What should early-stage startups build first?

Eric Ries

Chair, LTSE Services · Long-Term Stock Exchange

Customer Need

Eric Ries says what makes an MVP useful is how well it serves a customer need, not how beautiful or polished it is.

Alex Konrad

Founder and Editor · Upstarts Media

A Valuable Product People Love

Alex Konrad's answer is to build a valuable product people love that helps them, not obsess over the biggest number, since he says success can be a $5 billion or smaller company with impact.

Sam Stephenson

Founder · Granola

Daily Value for Users

Sam Stephenson says the goal should be whether the person actually gets daily value out of it, not just shipping, because building things is easy now and the details matter.

Peter Morelli

Co-founder and CEO · Bitdrift

Understanding the Customer

Peter Morelli says founders should understand their customer deeply and spend more time with them than they have, because engineers tend to focus on the technology rather than the customer and the story.

The answer starts at 32:39.

Sam Kroonenburg

CEO & Co-Founder · Cuttable

Paying Customers

Sam Kroonenburg says early-stage startups should prioritize paying customers, since free beta users don't reveal whether they'll pay and paying customers' feedback shows you're solving their problem.

The answer starts at 27:49.

Will Ahmed

Founder & CEO · Whoop

Prioritize the Problem

Will Ahmed says early-stage startups should prioritize the problem, not the idea, and obsess over it, because he focused on how impactful solving the problem could be rather than the outcome.

Dan Martell

Founder & CEO · Martell Ventures

Customers' Problems

Dan Martell says early-stage founders should fall in love with customers' problems instead of their solution, because that's what he needed to learn and understand how customers wanted their pain solved.

The answer starts at 17:09.

Sam Altman

Chief Executive Officer · OpenAI

Audit Your Own Adoption Gap

Sam Altman says to audit your own adoption gap first, checking your own habits before anyone else's, if even the person who built Codex still can’t fully use it.

Victor Cardenas Codriansky

Co-Founder, CEO · Slash

Code and Talk to Customers

Victor Cardenas Codriansky says early-stage founders should just focus on writing code and talking to their customers.

Aizada Marat

CEO & Founder · Alma

Real Problem

Aizada Marat says the most important thing is to think about the problem they want to solve—whether it's a real problem, a nice-to-have or a must-have—because founders can fall in love with the idea too early.

Yoni Avital

Co-founder & COO · Controlup

Validate Customer Pain

Yoni Avital says the biggest thing is to work directly with customers to validate pain points and solutions, because ideas imagined in a garage may not hold up in reality.

Temirlan Rakhmetzhanov

Co-Founder & CEO · Armeta

Validate with Customers

Temirlan Rakhmetzhanov says founders should validate the product with the market before building it, saying his own earlier startups failed because he built in silence without customer feedback. He now sells a feature before developing it.

Gabrielle Marquez

Founder Solutions Lead · Finstrat Management

Talk to Customers

Gabrielle Marquez says the key lesson is to talk to your customers and ask what’s important and what problems they have, because there’s no substitute for it and you shouldn’t assume someone will pay to solve a problem.

David Politis

Co-Founder · Not Another CEO

First Customers

David Politis says early-stage startups should prioritize getting their first customers, arguing the founder is in charge of sales for the first 10 and cannot outsource acquiring them.