About this episode
The episode discusses the importance of engaging with customers early in the startup process and introduces the concept of Time to Customer as a key metric for founders.
Hey friends 👋 You know the pattern. * January: idea. * February: market research. * March: wireframes, logo, landing page. * April: four customer convos. Two said routing is a pain point. Ouch — that’s just a museum of artifacts nobody bought a ticket to. This week, we break down Time to Customer : the single most important velocity metric for early-stage founders, and the one most likely to make you squirm. It’s a simple measurement — how long from “I have an idea” to “I tested it with a real customer”? Turns out, that gap is where most founders hide. Cameron and JDM dig into why we delay, what “progressivity” looks like in the wild, and what it actually means to have a bias toward getting in front of customers. We run three scenarios through the TTC lens — from a dog grooming app that spent three months in pre-production before a single customer call, to a churn prediction startup that got a prospect to ask “what would it cost to get this every month?”, to a compliance platform that built an entire outbound playbook before sending their first cold email. tbh… conviction scores were grim, but we left every founder with a clear path forward. We hope. And in frivolous Thoughts: *…
People in this episode
Hosts: Cameron, JDM
Topics covered
- customer engagement
- early-stage startups
- Time to Customer
- founder challenges
- market research
Keywords
- Time to Customer
- customer feedback
- startup metrics
- founder advice
- market validation
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Bands in Town
Places: Buffalo, DC
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