Ego off, learning on.

Last week we ran our 4th Product Jam with our partner Innovate Charlotte, a full day workshop experience for 5 early-stage startups that we host quarterly here in North Carolina.

During the event I had the opportunity to moderate an awesome panel discussion with John Espey (Chief Growth Officer at Macedon), Winston Len (Managing Partner at Equator Venture), Derek Wang (Co-Founder/CEO at Taalk), and Bart Cant (Founder/CEO at Msg2Ai). Also, a few weeks ago I got to sit down with my friend Juan Garzón (Managing Director at Innovate Charlotte) on the Building Great Experiences podcast to chat about startups and AI.

It’s pretty clear from these conversations.. the startup playbook is being completely upended right now.

For years the approach for startups looked like this: create a pitch deck, go raise capital with investors, hire a team, build the thing, ship it, and (hopefully) learn/validate and prove product-market fit so you can scale.

That playbook is becoming harder and harder. Investors want real proof. They want to see traction with real customers first. They want to know that your company won’t get swallowed up in the AI “sea of sameness.”

In this week’s newsletter, I’ll unpack this a bit more and share some of the things I’ve been seeing/hearing in the startup universe over the past year.

Speed & evidence > ideas.

For years aspiring entrepreneurs/founders/startups would go to these long multi-week/month accelerators where they nibble at topics and spend a lot of time talking and not a lot of time doing/executing. They’d get coaching to refine their pitch and focus on getting investor ready.

Now startups that focus energy on solving customer problems and getting real traction (in the form of sales and adoption) are winning and scaling without needing investment up front.

That’s what we’ve been trying to amplify with Product Jam since September last year. In a single day we help companies clarify where to strategically focus their energy based on their competitive differentiators, then develop a clear approach to win in their market, and rapidly prototype a real solution to test with customers/users.

AI tools are truly compressing the time it takes to get proof customers will pay you. At no other time in history could you go from ideas on a napkin to legitimate money-making product/business in a single day.

What keeps surprising founders is that you can actually put all of this together in 1 day and get people to try it the same day..

Putting this into action

• Prototype a small, bite-sized solution and test with real customers today. Not friends who will be nice and tell you what you want to hear. Find real buyers who will say yes/no. Capture the exact words they use when they hesitate or when they light up. Iterate and keep testing.

• Pick one decision to test now. For example, “Will customers connect to a data source? Will they prepay? Is it so useful/valuable that they’ll change from the status quo?”

Replace pitch decks with proof.

During Product Jam, the panelists were super candid. So many startups slap AI on their product now.. it’s not special. Investors want proof and repeatability. They want to see customers paying for the same outcome again and again. If your best proof is a deck showing a bunch of words, it’ll be reeealllly hard to get buy-in and raise capital (or get budget if you’re trying to sell internally). Prove that people want it, period. Use screenshots of Stripe/Quickbooks (or whatever you’re using to accept payments), show customer reviews, share your P&L, and provide videos of people using your product/solution.

One panelist told a story about his 1st company. It was a services company that required lots of capital and effort that created minimal pull with customers.. it was a slog. This time around he’s focused on building a product, keeping the team small, and has watched revenue grow exponentially because customers come back by themselves.

Putting this into action

• Gather 5 “receipts” to share with investors/stakeholders (i.e., proof that customers want what your’e selling). This could be a live demo link, clips of customers saying what changed for them, a billing screenshot, a page on unit economics, sales #’s, etc.

• Raise money (or ask for budget) only after you can run on sales for a while. Having options changes investor conversations.

• One creative idea from a panelist was inviting happy customers to invest in your business with $5-10K checks.

Your company is the product.

A favorite line from the panel, “Product-market fit is not just your tool (app, software, etc.). Your company is the product.” This includes your reputation, your people, your support, your quality, your speed.. everything. There has to be market-fit for the whole thing.

This shows up everywhere. In the way you answer a customer support ticket. In contracts that are simple and human. In a sales motion that teaches and makes customers feel smart. In a brand that makes people smile because it feels like it was made by someone with taste. Buyers remember how your product made their day easier and their lives better, not necessarily the AI model or features that powered it.

In our recent podcast episode, Juan and I talked about a local team that moved from events into a sales intelligence product. They didn’t sell the algorithm, they sold confidence before meetings and let the experience of the product do the work.

Putting this into action

• Ask every customer one question, “Why did you hire us?” Use the exact words on your website and sales materials.

• Implement 1 daily delight for customers. This might be a shortcut, a prefilled form field, a moment where the app says “I already did this for you.”

Ego checks & pivot discipline.

The most honest parts of the panel were about ego. As a founder/executive, you have to be stubborn about the vision BUT open minded that your 1st path might be wrong. Waiting too long to pivot hurts companies. Pivots are not a sign you failed, they’re a sign you’re listening to your customers and the market.

We also talked about posture. Unanimously everyone agreed that vulnerability wins. As a founder/CEO/executive, don’t buy into the lie that you need to be the toughest person in the room. Saying “I don’t know yet” is okay to say and builds trust/loyalty.

Putting this into action

• Write down 3-5 pivot triggers in advance so you have something on paper to refer to when things get hard. Maybe this is customer churn above a certain threshold after 3 months. Or maybe it’s your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to Lifetime Value (LTV) is below a certain dollar amount. Or maybe it’s fewr than a certain # of customers or revenue after a set number of product releases.

