[pasharayan]

Thanks for this write-up mwseibel & Geoff!

A question: What's the best way to keep ourselves accountable to the tasks of "talking to users", "do things that don't scale" and "writing code" every week?

We write a weekly report, and set milestones to go for each week - but it doesn't feel like these things focus us our attention as well as they could be.

[quaunaut]

It's the hardest part. Discipline. It requires creating your own system and constant reevaluation- every milestone/meeting should begin and end with how this is related to figuring out product/market fit.

If possible, this is the general way milestones should be structured:

1. Who is this for? Be as specific as possible. At first this might even be someone's name. As you start solving their problems, they'll ask for more and you'll naturally start targeting others through those features.

2. What's the easiest way to solve this problem today? Do it that way. You shouldn't be saving them 30 seconds a day, and actually doing what they're doing now will help you realize the difference between an annoying thing and a real need.

3. From here, what your proposed solution really is. Make sure you really figure out what they want- don't just do what they say, try to get to the root of what they're asking for.

4. How you're going to go back, show it to them, and see how much they clamor for it. See how it changes their plans, schedules, etc.

While going through this multiple times you'll probably even get mistaken customers. In this case, make sure you meet with them to just figure out what the hell is going on. They might be using it in a way you didn't realize and should maybe pivot toward- Segment is a good example of how there might be a big business right next to the problem you're solving today.