The builder's dilemma
Why building demand can't wait until the product is ready.
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Hey everyone. January has somehow both felt like 1 and 100 days have passed. Anyone else feeling that?
I've hosted founder dinners in LA and Mexico City this month, and one topic keeps coming up: how do you balance building product vs. going to market in the early days? It’s such a tough question.
I wanted to share what I’ve learned about the balance from co-founding Iteratively and Clarify, and try to start a conversation about how others look at this.
I don’t have a perfect formula. But I do have a few lessons that came the hard way, and I hope they save you a few cycles.
What I’d redo from year one of Clarify
We stayed private for too long.
For the first six months, we built in stealth mode. By the time we opened a waitlist, we were starting from (more or less) zero awareness in a category where everyone else had a head start.
The fix was simple but hard: we started sharing our thinking publicly - writing about what we were building and why, talking to anyone who’d listen about the problems we saw in CRM. The signups and waitlist grew faster than our small team could’ve driven through outbound alone. More importantly, the conversations shaped what we built.
The lesson: building in public isn’t just marketing. It’s product development with an audience.
When GTM actually starts
Day zero. Maybe before.
Most founders treat GTM as something that happens after the product exists. But the best GTM work I’ve done looked identical to customer discovery:
Talking to people about what breaks in their workflow
Testing different ways to describe the problem until someone says “wait, how does this work?”
Watching where they flinch when you mention price
The technical founder figuring out what to build and the early seller figuring out how to sell it are doing the same job. They’re both trying to find the words that make someone lean forward.
Building community, running lightweight demand tests, even just talking about your thinking publicly - these aren’t pre-launch tactics. They’re how you learn whether you’re building something people actually want to buy.
How I balance product and GTM
Early on, I treated building and GTM like separate tracks. It slowed us down.
What works better: see everything through a GTM lens from the start. Design partner conversations, small founder gatherings, writing about what we’re learning, previewing builds to users - it’s all GTM.
Example: we recently teased a feature inside the product with a waitlist CTA. About a hundred people signed up for access. That signal killed an internal debate and made prioritization obvious.
If I could rewind year one, I’d start building demand the day we started building product. Build the market and community while the product takes shape.
I’d also focus on adoption before revenue. If people don’t use it and come back, early revenue won’t last.
When to hire sales
GTM encompasses many things. One of those is selling the product.
I’m a strong believer in founder-led sales (more on that here) and I think the founder should stay involved as long as possible.
I do the selling myself so I can stay close to the problem, use the conversations to inform the roadmap, and develop a playbook.
Then I hire a salesperson to follow that playbook, not to create it from scratch. I want someone who learns fast, asks customers clear questions, and keeps the system simple, so we can see what’s working.
I make that hire when I can’t keep up and can explain the steps.
In short
Here’s a hit list of the lessons I’ve learned:
Start earlier than you think
We waited too long, so we went slower. If we had started earlier, we would have learned faster.
Create your community
Community doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. Start with dinners or small group chats. It compounds.
Run cheap tests before big builds
Landing pages, signups, waitlists, and beta toggles show demand without burning months. Marketing shows where the pull is. Product turns that pull into something people rely on.
Treat sales as discovery
Early conversations are for listening. Capture the words customers use and the moments that hurt. Feed that straight into the roadmap and the story.
Adoption before revenue
I look for repeat use. If customers keep coming back, it’s easier to sell and build consistent revenue.
Wait as long as you can to hire sales
It’s better to hire too late than too early. You risk missing the lessons that only come from doing the selling yourself.
This is all still a work-in-progress, but this is what I’ve learned so far.
— Patrick
Additional reads:
10 mistakes I made as a first time solo-founder: really interesting read, but number 6 (conducted pre-sale too late) is most relevant to this topic
Interesting read!! Really liked the take on community building. It compounds like interest, not reach.