A first-person monologue from a startup founder who raised a seed round while in stealth and used those funds to build a mid-market ERP product without engaging external design partners. Six months into development they intentionally skipped traditional design partners, serving as their own initial design partner (because they would have been customers), which they say greatly increased development speed.
We actually raised a seed round while we were in stealth. Still 80% of the funds left from that seed round. And the first thing we did was we said, we're not going to go and think about what the next one's going to be. We're just going to put our heads down and build what is the best software that we would have loved. As customers of a mid market erp. And kind of six months in, we skipped all the design partners. Like typical in vc, they explained to you have to go to design partners and spend time with them and then they'll kind of dictate the future of the product. We said, we will be the first design partner for this because we would have been customers. And that just increased the speed of development by orders of magnitude.
Trust and Leadership Lessons for FP&A From 100+ Top Leaders with CFO Jon Laudie
