A weekly industry memo for founders who refuse to build generic software. I’m sharing the frameworks, "Dark Arts," and product strategy we use at Jams to build high-fidelity products in the experience economy.
How to waste $85K to find PMF
How a founder lost $85K by delegating PMFThey say people fall in love with their own ideas and forget about considering a real problem someone might have. YC people like Sam Altman and Paul Graham would tell you to "talk to your users". But there's a huge misconception about talking to your users. Picture this ambitious guy in his late 30s. Perfect age to start a business. Has experience. Been crafting skills. Already senior in multiple professional ways. And probably well connected. So he comes up with a master plan. He works on a whiteboard for days until getting to a cool business model canvas which he learned about during his MBA. He has an innovative solution figured out. He doesn't want to share much about it because it's too good, someone might steal it. So he goes out and finds a team who can build an app to launch this business. $20K later and the app is live. He goes to "talk to his users". Shows the product. Comes up with use cases for them. Tries to close deals. Feedback's not great. He starts losing momentum. He has his main gig that provides for him and his family. So he decides to take a break. Until the creative spark hits again. He comes up with a new way to add value to users. Propose all those new features to the product team. $10K extra and the app's now iterated. Sales calls. Demos. Talking to more users. Nothing. The pattern keeps repeating itself during years. After a total of $85K spent on the project (software development, ads, content, PR), he's confused. "Why on earth am I getting zero revenue, if I've been talking to my users for years?" This is the misconception I was talking about. Talking to your users doesn't mean showing them what you have, and trying to come up with a magical way to add value to them with that existing solution you theoretically created for them. Talking to your users mean asking "what's your problem?" What's creating friction for you right now? What would an easier day to day look like for you? What's the biggest business goal? How are you getting there? Why? Those are the questions you need to ask your users. Before even building anything for them. This entrepreneur's vision was mixed up. "Product market fit" for him was delegating the product build to a team, and let them come up with innovative tech solutions that would help him attract more customers. In the meantime, his version of talking to his users was just doing meetings and pitching. Money spent so far: $85K. Revenue: nothing. The biggest lesson here is a simple one: If you're a founder, you can't delegate traction. Call it however you want. Product-Market fit. Offer validation. Business traction. The $100M offer. Every task around offer validation should be yours. Building a list of prospects can be delegated. Social media management can be delegated. Building a website can be delegated. But figuring out what to sell in the first place? No one will dare to know your customers or users as well as you do. And if you don't know them yet, then you need to spend more time with them. This is true for products, services, old industries, new industries, niches where there's a ton of room for technology, and AI or tech first contexts. No matter what type of business you're running, or trying to run, you can't delegate product-market fit. Useful stuff from the past week
Lesson of the weekMood elevation is a skill we all need to craft. Think about the little things you know that once done, will make you feel better. Especially if you show up and do them feeling down or on a bad mood, will make you feel much better afterwards. Of course the challenge is actually showing up those days you're feeling like shit. But the cool thing is that you already have proof about how positive the result will be. Some examples: a cold shower, a climbing session, a run, 15 minutes of yoga, journaling. If you made if here, thanks for reading. Feel free to share this with someone you know. See you next time, Juan Follow me to get the Daily Memo: And share this newsletter The Founder Memo goes out every Sunday. Join 1,000+ founders here. |
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A weekly industry memo for founders who refuse to build generic software. I’m sharing the frameworks, "Dark Arts," and product strategy we use at Jams to build high-fidelity products in the experience economy.
Hey, Juan here. If you made it here through my Founder Memo videos, thank you. This one's a bit more personal than the previous ones. I spent 4 nights in a remote area in northern Patagonia called Frey (Bariloche, Argentina). It was my most intense climbing experience. No phone signal. Lots of climbers and hikers from everywhere. Great sense of community. And an alpine paradise formed by a huge valley. All this creates a big sense of connection to the place. Here are 3 lessons from the trip...
Hey, Juan here. I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life building digital products. And I’m now convinced the biggest opportunities aren’t purely digital at all. Let’s dive in. 🧠 From the Lab The internet is getting weird. AI-generated articles are everywhere. Photos are fake. Sora and Meta are churning out AI videos. It’s a huge hall of mirrors. How do you know what’s real? Kevin Rose, relaunching the old social news site Digg, is obsessing over this. He calls it the “verification problem”....
Contrarian opinion: taking time off during a burnout is useless Last week I felt a huge burnout. Probably the biggest one in a year. And I was very close to letting go, shutting down the laptop and going on holidays. Luckily I didn't. Most people tend to need "breaks" every once in a while. Weekends completely off the grid. 1 or 2 week trips. An entire month off per year. At the same time, most people on the day to day tend to say out loud: "I just need a break". Or "I can't wait for the...