Startup analysis argues early-stage companies often suffer from customer onboarding bottlenecks rather than engineering shortages

I met a founder last week who was drowning, and his instinct was to hire more engineers. But the bottleneck wasn't building the product, it was getting it live at customers. Onboarding the deals they'd already signed was backed up for months.

The fix wasn't more engineers writing code. It was fewer of them writing code and more of them sitting inside the customer making the thing actually work.

A lot of startups don't die because they can't build anymore. They die because they can't deploy.

@dessaigne This is why founders who are product designers by trade are superior

They've been focused on understanding users' needs and behaviors their entire careers — that's how they start projects and how they know a solution is on the right track

Not doing it that way is wild tbh

@F_Vaggi @dessaigne @paulg We believe that this document is fully AI-generated

https://www.pangram.com/history/c37e6641-087e-4ba7-8554-4b336b514ae3

@dessaigne @paulg @pangram is this generic AI slop?

@dessaigne read this interesting article about pre-product/pre-revenue startups: https://micheltencarte.substack.com/p/your-customer-interviews-are-not

@dessaigne

@dessaigne @paulg This reads like a chat bot. Why did you outsource this tweet?

@dessaigne The hard part isn't producing code anymore. It's knowing what deserves human attention before you ship

@dessaigne @paulg Comms > code

It's mainly to keep the customer happy and bring their LTV to the maximum possible and just not getting too obsessed about the product, Nicolas.

Well, acquiring customers are one thing and keeping them is another, and boy I have worked on a product and sold to a couple of thousand customers and now I understand consumer psychology or I think I know.

@dessaigne Would you say that a common doom spiral is for founders to double down on the things they're good at, not the things they need to do?

@dessaigne Good insights, ChatGPT. Send regards to your user!

@dessaigne @paulg Deployments and customer retention are the unsexy parts of scaling

@dessaigne hiring more engineers when the bottleneck is deployment is basically buying a bigger oven when the actual problem is nobody's delivering the food

@dessaigne Facts. Will we ever see hiring first sales/GTM guy before hiring first product engineer

@pangram @dessaigne @paulg Surprised that @paulg would RT this kind of engagement bait usually he has very good taste.

@dessaigne he is talking to you dude @saibharadwaj watch & learn!

@dessaigne @paulg Startups should learn how to deploy

To avoid premature death

@dessaigne @paulg FDEs (Forward Deployed Engineers) are the future, but most organisations are not pivoting their org structure fast enough.

Engineers will have to be nurtured to take up this role and a new harness will have to be build to serve this persona.

@dessaigne second AE into a broken onboarding machine just grows the pile.