force in tech strategy – from selecting green cloud providers to implementing energy-efficient systems.

Choosing the right digital transformation partner

Business leaders face enormous complexity in today’s market – industries are converging and traditional roles are shifting. This pace of change demands a technology infrastructure built for the future.

Moving forward in these turbulent times requires going beyond traditional responses to disruption, such as cost-cutting or operating model changes. Along the way, organisations must get comfortable with challenging long-held assumptions about how they monetise their operations, even – and perhaps especially – when these assumptions are what brought them success in the first place.

_{The original content of the note was published on Independent.co.uk. To read the full note visit here}

The no-marketing-trap: Why even product-led growth companies need to invest in marketing early

Product Lead Growth (PLG) is usually considered the most powerful go-to-market model for SaaS businesses. Driven by the strength of the product and word-of-mouth recommendations, customers come inbound and sign up for your product by either self-serve on the website or after a light sales touch from the “Inbound” team. So far so good. But what do you do once you have a successful PLG model?

Having worked for several companies with highly successful PLG motions, including Slack, Dropbox and Google in the early years (yes, PLG was also Google’s initial growth driver), I’m often asked what the new generation of SaaS companies should do following very high initial growth driven by PLG.

From my experience, it is obvious that even with the strongest PLG momentum you need to invest early in building a marketing engine, long before you even think about moving to Outbound sales. Here’s why:

Hitting the adoption curve

To understand why it’s important to build a high-performing marketing function early, it helps to take a look at who adopts your product and when — the so-called Adoption Curve.

The first users will be Innovators. Trying new things is important to them. They are the driving force behind your initial growth. They are risk-takers, inspired to try new things by technology communities, by what they read in blogs and social media, etc. The more momentum you create in this early phase, the better. Following on are the Early Adopters. They also get their inspiration from blogs, forums and social media. But they seek a lot more information before deciding to use a new product and look for proof points that your technology will work.

The third group is the Early Majority. While it is not quite so critical to them, they still do have an interest in staying at the forefront of innovation but are concerned about the risk of failure. They are typically unwilling to do a lot of research, so relevant information needs to be easily found. The final two groups are Late Majority and Laggards, but they are less relevant for you now.

Each of these groups needs to be spoken to through marketing. However, each audience requires different channels and ways to connect. If you fail to adapt your marketing as you progress through the adoption curve, or you don’t do any marketing in the early phases, your PLG will slow down prematurely. You will have less momentum with Innovators, and Early Adopters may not come inbound at all. Moreover, Outbound Sales targeting the Early Majority will also struggle if there is no effective marketing team in place.

Think about website offerings

Your website is your shop window and you only have a few seconds to catch a visitor’s interest (estimated to be 10-20 seconds). It’s vital, therefore, to invest the time to craft clear compelling messaging that will capture their attention and there are a few things to consider as you think about how that website will support the next growth stage.

Bringing more traffic is the obvious next step, but making sure you are attracting the right traffic is key. Understanding the buyer persona you are targeting and creating content for that persona will attract more of the buyers you want.

Content fuel

“Content is the fuel your new marketing engine runs on” says Liz Smyth, VP of Marketing at Slack. “First and foremost capture and tell your best customer stories.”

They are not just the proof points that your prospective new customers need to hear, but also critical in helping the market understand new product offerings, their use cases and the value that can be derived. Also, take the time to create a few key pieces of thought leadership content. This is content that educates and informs. It is often research-based or presents your opinions and insights on specific topics. Together, those become the cornerstones of your early PR strategies.

Optimise the engine

Once the engine is running, it will be time to find ways to optimise it, often by looking at conversion rates and finding ways to improve them. Look at your website analytics to understand where your website visitors are engaging or dropping off. A 1% or 2% improvement at the top can make a big difference farther down your funnel and accelerate it. At this stage paid lead generation, webinars and content for specific personas and buying stages become increasingly important.

This content, often called ‘full-funnel’, is designed to meet the buyers where they are on the attract-engage-convert journey. Light and short content for top-of-funnel targets who just heard about your product or search for a particular problem to solve e.g. answering “what is …” questions or “what to do if …”. Deeper content for mid-funnel including pain points solved, use cases, demos. For bottom-of-tunnel customer stories, feature comparisons, pricing info and analyst reports.

Laying a strong foundation

If you have a strong PLG business, delaying building a strong marketing function or, as we’ve seen in extreme cases, almost leapfrog marketing and jump directly to building an outbound sales motion, is a mistake.

