5 product lessons to learn before you write a line of code

Published April 13, 2021

Before a startup can achieve product-market fit, founders must first listen to their customers, build what they require and fashion a business plan that makes the whole enterprise worthwhile. The numbers will tell the true story, but when it happens, you’ll feel it in your bones because sales will be good, customers will happy and revenue will growing.

Reaching that tipping point can be a slog, especially for first-time founders. To uncover some basic truths about building products, we spoke to three entrepreneurs who have each built more than one company:

Pouyan Salehi, CEO and co-founder, Scratchpad
Rami Essaid, CEO and founder, Finmark
Melonee Wise, CEO and co-founder, Fetch Robotics

Find out what your customers want — and build it

First-time founders often try to build the product they think the market wants. That’s what Scratchpad co-founder Salehi did when he founded his previous startup PersistIQ. Before launching his latest venture, he took a different approach: Instead of plowing ahead with a product and adjusting after he got in front of customers, he decided to step back and figure out what his customers needed first.

“Tactically what we did differently at Scratchpad is we tried to be much more deliberate up front. And what that looked like was [ … ] to not start with building, even though the product is such an important part, but really step back and understand what we are doing here in the first place,” he said.