Founders starter 5 years ago, built 10+ companies. We are a startup studio - a company that builds companies. This presentation is not your usual SaaS success story presentation. It’s not about how we reached $1 million MRR. Pre product-market fit is hard and tedious. So in this presentation, we focus on our failures. And what we can learn from them. That is what got us to our wins at Founders.

1. Founders
April 2017
Your Way
Out of the
Dark
How to do Pre Product-Market Fit
growth
Simon Sylvest - co-founder at Founders

2. Founders
2017
THIS IS USELESS

3. Founders
2017
Pre
Product-Market Fit
Post Product-Market
Fit

4. Founders
April 2017

5. Founders
2017
Wonderwerk
CUELY
Founders is
based on our
experiences
from building
15+ companies
and tools

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2017
Failure… The tech community likes to focus on
the secret hacks that magically get you to $1
million MRR. That’s bullshit.

7. Founders
2017
Instead, we should focus on our failures. And
what we can learn from them. That is what got us
to our wins at Founders.

8. Founders
2017
The 3 pillars of the Founders Growth Model
Distribution Research
Growth
Machine
Founders Growth Model
Growth
Memo
Preparation Process Discipline

9. Founders
2017
Experimenting with channels and then finding the
ones that work.

10. Founders
2017
Mistake #1: Jump in the red ocean

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2017
Learning #1: Sharpen the axe before you cut
down the tree
- No reason to reinvent the wheel - use the tips and tricks
you can to X-Ray the market into how they get their
customers

12. Founders
2017
Framework #1: Distribution Research
Your
company
x
Competitors and
peers
y
z
...
Distribution Research
- Traffic
- SoMe
- Communities
- Content
- Referrals
- Search
Competitor
growth
insights
x
Growth Ideas
Y
Z
….

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2017
Mistake #2: Oh, what about this one?

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2017
Learning #2: Focus, focus, focus
- No reason to reinvent the wheel - use the tips and tricks
you can to X-Ray the market into how they get their
customers

15. Founders
2017
Framework #2: Founders Growth Machine
Backlog Experiment Doc Pipeline

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2017
Mistake #3: Under-evaluating the power of discipline

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2017
Learning #3: The power of writing things down
- We all suck at going through what we need to do, this
format helps all companies to focus on what they should
be focusing.

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2017
Northstar tracking
Last sprint focus
Last sprint agreements
This sprint agreements
This sprint focus
Framework #3: Founders Growth Memo

19. Founders
2017
The 3 pillars of the Founders Growth Model
Distribution Research
Growth
Machine
Founders Growth Model
Growth
Memo
Preparation Process Discipline

20. Founders
2017
growth.founders.as
@simonsylvest Simon Sylvest
Founders Fieldnotes