Advice I wish I Received Earlier
4 pieces of advice I wish I had received earlier as a designer / founder:
Your sales team will likely know your users better than anyone:
Doing tons of customer interviews feels great, but often a 10 minute conversation with your sales team can yield 90% of the feedback you could have received from customers. Your sales team is likely talking to dozens of customers every day and can be a gold mine for customer insights.
Intuition often trumps A/B testing:
We've all been there—faced with a design dilemma, unable to choose between different options.
“We can just A/B test it!”
This sounds great, but it can become a crutch for decision-making. Seasoned designers possess an innate sense of what works based on their experience. They've been down this road before and don't always need to rely heavily on A/B testing to make informed design decisions.
Empower designers and engineers to think like product managers:
To create a cohesive product that aligns with your company's overall strategy, it's crucial to empower your designers and engineers to wear the "PM" hat. Encourage them to think deeply about how their work contributes to the broader goals of the company. Those who operate in isolation or simply follow a product manager's directives will never hit their full potential.
Avoid Perfectionism:
In the world of product development, perfectionism can be your worst enemy. Taking a rough idea from sketch to execution as quickly as possible should be your #1 goal. Especially if you're still working on achieving product-market fit, you need to experiment with tons of ideas. The speed at which you iterate and build your product is one of the key indicators of success for early stage companies.