Double-checking my own success narratives

Founders invent explanations of their wins and overall success which often doesn’t reflect reality. And I do that, too. It is a human nature.

One of the benefits of building in public is that retrospectively I can double check my own current narratives.

For example, I believe that positioning made a ten times difference in my MRR: from $3.5K to $35K.

I check my posts:

1. I had a slow growth and didn’t know who were my customers.
2. I realized who I can target and how. I made a bet and went all-in.
3. I have faster growth.

Of course, there is a lot more to the story: I worked on churn, marketing and so on. But without understanding my ICP, it would be a tough challenge to improve the product and market it.

Double checking with agents searching my public posts:

I didn’t wait 2 years. It is embarrassing and dumb, but I still prefer to be honest: I didn’t know that mattered.

I was chatting to customers, of course. I kept talking to different founders. I kept reading, e.g. “Selling to Carol: Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected” by Jason Cohen and Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. And then it clicked!

Of course, if I started today a new product, I would do it differently. And wouldn’t waste 2 years.