Navigating the Startup Journey: How to Achieve Product-Market Success

Featured Image: Navigating the Startup Journey — How to Achieve Product-Market Success

In this episode of Product-Led Growth, host Thomas Watkins sits down with David Hirschfeld, CEO of Tekyz, to unpack the biggest mistakes B2B software startups make — and how to avoid them. Drawing from his work with over 90 startups, Hirschfeld introduces his “Launch First” methodology, emphasizing the power of early validation through pre-launch sales and focused customer engagement. The conversation challenges popular assumptions around freemium models, highlights the dangers of falling in love with the product instead of the problem, and provides a clear path to product-led growth through strategic, revenue-driven launches. Whether you’re an early-stage founder or refining your go-to-market strategy, this episode is packed with hard-won insights and actionable advice.

Chapters:

  • Introduction and Tekyz’ Focus (02:01)
  • The Biggest Mistake Founders Make (02:02)
  • Understanding Product-Market Fit (03:52)
  • The Problem with Free Versions (05:04)
  • Successful Go-to-Market Strategies (09:00)
  • Early Adopters and Pre-Launch Sales (11:00)
  • Product Advisory Boards and Equity (14:00)
  • Product-Solution Fit vs. Product-Market Fit (16:49)
  • Viral Growth and Freemium (18:00)
  • Niche Selection and Direct Sales (20:09)
  • Client Engagement and Launch Types (23:39)

Product-Led Growth: Avoiding Common Startup Mistakes

This discussion between host Thomas Watkins and David Hirschfeld, CEO of Tekyz, centers on common pitfalls B2B software startups face and strategies for achieving product-led growth. Hirschfeld, drawing on his 18 years of experience working with over 90 startups, shares his “Launch First” methodology, emphasizing early product-market fit validation and pre-launch sales.

The Biggest Startup Mistake: Late Validation

The primary reason for startup failure, according to Hirschfeld, is delaying product-market fit validation. True validation comes from generating revenue with a healthy margin, where the cost of customer acquisition is one-third or less of the customer lifetime value. This margin allows for reinvestment and scalable growth.

Falling in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution

Hirschfeld emphasizes the importance of focusing on the problem, not the solution. Successful founders “fall in love with the problem” and constantly engage with customers to understand their pain points. Conversely, failing founders become enamored with their product, neglecting genuine market needs. He uses the analogy of the “white coat” (clinician focused on the problem) versus the “black robe” (preacher focused on the product).

The Freemium Fallacy

Hirschfeld challenges the prevalent notion of freemium models, arguing they rarely work for startups. While successful freemium software exists, it requires pre-existing conversion metrics and substantial resources. He cautions against comparing oneself to giants like Google, whose reach and marketing budgets are unattainable for most startups. Instead, he advocates for charging for core value from the outset, especially when targeting enterprise clients.

The Launch First Methodology

Hirschfeld’s “Launch First” methodology prioritizes identifying a narrow early adopter niche. This allows for targeted messaging, higher pricing, and improved closing ratios. The process involves creating a high-fidelity prototype (a realistic design mockup) and conducting demos to secure pre-launch sales. Pre-launch offers might include lifetime licenses, premium support, or free implementation, incentivizing early adoption. This approach generates revenue, funds development, and creates a pool of invested beta users.

Product Solution Fit vs. Product Market Fit

Hirschfeld distinguishes between product solution fit and product-market fit. While product-market fit focuses on whether the market is receptive to the product’s value proposition, product solution fit assesses whether the product delivers on its promises and is used effectively. He stresses that product-market fit is validated through sales, not usage patterns.

Engaging with Tekyz

Tekyz offers a comprehensive suite of services, including development, design, and marketing funnel creation. Client engagement typically begins with a discovery call to assess the project’s stage and the founder’s approach. While some founders remain committed to their vision, Hirschfeld encourages a data-driven approach, emphasizing the importance of testing assumptions.

This discussion provides valuable insights for B2B software startups, highlighting the critical importance of early validation, problem-focused development, and strategic go-to-market strategies. Hirschfeld’s “Launch First” methodology offers a practical framework for achieving product-led growth by prioritizing pre-launch sales and building a strong foundation of invested early adopters. He can be reached at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.

Transcript

[0:11–0:19] Host: Welcome to Product-Led Growth Leaders, where we learn about the bold path of building digital products that sell themselves. Let’s listen to product leaders who can give us a glimpse into the innovative thinking process.

