From solving “your” problem to solving “our” problem: the value of design partners

The Lincoln Highway, the latest novel from Amor Towles, includes a short conversation between a main character named Duchess and a traveling salesman that meet at a restaurant. The salesman touts his company’s innovation ability, and says

“…This year, I’m proud to say, we became the first blender manufacturer in America to offer a fourth stage of blending.

A Fourth Stage?

After mix, beat, and whip?

….Puree!”

Now, I’m proud to say, I wasn’t alive when this blender innovation launched in the 1950’s 💁‍♀️, and this is a fictional book, but I just love the image this vignette brings to mind of being out of touch with a consumer. I can’t help but think of a marketing and product team, huddled around, staring at a blender with a fourth speed stage button, AMPED to get this thing into customers hands, only to hear the question this passage begs …“it’s just another button??”

For early stage startups, the “ah-hah” moment for a startup often comes from scratching your own itch — you lived with a problem first hand and know it can be done better. While this intuition about a problem (sometimes called earned insight in the industry) is a catalyst to go all in and launch a startup, getting feedback from those who will be your actual customer is a critical next step if you want to build something that is as valuable as you are hoping. For the earliest stage companies that we back at Upfront, this happens via design partners. Design partners are the customers you work with prior to having a full fledged product who often compensate you in feedback, vs. cash. Being very particular about who you are choosing doesn’t violate the principle of CE. In fact, having a gating function to onboarding customers en masse until the product is ready to see daylight is smart. We’ve seen this path with several of our CE companies. Build like crazy > announce fundraising > collect signups > hand select a group of design customers.

Well how do you select your Design Partner? We’ve talked with our founders and put together the below list of advice for selecting the right partners:

• Design partnerships are explicit relationships (e.g., meet once per week, here are mock ups, here is how we think this will work.) Think of them more as co-creators in the process.
• Not just former colleagues — Some design partners should not be former colleagues, or close friends, as this will make receiving the tough feedback and truly understanding if you are providing something of value more challenging. This will also demonstrate ability to sell and establish net new relationships.While it is OK, even an advantage, to start with friends, in consumerized enterprise you will need organic signups, referrals or even straight up outbound founder sales to get to the right feedback and right volume for future business model. It’s good to build this muscle as early as possible.
• Well financed and respected Series B through E companies are great candidates. If these startups are the who’s who of their peer set, this will make selling to the next account that much easier with the social proof working with tier one companies will provide.
• Be hypothesis led. Put a stake in the ground — As you approach these conversations, it’s okay that you don’t have the answers. You need to have an insight and a perspective, but part of this process is putting a stake in the ground and saying “this is what this space needs” and figuring out where you are right and wrong.
• Look for specific answers, but be open for the unexpected — Still a decent amount of research and assumptions will be validated in the process. One of our portco’s asks users to rate a proposed feature / mock ups usefulness on a scale of 10/10. Answer specific questions, but expect to learn things you weren’t expecting as you approach these relationships.
• Don’t optimize for ARR — Fees for design partners vary from non to a nominal rate. At this stage, you are optimizing for learning and not ARR. An engaged partner will yield millions of ARR in the future in the form of a better product. ​​BUT, keep ARR in mind. Understand willingness to pay early and what a self-service vs asset vs full contact sale will require. GTM flow is a core consideration for consumerized companies, but it is not the only one. It is possible to build a consumer friendly product that has much faster adoption than traditional players and a freemium product with a full contact sales motion.

The best software of tomorrow will be co-created with design customers. Your culture of customer obsession will first be established when you select those design partners. Lots of interesting work has been done in how you engage in these relationships and the feedback loop, and tech has borrowed principles of design thinking and human-centered design. A helpful framework to get the juices flowing is an Empathy Map. We’ll rely on excellent work that’s been done in this space, but the general idea is to create a set of questions that unpacks what a users says and does, thinks and feels, hears, and sees as they interact with your product, feature, module, etc.

Finally a word of caution. Don’t be overly concerned with metrics at this point.

At this stage of work, consider what you are doing to be less like a political pollster and more like an anthropologist. Put on their shoes, travel to where they are, sit next to users as they are using the product. Maybe (and hopefully) more sociology and anthropology majors that are kicking off their final semesters in school will soon be sitting in product and research orgs at the next unicorn.

As with all principles of CE, customer-obsessed is part of the whole puzzle. Next post we’ll dive into building a brand that more closely resonates your favorite consumer product vs. a sleepy IT software company.