We started Rivalry at the beginning of the year and are off to a steady start.
We have two big accomplishments. First, finding some of the top talent (.01%) in the city to build our MVP. Second, we have very credible and smart customers we’re building the MVP around.
At the beginning stages of building a company, a CEO’s decision-making discipline is tested significantly. There’s large amounts of excitement starting a new company and the potential to run a million miles in every direction is very real.
Staying focused on your people, customers, and product is most important — in that order. The people have the skills to build the product, the customers tell you what to build, and the product is in the execution.
One factor that’s often over looked in building a company is picking early customers. If you’re a good CEO and have built a bit of buzz around what you’re doing, people are going to want to “try it out” and “be a beta customer.” Six months down the road, that may be okay, but chasing a customer who’s not the ideal fit for the company’s vision could be very debilitating, especially in the MVP stage.
Not only are you chasing features that are inconsistent from one customer to the next, but you’re going to drive your dev team insane.
Staying focused on your team, your customers (2-3 is ideal to build an MVP in B2B SaaS), and the product is important for starting out.
Pick your first customers wisely.