[0:20–0:35] Thomas Watkins: Showcasing and celebrating these awesome folks, I’m your host, UX and product design veteran, Thomas Watkins. Welcome to Product-Led Growth Leaders.

[0:35–0:51] Thomas Watkins: We’ve got a cool guest for the show today, David Hirschfeld. He has been a CTO, a CEO, a founder of a number of different companies. And today he is founder and CEO of Tekyz, which specializes in the accelerated launching of software companies.

[0:51–0:54] Thomas Watkins: We’re going to learn all about that. David, welcome to the show.

[0:54–0:56] David Hirschfeld: Thanks, Thomas. Thanks for having me on your show.

[0:56–1:02] Thomas Watkins: Yeah, so let’s start off with getting an idea of where you fit in the ecosystem of things.

[1:03–1:19] David Hirschfeld: Sure. So I started Tekyz 18 years ago. We’re a custom software development shop. I have since, and I’ve worked with over 90 startups during that time, although we do development for scale-ups and medium-sized businesses as well, but we’ve worked with a lot of startups.

[1:20–1:47] David Hirschfeld: And the vast majority, a few of them very successful, but the vast majority failed as a lot of B2B software startups do. And so I created a methodology specifically for B2B software startups called Launch First to help them go from concept to cash flow in just a few months through product, basically product-led sales even before you’ve developed the product as a way of proving product market fit.

[1:47–2:01] David Hirschfeld: because it’s always the — so I fit in the ecosystem as the software development company of record as well as an accelerator or coach for founders who are looking to start a software company.

[2:02–2:13] Thomas Watkins: So I was going to ask what most people are doing wrong, but the answer is implicit in what you said there, which is that are people not finding product market fit and what else are they getting wrong?

[2:13–2:28] David Hirschfeld: What they get wrong is waiting too long to validate product market fit. That’s the number one reason why founders fail, because they don’t. And the only way to prove that you have product market fit is that you’re selling enough product for something.

[2:29–2:49] David Hirschfeld: You’re generating revenue at a high enough margin that your cost to acquire a customer is about one third or less than what your lifetime value of that customer is worth. and you need that margin so that you can put money in a predictable manner so that you can scale your business by putting that margin back into the growth.

[2:49–3:01] Thomas Watkins: Okay, so they’re going the wrong route by not validating early on that there is a market, that they think there is this. Why are they doing this? Are they falling in love with the solution, not the problem kind of deal?

[3:01–3:15] David Hirschfeld: Oh, my gosh, that’s exactly why. In fact, I use that. I say that all the time. And founders who are serial entrepreneurs who are successful over and over again are founders who find a problem and fall in love with the problem.

[3:15–3:29] David Hirschfeld: And they spend all their time talking to customers about their problems. Founders that fail regularly are the ones that fall in love with this product and the solution and spend all their time talking about how great their product and solution is.

[3:30–3:46] David Hirschfeld: And unwinding that, I call it wearing the black robe because you’re out there preaching about your product. instead of wearing the white coat, which means that you’re a clinician. You see it as a science experiment, and you’re focusing on the problem, and you think of mitigation strategies for that problem.

[3:46–3:52] David Hirschfeld: The product just becomes the natural conclusion of that process, not the thing to be focused on.

[3:52–4:02] Thomas Watkins: Now, would you help founders? Are they across the board, industries, all different kinds of markets, I imagine? Give us a little bit of a landscape of the kinds of things.

[4:02–4:16] David Hirschfeld: Healthcare, FinTech, PropTech, law enforcement, entertainment, very broad smattering, manufacturing, logistics and distribution. People come up with the problems.

[4:16–4:31] David Hirschfeld: The best founders are the ones that are struggling with a problem themselves in their particular industry. And they can easily quantify the cost of that problem and the personal impact of that problem and what it would be worth to them to solve it.

[4:31–4:42] David Hirschfeld: And then they’re in an industry full of people exactly like them that are struggling with the same problem they’re struggling with and that they have some level of reach to those people in that industry.

[4:42–5:00] David Hirschfeld: Those founders are already halfway there in terms of being able to bring a product to market and turn it into a profitable business. and then it’s just a matter of staying focused on the problem and staying focused on those customers and not losing sight of the fact that the product is not important.

