What Every (Pre-Revenue) Lean B2B Startup Should be Doing

The only things that matter early on are product-market fit and not running out of money. – Fred Lalonde, Hopper Co-Founder and CEO

In the early days of your B2B startup, customer development is the most important thing you can do.

You can build a product, raise money, hire a team, and incorporate your business, but if your product assumptions don’t match the market needs, you’ll eventually regret having done any of these things.

Your startup success depends on your ability to focus on finding the right product for the right market and not running out of money.

Analytics, responsive design, domain name, branding, press, etc are not keys to your success; without a product people want, the perfect press release or analytic setup won’t ever matter.

Forget about vanity metrics and think small. Product-market fit is when you have five passionate customers willing to vouch for your business. The temptation will be strong to start optimizing and building sales channels before reaching product-market fit, but resist it.

Don’t build a company before product-market fit. Keep you burn low.

Fred Lalonde’s list of things that don’t matter early on:

You can view his full presentation here.

More on B2B Startup Focus

• The Importance of Focus in B2B Startups
• Why B2B Startups Should Target SMBs First, Not Big Enterprises