Welcome back to NoteLoft Newsletter - the shortcut for founders who want to go from MVP to scale. My goal is to share what actually works when building software, so you can spend more time on deals, growth, and scaling your startup.
If you need help taking your product from MVP to scale, get in touch! We’ve grown our tech team, and we can’t wait to help you.
Let’s get into it!
The most successful founders I’ve worked with over the past decade are comfortable with hearing the word “no”. They hear it from investors, they hear it from potential users, and they hear it from engineers.
But they keep going. Because they understand the value of the word “no”. No is really feedback they can use to get to the next level. And they always want to get to the next level. Despite a graveyard of “nos”, They go on to raise millions of dollars, they acquire hundreds of thousands of users, and they build software that doesn’t have to be re-built every six months.
I find that founders who aren’t as comfortable with the word don’t get as far. They don’t raise enough money to keep their dreams alive; they don’t adjust to user feedback ( which means leaving money on the table) and their builds are always over budget and over time. Because they want to be right more than they want to be successful. Or they want to be successful, but need to fix their mindset.
As someone whose written code for over a decade, I’ve had to tell many founders no. Sometimes I’ve had to tell them that their ideas were good but not great; other times that their ideas were a threat to the company.
I want to make sure that you know when your engineers push back on your ideas, its coming from a good place. Here are some reasons your engineers might tell you no:
- something foundational to your software is missing, and they need to build that first
- something is broken. They need to fix that first.
- there's a simpler / faster / more efficient way to get the outcome that you want
- the thing you're asking them to do goes against best practices
- your solution won't scale, and you have a massive waitlist or tons of users
- your solution won't pass a compliance review
See you soon,
LaToya