[5:00–5:04] David Hirschfeld: It’s the problem that’s important. I know it sounds weird, but that’s, yeah.

[5:04–5:18] Thomas Watkins: Because it’s so common, isn’t it, where you have someone who you have people all over the place who are smart. They are experts in their area. They come up with an idea that’s not a bad idea in theory, but they just fall in love with it.

[5:18–5:21] Thomas Watkins: They just start building it and spending time and money on it. Yeah, exactly.

[5:22–5:42] David Hirschfeld: And then they develop this big vision in their head about what the product needs to be to solve all the problems that it’s going to solve. And then they get an MVP done and a pitch deck, and they try to raise money and find out that they can’t raise money or that they’re spending six or nine months not doing anything to move their business forward while they’re trying to raise money.

[5:43–5:59] David Hirschfeld: So they put out free betas because they feel like the MVP is only a small part of the vision, And so they don’t feel justified in charging for this small piece of the, oh, these are every single one thing I just said are all mistakes that founders make.

[5:59–6:12] Thomas Watkins: I think that a lot of people, a lot of us start off like that, but then we work in software and we learn that just the world doesn’t work like that. The stuff you put out, way uglier, way more broken than what you originally thought.

[6:13–6:40] David Hirschfeld: You just have to get used to that. And then the question, is it more broken than it should be? or is this a reasonable place to be with our product? And a lot of founders that are non-technical founders get stuck there because they’re working with a poor software company that’s not delivering any kind of exceptional product or exceptional delivery or feedback or setting things on at expectation and being able to deliver on those things like that.

[6:40–7:14] David Hirschfeld: But that’s not the reason that most founders fail because you can work around that or get another company in that if that’s the case. It because they just don step back and say wait a minute I don have product market fit I should be always charging I shouldn have anything out there for free except in rare cases where it does make sense But free trials are not the way to get There so many problems that we could talk of and circle in on any one of these and spend some time talking about any one of these things and why they matter And I’m sure you’ve had these discussions with other people that you’ve had on your show too, right?

[7:15–7:26] Thomas Watkins: Yeah, let’s double click on that one actually because you’re right. There’s a bunch of places we can go. But the opinion that free versions is not the way to go, you have a lot of experience with this.

[7:26–7:39] Thomas Watkins: So I want to hear that. I want the audience to hear about it. You have wildly successful freemium softwares. You’ve got a lot of failing software, though, too, that offers too much for free and doesn’t convert it.

[7:39–7:43] Thomas Watkins: So what does that look like? What do you have to say, share there about your observations?

[7:44–7:59] David Hirschfeld: Premium makes sense if you already have metrics on conversion from premium to paid. Then it makes sense. It makes sense if you’re really going based on vision.

[7:59–8:12] David Hirschfeld: You’ve got something that’s completely new in the market and you have a vision of something. Now, I’m not saying it’s smart to do that, but it makes sense from the standpoint. If it’s going to be successful, then freemium will get you there.

[8:12–8:23] David Hirschfeld: But you’re one in 100, maybe one in 1,000 of those that will be successful if you’re basing it on your vision of what the future should be for this particular market and product.

[8:23–8:45] David Hirschfeld: And that’s not a good place to be for 99.9% of the founders out there. We’re not — I’m not Steve Jobs. None of my clients are Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or anybody that really has true vision and can turn that vision into a huge business reality.

[8:46–9:00] David Hirschfeld: It’s just so rare. Or the next viral sensation, the odds are against you in such a huge way that it’s not a smart direction to go if you’re trying to build something that’s very specific and that has value.

[9:01–9:13] David Hirschfeld: So the idea is if what you’re building has value, then focus on the core value initially. Your MVP should be that. And the market should be willing to pay for it right from the beginning.

[9:13–9:34] David Hirschfeld: If you’ve nailed down who the early adopter is, if you’ve nailed down what that value proposition is, if you’ve nailed down a solution that mitigates a problem where the founder feels a high sense of urgency, The founder, the buyer feels a high sense of urgency to correct the problem, and it costs them a lot because of that problem.

[9:35–9:46] David Hirschfeld: I was speaking with a founder just this week, this past week, who’s having some success selling a product, but it’s taken them way, way too long. The sales cycle’s too long.

[9:46–9:58] David Hirschfeld: The person who wants the product doesn’t have authority in their organization to make this big decision because it’s a big, expensive product. even though they’ve won all kinds of awards for this product.

