When things aren’t working

and you don’t know why they’re not working

Hi all —

In recent weeks, I’ve chatted with a few early-stage founders who are all grappling with the hardest startup problem there is:

“We’re not growing and I don’t know what the problem is.”

When prospects aren’t buying, or when you’re not getting enough meetings, it could be because:

• You’re targeting the wrong kind of customer

• You’re targeting the wrong persona at the right customer

• Your messaging / positioning is off

• Your product isn’t right

• Your sales execution isn’t good

• Etc etc etc etc etc

At a startup, you have ALL of these problems and more. So the question is: What should I prioritize to ignite growth?

The “sounds right but is wrong” answer says to do a bunch of analysis to figure out the true source of your problem. Like many things, this answer makes sense in theory but breaks down in practice. In a startup, you don’t and won’t have enough data to locate the root of your problem. More likely you’ll spend weeks analyzing with no clear result. Or worse, you’ll come up with additional work for your team “testing hypotheses” that will never generate real signal.

Which brings me to my recommendation for founders at this stage: You need to be personally responsible for generating and attending a firehose of meetings with potential customers.

Why? Because if you intuitively understand your buyers in their context, you’ll know what your business needs to do. And the only way to intuitively understand your buyers in their context is through a high velocity of conversations.

These conversations can be pure discovery and information-sharing. And like discovery calls, they may morph into sales conversations right now or at some point in the future. Many won’t become sales but could give you the sparks for new ideas. And a lot will be uncomfortable and useless. Some days you’ll hate the outreach, the awkwardness, and me for telling you to do this.

But in total, these conversations will give you the direction you need to grow, the contacts you need to sell, and the street cred that you made it happen.

So you, founder, who has pawned off outreach and discovery calls to your employees, and can’t figure out why you’re not growing: it’s time to own this yourself.

Go make it happen.