If you don’t invest in a marketing team, you are likely to face significant difficulties building an Outbound motion, and eventually even experience premature slow-downs of your PLG. Instead, companies that use the initial time of strong PLG to build out a proper marketing function experience a longer period of healthy PLG and Inbound growth and are eventually more successful in their efforts to go Outbound.

_{The original content of the note was published on Eu-startups.com. To read the full note visit here}

The road to success — On the minimum viable concept

Whenever you’re trying to create a product from scratch or thinking about a major new feature, you will inevitably bump into the term MVP (minimum viable product). The concept of MVP is there to help you build something that the users really want in the shortest, cheapest, and leanest way. This week, I went to a meetup where I heard some talks that planted the seed: to reach success, maybe it’s not only the product (or feature) we want to ship there that should be scrutinized along the “minimum viable” concept. Let me share with you the saplings that grew out of those seeds.

Product

Recap: A minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the simplest version of the product that includes only the essential features required to deliver value to early adopters and validate core assumptions about the product’s viability. In my view, the same concept can also be applied to major features.

Core functionality only
A good MVP contains only the core features, no decorations or knick-knacks.

Rapid development and launch
A good MVP allows teams to quickly develop and release the product without overdoing the initial investment and risk.

Validation
A quick MVP can help you gather honest user feedback to validate whether the product is worth further investment.

Rinse and repeat
Based on the insights gathered from each release, the product can be improved step by step with additional features, design improvements, and optimizations.

Business

Many startups bleed out due to wrong or missing product-market fit. Similarly to what the MVP means to the product, you should also validate your product-market fit and broader business model.

Core offering and product-market fit
What is the core problem we’re trying to solve with our product? Is there a real need in the market for this, or are we just trying to find the problem for our solution idea?

Revenue and business model
Is our product for the B2C, the B2B, or the B2B2C market? Who will be our customers? What’s our revenue model? Direct sales, pay-per-use, or subscription? Are there enough customers who are willing to pay for our product?

Customer acquisition and retention
How will you attract new customers? What channels and what kind of communication might work? How much effort will it take to attack and onboard enough customers to become sustainable?

Operational and financial feasibility
Collect what you will need for product delivery, customer support, and other critical operations. Can the current model expand with additional demand? Uncover the essential costs required to run the business. Will your revenue cover all your costs, including product development, marketing, and operations?

Technology

Our goal is to establish a minimal yet functional technological foundation that can support the initial phases of a product without over-investing in complex, resource-heavy solutions. What design and data structure will support the needs of my MVP, and what is not needed? The idea here is to outline the path from the initial concept to the shippable product, removing the ambiguity.

Design
Don’t be shy with design discussions. Don’t just code something and let it evolve into a nice bowl of spaghetti. Even if you’re following an iterative approach, planning for the planned features and use cases is essential.

Infrastructure
Verify your infrastructure from multiple angles: how much does it cost now, and will it cost if your product scales? Can you leverage free credits or services?

Data structure
Software engineers tend to say that code is concrete. Once you’ve developed something, it’s tough to change it or to let it go. We tend to forget it, but the same is true (or even more accurate) for data structures.

Automation

In the beginning, you most likely will perform all operations manually. But that’s not sustainable in the long run. Identify possible areas for automation and tooling and the cost of development. And only automate what’s worth the investment.

Build or buy

There is an app for that! Chances are there are multiple free or paid services that you can use as Lego blocks to build your house. They might not be perfect, but they are cheaper than building something from scratch, especially in the beginning.

Analytics

Insight into the product’s performance, user activity, and system reliability is key to a successful improvement. Think about these aspects early on so that you can collect events and slice and dice this data to gather information that can be fed into your product, business, or technology roadmap.

If you would like to dig deeper into the technology aspect, then check out my earlier post to dig deeper into unnecessary complexity:

As you can see, this no-nonsense, down-to-earth, focus-on-the-minimum approach that characterizes the MVP concept is very much applicable to your strategy with business and technology as well. All aspects are essential for a successful product or feature launch.

Food for thought: What’s your approach to avoid unnecessarily complex products? How do you avoid building something as complex as a space rocket in your first release? What’s your secret weapon to verify product-market fit? I would love to hear from your personal experiences.

_{The original content of the note was published on Namasteandcabernet.substack.com. To read the full note visit here}