[9:58–10:25] David Hirschfeld: He said the CEO has bought in usually, and I said, so why aren’t you selling to CEO? He said, they’re not the ones that are going to use it. I said, but if you figure out which CEOs and which companies can recognize the value of your product and get them excited about this, and it solves a big problem for them because this was a financial analysis product, and they were selling it to CFOs, then you can get something to happen quickly.

[10:26–10:41] David Hirschfeld: Otherwise, you’re getting the person who wants to use the product having to sell everybody else in his company, and that’s not going to be, and the sales cycle is long. And plus, if the CEO’s got different initiatives, you can’t get that CFO to make the effort.

[10:41–11:00] David Hirschfeld: Anyway, so this is just the case of not understanding who the early adopter is and what those buying triggers are that will cause somebody to write the check, write that. And if you’re a startup, you need that person, the person who will write the check immediately as soon as you show them the product or go through a couple steps.

[11:00–11:17] Thomas Watkins: So let’s talk about what are the normal successful early paths and go-to-markets that you see in the scope of what you’ve observed. Is it a launch partner where a company says, we really like what you build and we’re going to sign on early?

[11:17–11:27] Thomas Watkins: Is it you build something and you verify how, you know, when you get that first, you start, get that early stability. How do you do that normally in the successful cases you’ve seen?

[11:28–11:44] David Hirschfeld: So with Launch First, what we try to figure out, okay, like I said, we figure out who that early adopter niche is. And we try to make that niche very tight because the smaller you can make the niche and the better you can target, the more you can charge and the higher your closing ratio.

[11:44–11:57] David Hirschfeld: They’re like an inverse proportional relationship between those two things. So we nail down that niche, which there’s a lot of effort that goes into that, but that’s one of the very first things we do with launch first.

[11:57–12:08] David Hirschfeld: And then once we are confident who that niche is, then we’re fashioning a pre-launch sale and creating what I call a high-fidelity prototype.

[12:08–12:19] David Hirschfeld: Actually, I didn’t come up with that phrasing, but basically it’s a design prototype. It’s not real software, but when you demo it, the person you’re demoing to cannot tell they’re not looking at real software.

[12:19–12:33] David Hirschfeld: And it shows the full vision and all the critically high-value workflows that the person cares about. And you’re focusing. Then you do demos to those people. You come up with a high-value pre-launch purchase option for them.

[12:34–12:53] David Hirschfeld: And there’s a couple different ways of structuring this. But in general, it’s usually something like a lifetime license for if they buy 12 months or 18 months of the subscription fee in advance. They also part of the early adopters club and they get a tech support number that goes to one of the stakeholders in the business so that they can always get help on the product.

[12:53–13:13] David Hirschfeld: Or maybe they get free implementation, like in the case of clinical trial software, where the implementation of the software is as much or more than the software itself. or whatever the high-value trigger is, that stakeholder needs to secure for them to feel like if they don’t buy in now, they’re going to miss out on a big opportunity.

[13:14–13:26] David Hirschfeld: And if you’ve nailed down the early adopter properly and you’re solving a problem that matters enough, then they will buy in enough numbers at that point that you can prove that product market fit.

[13:27–13:41] David Hirschfeld: Are you, as opposed to just getting one partner that may believe in it, because that might be a fluke, You don’t know that until you go out and start to sell it to other people. And now you’re pushing off that validation process until after you’ve built the product.

[13:42–13:59] David Hirschfeld: Whereas if you do it this way you can without any question sell enough copies of your software and also generate revenue to help you fund development and give away an immeasurable fraction of your percent of your market in doing it instead of giving away 20 to raise Angel or Sebra

[14:00–14:13] Thomas Watkins: So you get early, real clients. You go through a whole testing process because a lot of that is validation and making sure you have a real problem using a lot of usability testing methods mixed with market discovery.

[14:14–14:16] Thomas Watkins: Are you a fan of product advisory boards?

[14:16–14:50] David Hirschfeld: only in validation not in design in other words if i’m designing my product well once we’ve created figured out who the early adopters in that process we’re recruiting we’re recruiting basically a focus group which is basically a ux advisory group but we’re doing it so that as we’re putting that prototype the design prototype together we’re getting feedback mostly just to Avoid having missed important things, not because we’re asking them what direction the product should go, because that will lead you in the wrong direction.

