StartUp Founders: Friction Kills. Marie Kondo It.


Hey Reader,

Founders' obsession with speed is akin to a squirrel on espresso - hyperactive and directionless. You don't want speed, you want velocity: momentum in the right direction. For founders, before the user journey, before the wireframes, before the before, comes the 5 pillars of the user journey. (𝕏 Tweet)

TLDR; Marie Kondo your app. Barriers to usage often come from prioritizing company wants over user needs or value. Friction kills.

Unlock New Audiences with CAASie

​CAASie gives startups an easy path to outdoor advertising. Reach new audiences w/ lower CAC & higher visibility. Escape the AdWords battleground.
​
Meet customers where they are - from billboards to gyms, offices, & charging stations. Stand out, compete smarter.
​
No contracts, no minimums. Use CAASie now.
Need help, reach out to Joe.
​Want to get in front of 140,000+ founders? Go here.

LAST WEEKS FRAMEWORK:

​1.8 StartUp Founders: Create Lovers Not Users. Even in V1.

LETS GET INTO IT:

Every unnecessary barrier, every overlooked user need, is a missed opportunity to win (to convert). The gold is converting the beans already in your funnel, vs finding new beans to hid your failures.

Iterating your solution in your head through critical thinking is free. The more you go through it, repeat it, visualize it, think about it, talk about it, the more you do before you do, asking why to literally everything, the more likely you are to build into value.

Just get the user to the destination as clean and clear as humanely possible, that's it.

The 5 Pillars: Onboarding, Data In, Product Value, Output, and Measurement - are the foundations of the user journey. A chance to evaluate your app's purpose, impact, and success metrics at every stage to the right and left of your solution. Clarity before you drill.

This workbook might help you thinking about thinking:

Embrace the iterative process, the constant challenging, root it in real user feedback (direct and indirect) to help get closer to product-market fit. Examination of every single step, fighting for the user towards genuine value.

  • Do you really need all those questions in onboarding?
  • Do you really need the user to upload branding when you could grab it for them?
  • Do you really need to bombard users with all features at once, or can you introduce them gradually?

Just ask whether every feature, every step, every gate, every requirement genuinely serves the user or merely satisfies a perceived internal need. Are you truly user-centric, or are you projecting your own assumptions onto your users?

Question everything. Fight for the user. This is what differentiates successful startups from those that never understand why their app didn't catch on.

As always, you are welcome to grab time with me.

Good luck.

-- James
​

​

Not A Subscriber?

Join 140k+ StartUp Founders reading my weekly newsletter offering tactical insights to start, scale, and fund their startup. Real advice from a 3x exited founder.

​

​


​

‪8424 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite A523, Los Angeles, CA 90069
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​

StartUp To ScaleUp

Where 140k+ founders read my weekly newsletter offering tactical insights to start, scale, and fund their startup. Real advice from a 3x exited founder.

Read more from StartUp To ScaleUp
Quietly Freaking Out

Hey Reader, You're probably quietly freaking out. It's a common theme I am hearing from founders at every stage of maturity. Every other LinkedIn post screaming with ridiculousness. I raised $30m in three minutes with AI, solo founders running businesses with 40 AI agents, MVPs vibe coded in a weekend with 100 customers and $22k MRR, the AI Marketing agency getting 82% conversion rates from emailing 3% of the world. AI video doubles auto-posting across founder socials while they sleep driving...

The Moat

Hey Reader, What stops someone from stealing your idea? Not much. In most cases, I can find, hire, or outsource to a team that gets to basic parity with your tech. I’m not talking about stealing your vision, that’s what makes you unique. I’m talking about stealing your traction. Your customers. Your edge. That’s what a "moat" protects. Your competitive advantage, your defensible edge. And if you don’t have one yet, be very clear what’s holding your position... likely by a thread. In the early...

SCARF Empathy

Hey Reader, We need gamification!! We need a checklist at signup, because users don’t like leaving jobs unfinished. That’s certainty. They want a clear path, closure, and to know what's next. We need badges and progress markers, because users like feeling recognized. That’s status. They need to feel like they’re getting somewhere and that it matters. We need customizable flows and smart defaults, because users don’t like being forced into decisions. That’s autonomy. Give them agency, or...