• Run 2-week sprints when you see a promising fork. Define success before you start. Kill or double down on day ten.

• Recalculate the life you want.. Growth/scale with the ultimate goal of being acquired/selling? Profitable lifestyle business that’s calm and fun? Choose on purpose.

Provide a differentiated brand & experience focused on value/adoption.. not meaningless metrics.

Another panel zinger, “there’s no blue ocean anymore” (i.e., everything’s been done). The second you launch the MVP of a digital product, 100s of people can clone you with Cursor/Claude Code.

The companies that are winning are creating a ton of value for their customers and focusing their energy on differentiated brand and experience. This makes their product/business memorable and adoption effortless. The products that slip into obscurity are just plain “meh.” They be mildly helpful, but if no one remembers or they look/feel like everything else.. they’ll be forgotten.

Focus on building an experience they actually need/want, will pay for, make their lives better AND they’ll remember.

Putting this into action

• Map the “last mile” before you build a feature. For example, where will a customer discover it? How will they try it? How will they “win” and get value? What will make it unique/memorable?

• For your 1st customers, over invest time and energy to really blow their minds. Adoption is a feature.

• Measure the time it takes for customers to ge their 1st “win” in the product. Put some hard metrics around it and monitor closely like it’s cash.

Capital is a tool, not a trophy.

I loved the transparent discussion during the panel around raising capital. Plain and simple, fundraising is not free money. You are taking someone else’s money, which comes with expectations. Somehow this very important fact gets missed/forgotten. Raise ONLY when you know exactly what capital will help you achieve, not because you can.

Media loves headlines about founder/startups/companies that raised a bunch of money, but real builders love EBITDA (profit). The best company is the one that can be self sustaining where fundraising is optional.

TL;DR - Focus on building a real, profitable business.. not getting a big check that sounds good in the headlines but comes with investors expecting big results fast.

Putting this into action

• Paying customers = capital. If you want to accelerate cashflow, consider offering a promotional discount to get money in the door that you can reinvest in the business. That’s capital too.

• If you’re going to raise capital, start by writing down what you will say to investors while raising. For example, “We’ll use $XXX to expand into 2 channels we’ve already proven. We expect a payback in X months/years based on Y conversion rates.”

AI everywhere, but stay human first.

I’ve heard countless stories at this point of a single person using AI to build/launch a digital product with immediate market fit and customer traction. The tools are getting better by the day and I encourage everyone to look for every opportunity to leverage it to help you do work faster and more efficiently so you can focus on the higher value things.

That said, no matter how fast you get with AI.. judgement, discernment, relationships, and taste are still the most important factors for businesses today. The human layer that sets expectations and keeps promises are more important than ever. The future belongs to teams that combine AI-powered speed with human judgment and warmth.

Putting this into action

• Use a note taker (seriously this is probably the 5th time I’ve said this in the newsletter because most of you still haven’t done this yet 🫣). Connect it to other tools using Zapier, n8n, etc. Make it so that every meeting summary is auto-captured and categorized, tracked in your CRM, and creates tasks in your project management tool. You’ll walk out of meetings lighter, I promise.

• Think differently about the questions you ask AI. Treat it like an advisor or collaborator. Ask things like “Challenge my proposal with 20 questions before I share with a customer.”

• Think about specific tasks you could delegate to a recent college grad, then recreate as an AI agent. Maybe it’s a growth analyst that shares a weekly marketing report. Or maybe it’s an executive assistant that sends calendar invites and triages your inbox.

• Pick one AI tool to use. Use it daily for a month. Then add a second. Momentum beats overwhelm.

• Turn every expert you follow into a just in time course. For example, ask something like “Teach me the 3 most important product marketing moves for a 5-person startup. Use examples from my last three emails. Give me a checklist I can run this week.”

• Do live customer research with AI in the room. Draft three discussion guides. Let the model listen and suggest follow ups you are too close to see.

Wrapping up

It’s exciting to watch the startup and product playbooks being rewritten in realtime. I’ve absolutely loved talking shop with other leaders to hear how they’re applying these things with their teams, customers, and businesses.

To wrap this all up, I thought I’d share some of my favorite takeaways from the Product Jam Panel and my podcast convo with Juan.

• Prove value with real users fast. Aim to get a thin slice in hands and learn within a day.

• Replace pitch decks with proof. Show receipts.. usage, revenue, and customer clips over slides.

• Treat the whole company as the product. Brand, people, support, and adoption matter more than features.

• Be stubborn on vision and flexible on path. Check ego, invite vulnerability, and pivot on evidence.

• Use AI as a collaborator, not a gimmick. Let speed come from AI and differentiation from taste and authenticity.

• Obsess over customers, not competitors. Ask “Why did you hire us?” and let discovery shape the roadmap.

• Use capital as a tool. Raise with a clear plan, tap customer prepay and small checks, and remember fundraising isn’t free.

• Respect fundamentals. Execution, IP, distribution, grit, and self-awareness beat hype and headlines.

• Assume clones. Design for fast adoption, bridge startup innovation with enterprise scale, and move first to the first win.

• Leverage the ecosystem. Build with mentors and partners, remember investors are people, and skate to where the puck is going.

If you liked this list be sure to check out the full list in this LinkedIn post.

Onward & upward,
Drew