[14:50–15:05] David Hirschfeld: But we want to know for the things that we’re building, is this solving the problem? Did we miss something? Now we’re talking about product solution fit, not product market fit. But we need to make sure when we’re demoing the product that people are connecting to it.

[15:05–15:16] David Hirschfeld: So you get four or five people in this focus group, which can be one of those people, a couple of those people might end up being part of your advisory board as well.

[15:17–15:28] David Hirschfeld: So having an advisory board is good if the people on your advisory board understand what it takes to launch a company and launch a product and understand your industry to a certain degree.

[15:28–15:29] David Hirschfeld: Do you? Yeah.

[15:30–15:45] Thomas Watkins: I was just going to slide in there. do you recommend for founders to, if they get one, and have them as equity partners and having them have a physical stake in it, or do you find another way to compensate?

[15:47–15:58] David Hirschfeld: If you can find another way to compensate, that’s good. But advisory boards often require that they have some kind of equity stake for you to get them to recruit an advisory board.

[15:59–16:09] David Hirschfeld: So, yes, I think advisory boards are great, but it does push you into the position of having to raise money because now you’re given equity away.

[16:09–16:23] David Hirschfeld: And so you have to have that raising money structure in place, right? So that’s the only negative about advisory board. However, but if you’re going to raise money, you really need one because you need to show your team to whoever you’re raising money from.

[16:23–16:40] David Hirschfeld: and the advisory board’s an important part of your team that you’re raising money around. But if you’re going to launch first, you don’t necessarily need an advisory board, at least not initially, because you can start to generate revenue and get customers and basically self-fund through pre-launch sales.

[16:40–16:53] David Hirschfeld: And now you’re building up a bunch of highly invested beta users so that when the product is out, they’ve already paid for it. they’re going to be really invested in testing the product and giving you real feedback.

[16:54–17:10] David Hirschfeld: And then your MVP is about product solution fit, not product market fit, where you’re just making sure that now we know what value they bought into. Is it delivering that value or not? Are they engaging with the product or not? Because that’s what you care about once the MVP goes out.

[17:10–17:14] David Hirschfeld: You hopefully at that point have nailed product market fit down solidly.

[17:15–17:29] Thomas Watkins: So product market fit, that’s what you’re saying, PMF. We all hear that. term, but product solution fit, don’t hear that term as often. That has to do with the delivery and how the market’s receiving it.

[17:30–17:41] David Hirschfeld: Is the product doing what it’s promised and is it being received in the right way? Exactly. That’s product solution fit. And people mix up product market fit and product solution fit all the time.

[17:41–17:55] David Hirschfeld: Product market fit is not about how people use the product. It’s about whether they’re buying your message. That’s product and buying the product. And if they’re not, why? So that’s all product market fit is.

[17:55–17:58] David Hirschfeld: And you only know you’ve got it when people are buying it, when you’ve got sales.

[18:00–18:11] Thomas Watkins: When people aspire to be freemium, obviously their argument is going to be, we want viral growth. We want this to spread. And you’re pointing out that’s just not the right thing for most people.

[18:11–18:37] Thomas Watkins: 99% of the time, you’re not going to have the resources to pull it off. Should people, let’s say it’s a B2B enterprise, they launch successfully, have maybe five high-paying clients, should they aspire to getting their software to the point where, hey, we can offer this on the website, have people click and start using it, or is that just something that people should not aspire to?

[18:37–18:41] David Hirschfeld: Give me a context in terms of a type of specific product.

[18:41–18:54] Thomas Watkins: Yeah, so let’s say that it’s a software that causes some — it solves some common industry problem that, I don’t know, procurement managers –

[18:54–18:57] David Hirschfeld: For what size companies? For enterprise or for small companies?

[18:57–19:09] Thomas Watkins: Okay, so that’s telling me that’s a big part of the discussion, isn’t it? It’s what size you’re targeting. Okay, so you’re targeting gigantic mega companies, and that’s the only one signing the contract. Is that the bad fit for freemium?

[19:10–19:22] David Hirschfeld: Yeah, totally. Yes, you don’t go after enterprise with freemium. I guess you could, but I think you’d be crazy. That’s your only market strategy. So let’s say it’s something like a business intelligence tool.

[19:22–19:44] David Hirschfeld: Let’s say Google Looker. Google Looker. So that is going after everybody, right? And they do have a freemium version of it. They’re also Google. And so they have reach that most people don’t have, and they can market products with massive budgets, even if it’s just to test the market, right?

[19:44–19:55] David Hirschfeld: So they want enterprise, and they also want small to medium businesses, and they want startups and entrepreneurs, and they want it across lots of different verticals in terms of business.

[19:55–20:09] David Hirschfeld: That’s different. That’s a completely different type of freemium. And people compare themselves against things like this all the time, and they shouldn’t, because you don’t have, you as a startup founder, are not going to have the resources available or the reach.

[20:09–20:29] David Hirschfeld: So you really have to pick a niche and a focus. So if you’re going after enterprise, that’s a direct sale model, right? You can’t sell the enterprise from a premium model. If you’re going after small to medium businesses, then you need to figure out what niche you’re going to focus on initially and what problem are you going to solve.

[20:29–20:59] David Hirschfeld: So if I am selling a product like what I was just talking about a business intelligence tool and I am a founder of a new product okay now I going to think okay I going to go after small to medium businesses Let say that my market because I solving a particular problem I had in the past with a tool like this So what are all the different type niches that I can go after that are something that either I’m familiar with or I know could use a tool in the way I’m thinking for

[20:59–21:33] David Hirschfeld: aggregating social media? Maybe that’s the thing I’m going to pipeline that I’m going to focus on first. And so small to medium-sized businesses, which are the ones that are super reliant on social media today. Let’s pick something like restaurants because restaurants live or die on their ratings, right? So social media is killer. And food trucks and things like, okay, so I’m going to go after restaurants. I’m going to go after small to medium-sized restaurants or maybe small chains that maybe somebody owns three or four or five restaurants in that. But that’s going

[21:33–22:11] David Hirschfeld: to be my focus. Maybe I’m going to focus on one type of food, like Mexican food. So I’m just going to go after Mexican restaurants. So if I think of all the different niches just in the restaurant business, right, high-end restaurants, fast food, Mexican, Italian, like that, because if I’m an Italian restaurant, I am competing against every other Italian restaurant around, right? So that’s a niche. And so if I am trying to reach my customer and I’ve got a solution that speaks specifically to Mexican restaurant owners who have two or more restaurants, two to five restaurants

[22:11–22:43] David Hirschfeld: who are in a particular Southern California, for example, right? That might be 10,000 restaurants. I have no idea. There’s a lot of Mexican restaurants here. Now I can craft a message to those restaurants that speaks directly to those owners, right? And shows a specific business value proposition around social media to Mexican food lovers, right? And why I’m giving them the kind of business intelligence that they can make quick decisions that will bring in more people

[22:43–23:02] David Hirschfeld: and get them higher ratings in the restaurant that works specifically for Mexican food locations, right? So now I’m an owner of a restaurant like that. I’m leaning forward because he’s addressing a specific problem statement that I care about that matters to me.

[23:02–23:13] David Hirschfeld: So I’m leaning forward because I hate losing people that don’t go to mine, they go to somebody else’s because of social media, because I’m not targeting profit, whatever the reason is, right?

[23:13–23:28] David Hirschfeld: And the cost to me is very high because I’m losing business to some restaurant nearby and I’ve got all my pipelines specifically customized already for the Mexican restaurant world in Southern California.

[23:29–23:38] David Hirschfeld: Now I’m offering a unique solution with a high value, and I can charge more for it, and I can go out and test the market and see if I can get some pre-launch sales for that.

[23:39–23:54] Thomas Watkins: So clearly a wealth of experience here to apply to these different things. When you’re engaging with folks, how do you roll your clients into this? Do you give them a diagnostic on, hey, I think this is where you need help, or just a simple discovery call to figure out what needs to happen?

[23:55–23:55] Thomas Watkins: How does that come together?

[23:55–24:09] David Hirschfeld: It’s usually just a simple discovery call. It depends on where they are in their project, right? If they’re at the concept stage and we haven’t started design yet, then I always bring this conversation up if they want to go this direction.

[24:09–24:21] David Hirschfeld: Not everybody does. A lot of people just believe in their vision. They have a vision and they believe in their product, which is unfortunate because, you know, they’re usually wrong. because they’re wearing the black robe, not the white coat.

[24:22–24:35] David Hirschfeld: They may believe in their product, believe in their vision and their product, but they’re wearing a white coat and they recognize they need to test all these assumptions, right? And they recognize they are all assumptions and still want to build their product.

[24:35–24:46] David Hirschfeld: But they have a way of going about, they’re very disciplined in doing a very slim MVP with the idea they’re going to use that to test product market fit.

[24:46–24:57] David Hirschfeld: And that’s valid too. It’s more expensive and higher risk approach, but it’s much easier and more fun, right? And fun from the standpoint of people want to build a product because it’s cool, right?

[24:57–24:59] David Hirschfeld: They got this. It feels good to build your product.

[24:59–25:11] Thomas Watkins: It’s so common. It is. You fall in love with it and you just have to stay sober because if you love your money, you’re not going to throw it out the window just pursuing a dream like that. Do you provide everything in-house?

[25:11–25:18] Thomas Watkins: You’ve got developers and then you do the coach. Do you have the designers? And then how do you? Yeah, we do it all in-house.

[25:18–25:32] David Hirschfeld: Yeah, even building out the marketing funnel once we believe we understand who the early adopter niche is for testing pre-launch. We don’t do the sales. That’s the client’s job. And they need to be the one that’s speaking to the customer and hearing what they’re saying when they’re not buying.

[25:33–25:48] David Hirschfeld: And sales can look like a lot of different things. It can be a one-on-one demos. It can be webinar-based demos where they’re marketing to a community of potential users. A lot has to do with the product and the value proposition of how much you’re charging for that pre-launch sale.

[25:48–25:59] David Hirschfeld: And there are even different types of launches. Some launches are classic pre-launch where the product won’t be out for three to four months after they buy their pre-launch version of it.

[25:59–26:16] David Hirschfeld: Or the concierge launch, which is where we’re going to start providing the service immediately. We cobble together some workflows and maybe a WordPress and Google Sheets and some automation to help them manage the service.

[26:16–26:29] David Hirschfeld: And then we do a lot of things manually. and then we start building the product once we’ve got enough clients on the product, on the service. But we’re still demoing the design, this vision of the product that we have.

[26:29–26:43] David Hirschfeld: That’s what we demo to people and sell them. And then we start to deliver that functionality to them over the next few months. But they get to take advantage of the service immediately because maybe it’s one that they just can’t wait to three or four months to do.

[26:43–26:44] David Hirschfeld: Excellent.

[26:44–26:52] Thomas Watkins: We know we’ve been talking to David Hirschfeld of Tekyz Corp. That’s T-E-K-Y-Z. Where can people find you, David?

[26:53–27:04] David Hirschfeld: You can find me at david at Tekyz.com, which, again, is T-E-K-Y-Z.com. I’m easy to find on LinkedIn, David Hirschfeld. And so you can find me in those places.

[27:04–27:14] David Hirschfeld: And I’ve been interviewed quite a lot lately on various podcasts. You might find me on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

[27:14–27:16] Thomas Watkins: Nice, nice. Doing the circuit.

[27:17–27:19] David Hirschfeld: Doing the circuit, exactly. That’s right.

[27:19–27:24] Thomas Watkins: Good, good stuff. All right, David, thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your insights.

[27:24–27:26] David Hirschfeld: Thanks, Thomas. I appreciate you having me on.

[27:32–27:37] Host: Thank you for tuning in. Join us next time on Product-Led Growth Leaders. Take care.

David Hirschfeld, Tekyz Founder

David Hirschfeld founded Tekyz, a company dedicated to transforming business software development. With over 30 years of experience, his journey began with a physics degree from UCLA and a successful sales career at Computer Associates. After launching and selling his first software company in 2000, David found his passion for empowering entrepreneurs.

He developed the Launch 1st™ methodology, which focuses on generating revenue before coding begins. This helps startups gain traction while minimizing risks. With a commitment to innovation and collaboration, David leads Tekyz in providing AI-powered development and SaaS solutions, making a meaningful impact in the tech world.

Tekyz is set to launch two new AI applications: one for automating the Launch 1st Methodology Niche Analysis and Estimiz, an AI-based project estimation tool. Outside of work, David enjoys golfing and woodworking.

You can learn more about David Hirschfeld and Tekyz by following his LinkedIn profile — David Hirschfeld’s LinkedIn Profile.

For more information about Tekyz’s services and how they can help you harness the power of AI in healthcare, visit tekyz.com or contact the founder directly at [email protected].


Navigating the Startup Journey: How to Achieve Product-Market Success was originally published in Tekyz Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.